Documentation always seems to come last at our company. First, it can't be written until the code is done. Then the programmer(s) involved are on to the next thing on their schedule while the documentation person needs to get a brain dump from then – after it has gone through testing and they have a build.
We also have a fundamental problem that we do not save up new features and then release all of them at once every 9 months. About 2 years ago we decided to release new features when they were completed – we had something we had added that one of our customers desperately needed and telling them to wait 5 months would not help anyone. With the program a constantly moving target, the documentation also became a moving target.
So we switched our whole approach – and it's working great. The documentation is now all in a wiki at ohana.windwardstudios.com. All Windward employees and a number of our customers can edit it at any time (anyone can add a comment at the bottom of any page). So now when a developer checks in the final code for a new feature, they are required to document it in the wiki. So we now document a feature before we ship it. And the person who implemented it writes it up when it is totally fresh. (BTW – I grew up in Hawaii and that's the Honolulu Airport wiki-wiki bus.)
This has made a tremendous difference. The level of detail and description of why you would use a new feature as well as how has jumped substantially. It's human nature, when a developer has checked in their code they are the proud parent of that feature and want to describe it in detail. And at that point they retain every detail of it and that all goes in. The old way they would be asked about it several weeks later when they are busy on a new feature and so their focus and memory is elsewhere.
The documentation person gets an email whenever a page changes. So she then goes in and cleans up the new documentation. A lot of developers do not write the clearest documentation, but it's enough that she can turn it in to something very clear and complete, occasionally asking the developer for some clarification.
Now the wiki is great, but what about when you click help in the program? Well it will first try to go to the appropriate wiki page for that help. So clicking help gets you the latest information if you are connected to the Internet. The biggest problem with this is you may read of a feature that your older version does not have. But that is just an indication that if you need that feature, grab the latest version.
And if you're not connected to the Internet? About every 9 months we bump the version number by 1, and then copy all the wiki content to html files. We ship those files with the program. So if the wiki cannot be connected to, it will pull up the local file instead. These files do slowly get out of date, up to 6 months so, because making a local copy is very labor intensive (basically 1 week's effort by an intern).
The code behind this generally works fast. The Windows call InternetGetConnectedState will return instantly if a system is connected to the Internet. If it is we request the HEAD for the desired page as that's the fastest way to determine if we can get the page. This will take a couple of seconds if it will fail, but failure is very unlikely.
We've had videos for some time for some basic training. But we are now in the process of adding videos to demonstrate how to perform any action that we get repeated questions on. These videos will require a connection to the Internet because users do not want us installing hundreds of megabytes of videos to their system. But the links to the videos are being incorporated throughout the wiki so a video to demonstrate a concept will always be a click away.
We are also adding Computer Based Training. We are creating interactive videos where it is showing the system, explaining what to do, highlighting the next step, and then the viewer has to perform that operation. So it guides you through performing each step of the action you wish to accomplish.
We also had one person come up with a very clever idea. The first time you run Office after installing AutoTag, it opens on a document we created. That document is both a tutorial and a report template. So it explains a concept, then has that concept as a set of tags there in the document. You can at that time tell AutoTag to run the template you are in and see the generated report. I like how it's both tutorial and template all in one – something we can only do because it's design in Office.
[DllImport("wininet.dll", CharSet = CharSet.None)]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
private static extern bool InternetGetConnectedState(out uint lpdwFlags, uint dwReserved);
/// <summary></summary>
/// Determines if can access a webite. First checks connection state (that is fast). Requests the HEAD to verify.
///
/// <param name="uri">The uri to look for.
/// <param name="timeout">The timeout in milliseconds. Reccomend 10000
/// <returns></returns>
public static bool CanLikelyAccessWebSite(Uri uri, int timeout)
{
uint unused;
if (!InternetGetConnectedState(out unused, 0U))
return false;
try
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
request.Method = "HEAD";
request.Timeout = timeout;
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
{
return response != null;
}
}
catch (WebException)
{
return false;
}
}
No idea. But one thing I have learned, documentation can always be better.
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Adds various capabilities such as inequalities,descending sort, joins, and other functions.
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SQL Select Debugger
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Added a Query tab as a field for typing or pasting in a select statement
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All tags using that Data source will be automatically updated with that name.
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New single interface to replace 2 separate dialog boxes
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Displays of all the tags in the template, structured as they are placed in the template. This provides a simple & intuitive way to see the structure of your template. Also provides the capability to go to any tag and/or see the properties of any tag.
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The ability to integrate the Windward Engine into Google’s cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications dubbed Google Applications Engine (GAE).
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This new integration will allow for processing of complex scripts and bi-directional text such as Arabic. Your PDF output will be much tighter and more closely match your template, and we’ll be able to respond rapidly to PDF requests and fixes.
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Includes support for new ForEach and slide break handling, table header row repeat across slide breaks, and native Microsoft support for charts and images.
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Tags are color coded in the template by type, making it easy to visually identify them.
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Version 13’s core code has been reworked and optimized to offer a reduced memory footprint, faster PDF generation and full documentation of supported features and limitations in the specifications for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX.
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Documents can include advanced Word image properties such as shadows, borders, and styles.
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Windward has updated HTML output to reflect changing HTML standards.
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Windward now works with a slew of new datasources: MongoDB, JSON, Cassandra, OData, Salesforce.com
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The Generate Code tool in the designer allows you to open an existing template and, with a click of a button, automatically create a window with the code needed to run your current template with all data sources and variables. Simply copy this code and paste into your application's code in the appropriate place. You now have Windward integrated into your application.
You only need to do this once. You do not do this for each template. Instead, where it has explicit files for the template and output, change that to parameters you pass to this code. Same for the parameters passed to Windward. This example uses explicit values to show you what to substitute in where.
Any pivot tables in an XLSX template are carried over to the XLSX output. The ranges in the pivot ranges are adjusted to match the generated output. So your final XLSX will have pivot tables set as expected in the generated file.
This makes creating an XLSX workbook with pivot tables trivial.
In an imported sub-template, if its properties for a style (ex. Normal) differ from the parent template's properties for the style, the use in the sub-template can be set to either use the properties in the sub-template, or the properties in the parent.
You set to retain when you don't want the child template's styling to change when imported. You set to use the parent when you want the styling of the imported template to match the styling in the parent.
Any explicit styling is always retained. This only impacts styling set by styles.
Tags can be placed in text boxes. Including linked text boxes. This gives you the ability to set the text in a textbox from your data.
Tags can be placed in shapes & smart art. This gives you the ability to set the text in a shape from your data.
When generating HTML output, the engine can either write bitmaps as distinct files the generate HTML references, or it can embed the images in the HTML providing a single file for the output.
You can place tags in pretty much any part of a template, including in footnotes & endnotes.
Any parts of a DOCX or XLSX (PowerPoint does not support this) file that are locked in the template, will be locked the same in the output.
If a font used in the template does not exist on the server generating a report, the font to substitute can be specified.
In addition, if a glyph to be rendered does not exist in the font specified, you can specify the replacement font. This can be set distinctly for European, Bi-Directional, and Far East fonts.
If you need this - it's essential. And if you don't need it, it's irrelevant.
Windward enables you to build a document by applying multiple datasources to the template simultaneously. When Windward is merging the data into a template, it processes the template by handling each tag in order, and each tag pulls from different datasources. (As opposed to processing all of one datasource, then processing the next.)
This allows the select tag to use data from another datasource in its select. For example, if you are pulling customer information from one data source, you can then pull data from the sales datasource using the customer ID of the customer presently processing to pull the sales information for that customer. If you're interested in patching together your data from multiple datasources, read this post on our blog.
