In 2008, Adobe introduced Adobe Community Help, “an integrated online environment for instruction, inspiration, and support. Community Help combines content from Adobe Help, Support, Design Center, Developer Connection, and Forums—along with great online community content—so that users can easily find the best and most up-to-date resources.” Peggy Harvey, a graduate student in tech comm at North Carolina State University, has written and spoken about Adobe Community help as an example of a company engaging users through interactive user assistance.

I’ve used Adobe Community Help when trying to get answers regarding Creative Suite products. I like the emphasis on searching and the integration of results that aren’t within Adobe’s domain. I’m not someone who cares much about rating systems most of the time, with the exception of ratings on open source software. Ratings break down unless you have more than three people leaving ratings.

But I think Adobe Community Help is a great example of what help can be: pulling answers and information together from various sources and formats and then showing context in search results.

So if it’s good enough for Adobe, why are they dishing out AIR Help to technical communicators?

In an interview with Peggy, RJ Jacquez said, “[T]here’s so much to like about Adobe Community Help, and at Adobe, we really see this as the future of delivering User Assistance and a way to bring entire communities together around our products and services. We are also doing something similar in the Help of Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2.”

He asked Peggy about why Adobe Community Help is exciting to her. Her answer was, “I think the future of documentation is in search,” and she elaborated nicely. However, RJ barely acknowledged this topic and went on to other aspects of Community Help.

What I get from that, and from the fact that some of AIR Help’s most advertised features are commenting and favorites, is that Adobe’s help authoring focus is on a slice of social media. RoboHelp 8 has improved search over earlier versions, but certainly not to the level of Adobe Community Help.

Why not?

Let’s go back to the announcement on Adobe Community Help (I’d abbreviate it, but ACH isn’t a nice acronym):

Adobe Community Help relies on a new approach to search called Custom Search, an enterprise tool from Google. This tool enables us to selectively index only the most relevant information from Adobe from the highest-quality community sites. . . . Adobe is working with local professionals in North America, Europe and Asia—designers and developers who use Adobe products every day—to identify learning and troubleshooting content to add to our custom search engine.

First problem: When I read “enterprise tool,” I take it to mean “for big organizations with deep pockets.” Adobe, a giant of a company, has purchased a custom setup from Google. Some technical communicators work for companies that size, but many don’t. Our organizations probably can’t afford that kind of custom search. And what are the options for those with private or sensitive documentation and training that can’t be put on the public Web for Google’s digestion? This method especially isn’t practical for small products that need robust search and satisfied users just as much.

Second problem: Adobe has enlisted experts to help them vet content on the Web before they include it in their custom search. See the first problem. Most companies won’t and can’t spring for paying extra people to help in that kind of effort.

It appears to me that when it comes to RoboHelp’s outputs, Adobe has pushed in a bit of social media at the expense of one of the things that makes today’s Web run: quick and thorough search. I’d like to see user assistance projects that can search across files and formats. I would like to see customizable searches that don’t need technical writers and help authors to become back-end developers or server administrators—we need to be able to customize things through our software interfaces.

If you’ve read Tom Johnson’s recent Organizing Content series, it’s a strong reminder of another area in which authoring tools are severely lacking: options for navigation. Many sites on the Web offer faceted navigation, but HATs have barely scratched the surface here as far as I know. A commenter suggested after post 7 in the series that it’s up to the writer to get past the limitations of the software, but there are only so many things you can do with a limited search function and outdated conventions like tables of contents and indexes. Adobe seems to be focusing on community and not enough on findability of information when it comes to the tools they’re handing technical communicators.

I’ll point out here that I reviewed RoboHelp 8, and the AIR Help output seemed about the same as the first version introduced with RoboHelp Packager for AIR. If anyone has insight as to how AIR Help enhances search capabilities, I’m all ears. And it sounds like I’m picking on Adobe, but I extend a call to action to all help-authoring tool companies to improve their products.

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