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Documentation that makes sense

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NEWS

Nov. 14th, 2006

OpenOffice.org is the first application, supported by Plan-B™ technology.

Melrose, MA - Nov. 14, 2006, Conficio, has announced the public beta phase of its Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org support service. This service allows anyone, especially non technical users, to find answers to their questions quickly and to understand the documentation effortless. Plan-B™ is a new technology that documents software with short videos (screencasts) and offers smart search technology for improved indexing.


June 2006

OISV - Organization of Independant Software Vendors - Charter Member


ornamental red diamond, element of the conficio logo User Friendly Software Documentation

Conficio is dedicated to produce user friendly software documentation systems. We invent and develop systems that allow users to learn software on demand and access the material in their own language.

ornamental red diamond, element of the conficio logo Web based support

We strive to make software instructions easier to understand for end-user by building it around screencasts (short instructional videos). We also make it more accessible by providing smart search that understands the user's language.

Our systems support a process of constant improvement. Documentation, if serving the user well, is a living system that needs feedback and integration to support systems. Our systems are bi-directional communication between texhnical writer and the end user.

ornamental red diamond, element of the conficio logo User centric systems

Our goal is to overcome the typical end-user's complaints:

  1. "I can't find [in the documentation] what I'm looking for."
  2. "If I find something, I do not understand the instructions. (I have to try it out, before I know if it fits my problem)"

We believe these complaints are very valid from the perspective of the typical (non-technical) user. They are rooted in the way we produce software documentation today. The status quo requires the end-user to learn the language of the application in order to understand the documentation. End-users are not able or not willing to invest this effort. We propose a new way to overcome this language barrier.

ornamental red diamond, element of the conficio logo Increased Software Productivity

The PC revolution is about 20 years old and still typical end-users struggle to use their software to get the job done efficiently. Some daily tasks are perfomed in sub-optimal ways, because the documentation is so in-accessible. Non-routine tasks become difficult to achieve, because they stretch the proficiency of the user and she/he has no way to turn.

With computers and the Internet more and more employees become knowledge workers who can't work efficiently if they don't know their tools. The efficiency of a knowledge worker depends the proficiency in "How to use software?" Currently when end-users need to expand their knowledge about software, they don't turn to the documentation but rather to a "perceived" expert, such as a colleague or neighbor. The rapid development of new software and more feature reach software demands that we find ways to teach software more efficiently and more timely (on demand).

Conficio is commited to lead this necessary change by advancing the state of the art of software documentation to the next level.