[HN Gopher] Subsection - A tool for creating support docs for SaaS
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Subsection - A tool for creating support docs for SaaS
Author : octobereleven
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-09-28 14:06 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (subsection.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (subsection.io)
| koromak wrote:
| I'm in the market for one of these. Right now all alternatives
| that have embeddable forms and chat are weirdly expensive.
| Gitbook would be fantastic, but if you want to include some kind
| of help desk you're forced to take users off site. Which is a
| decision I can't quite understand. I mean, users go from the
| application, to gitlab, to an offsite help desk just to get an
| answer.
| octobereleven wrote:
| [ Subsection is free to play with, without needing an email ]
|
| Hey HN friends,
|
| I have created this tool for any Saas that is currently missing
| Support Docs or wants to manage them all from a single spot.
|
| Support Docs, such as: User Guides, Knowledge Bases,
| Documentations, and Changelogs.
|
| The project started with me looking into how to create support
| docs for my other apps and couldn't find one that does it all _.
|
| Then found out that user guides and knowledge bases do rank
| pretty well for bottom-of-the-funnel customers = Subsection was
| born.
|
| _ Currently you can only create a User Guide as I'm in the midst
| of deploying themes for KB, Docs, and Changelogs.
|
| Would love to hear your thoughts.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| I would love to use it actually, but would want to have some
| pricing or long term garantue.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Thanks. There will be pricing after the Beta. I want to base
| it on what users are able to pay for something like this.
|
| Could you share a bit about what aspects of it you would use
| and what would be a good price for your Saas?
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| I was thinking of spinning op a Docusaurus v2 for a while.
| But was annoyed by the forced markdown editing for my team
| mates who are not devs. Gitbook is okay alternative, but
| forces you to pay per user. But just decided to go for
| gitbook now, it's basic plan is actually ok.
|
| I understand your careful approach, but I would just set
| pricing for now, at the moment I don't want to invest all
| the time of setting up docs and then you having it shut
| down.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Fair points. Yes, will try to soon have a better
| understanding about the pricing and post it up.
|
| "Teams" is something I am trying to launch shortly so
| users within a company can collaborate on various docs.
|
| I hope you get to keep Subsection in the back of your
| mind, and once you feel we're here to stay, I would love
| to have you and your team on Subsection.
|
| I am Val and you'll most likely find me on the chat
| support.
| murdockq wrote:
| One of the most important aspects that doesn't seem to be covered
| here is data retention and ownership. Looking through the
| settings page I don't see any ways to eject and backup all the
| documentation that was invested into the project. Downloading the
| data as markdown or as a git repo is pretty important to be able
| to trust it won't be lost if you disappear or out grow the
| features of the service.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Great point! Adding this to the list. I agree that it's very
| important to have this functionality in, so users can be free
| to move away at any time without feeling tied to the tool.
| midenginedcoupe wrote:
| If you're pitching a managed platform for documentation, then the
| documentation for the product itself has to look and behave
| brilliantly. It's the showcase for your product. Unfortunately
| this doesn't seem to do that. The website seems to have a
| confused mix of styles and it quite hard to read somehow. Also,
| grammar is super-important in this domain - I see SaaS has
| already been picked up, but it's also super-weird to see the
| plural of Documentation being Documentations. Reading the terms
| and privacy is also hard work - there's lots more work on grammar
| required here, too.
|
| The focus seems a bit blurred, too. The claim is that it's for
| Support, User Guides, Knowledge Bases, Documentation and Change
| Logs. But the features list also talks about multuple Blogs. It's
| not at all clear where they fit in.
|
| Also, being misled is a massive turn-off. First you say "User
| Guides + Knowledge Bases + Documentations + Changelogs", but then
| caveat it with "Currently offering User Guides only". But then
| later on the same page you say "Apps like Intercom, Crisp, and
| Helpscout, offer only one aspect of support pages and that is
| Knowledge Bases. Subsection covers all four: User Guides,
| Knowledge Bases, Documentations, and Changelogs"
|
| You don't cover all four, you _plan_ to cover all four in the
| future.
| mijustin wrote:
| I decided to try it out (I recorded my initial impressions
| here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdmB0JnNF3s).
|
| The software itself is pretty slick. Currently we're using
| Crisp Chat's help docs for our SaaS, as well as a static site
| generator for our API docs. I think this could reasonably
| replace both.
|
| One thing I really like is the layout. Having general topics on
| the left, as well as anchor based menu in each article is super
| helpful.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Thank you so much for recording this. I appreciate it a ton.
|
| It's incredible to look at it from the user's perspective.
| And happy that you found it useful. Gives me a few ideas on
| how to improve certain things.
|
| And to compare it to Crisp, that's just amazing. Would love
| to see Transistor's help and api docs on Subsection at some
| point.
|
| This was great!
| octobereleven wrote:
| Thank you so much for your well founded critique. I will take
| all your comments and improve these areas you have mentioned.
|
| Your feedback is gold!
| nicoburns wrote:
| One super-simple improvement would be to include a link to
| your documentation in the primary navigation of your website.
| I can't even find it!
| octobereleven wrote:
| You are absolutely right. It should be up there.
|
| It's currently all the way down on the footer:
| https://subsection.io/guide
|
| It's still being worked on as Subsection is only about a
| week old and still deploying features as we speak.
| zerkten wrote:
| You should flesh out your your own docs before showing it
| off. For the people that are buying documentation
| products they are comparing your product to many others
| including open source tools which come with substantially
| more evolved demonstrations of what they do.
|
| Throwing stuff over the fence works for some markets and
| is generally encouraged by HN, but it doesn't for a lot
| of markets which have substantially more money to spend
| on these kinds of solutions. In return for more money,
| you need to withstand basic scrutiny.
| octobereleven wrote:
| You are right. We need to move faster in that direction,
| as few other commenters have noted earlier.
|
| Thank you for taking a look at it.
| OmarIsmail wrote:
| The idea is solid but as someone who is in the market for
| something like this, the product doesnt currently inspire
| confidence. Specifically, you're a tool to create User Guides and
| yet you haven't created a user guide for your own site. If you
| don't have user guides for your own service that indicates a few
| possibilities:
|
| - the tool is too difficult to use for even yourself to be worth
| it
|
| - you don't use your tool deeply so you don't have intuitive
| understanding of what is needed to be improve
|
| - you don't actually take user guides seriously and think they
| are important for a company to provide
|
| When looking at this kind of service I'm evaluating on two
| levels: my customers experience, and my authoring experience. By
| not having your own user guide filled out I'm unable to evaluate
| the end customer experience (search, navigation, etc).
|
| I know you're in beta, but I don't know why you'd do a show HN
| without at least having your own user guide filled out. A big
| wasted opportunity.
| solvitor wrote:
| > Specifically, you're a tool to create User Guides and yet you
| haven't created a user guide for your own site.
|
| This was my exact thought. It's nice to have an easy-to-start
| demo, but I was expecting at least a link to a working (user-
| side) example.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Oh, sorry you missed that.
|
| On homepage there is a guide to one of my other apps,
| blogstatic, using Subsection:
| https://blogstatic.io/guide/getting-started
|
| And the Subsection one, which I am currently adding info to:
| https://subsection.io/guide
|
| Subsection is about a week old and still improving it while
| in Beta.
| OmarIsmail wrote:
| Even that blogstatic "guide" is just one page.
|
| It seems to me you're throwing a bunch of barely-built
| stuff at the wall to see what has traction to then actually
| build out. I don't think HN is a good way to do that. This
| now feels like a waste of everyone's time.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Sorry about that. Did not mean to look like I am doing
| that.
|
| Subsection is about a week old and I am slowly building
| out the guides for both our apps.
|
| Also, there are currently two users who are using it to
| build out their User Guide and they will hopefully
| publish soon, so I can share their guides.
| 9dev wrote:
| I think that's a bit harsh. HN should absolutely be a
| place to try stuff out, as long as you're clear about it.
| OP was mostly clear, even though the homepage copy might
| not be ideal.
| caitlinface wrote:
| Really love the way you handled the demo.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Thank you. I appreciate that.
| Trufa wrote:
| Don't get discouraged by HN's negativity. The product may be a
| little rough around the edges but it's starting to look great,
| congrats on being on beta and good luck with the rest of the
| path.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Thank you. I really appreciate that. I look forward to
| improving it and fixing the areas some HNs have pointed out.
| Also, I am happy people are taking the time to look at it.
| midenginedcoupe wrote:
| Please don't ignore accessibility. Docs that aren't accessible
| are a big no-no and a dealbreaker for my company. I've had a
| quick look at your own userguide and the results aren't good.
|
| https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A...
|
| Even just the basics of alt text and sufficient colour contrast
| need fixing. This suggests accessibility hasn't been considered
| at all.
| octobereleven wrote:
| You are right! Absolutely embarrassed that I didn't thoroughly
| look at the accessibility aspect of it.
|
| That is the next task in line. Please, check it again soon, to
| notice the changes.
| jiriro wrote:
| Can this be used on premise?
| octobereleven wrote:
| It will be online only. Sorry about that.
|
| Not that I'm against "on-premise", but it's much easier to
| deploy updates this way.
|
| Thank you for taking a look at it.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| Congrats! Small nitpick. Saas should be SaaS otherwise it looks
| like a misspelling.
| octobereleven wrote:
| Ah. Will change that. Thanks for noticing it. I never know fore
| sure.
| tobr wrote:
| Some thoughts about your onboarding:
|
| > Try a Free Demo / NO EMAIL REQUIRED
|
| Ok, sure! I'm assuming this is a demo of documentation created in
| Subsection, so I'm not sure who would expect it to require email
| anyway. _Click_
|
| > Free Demo
|
| > Email is not required to test Subsection!
|
| > Start
|
| Ok, an entire screen to say that again? There's nothing to do on
| this screen, so it seems completely unnecessary. How can "no
| email required" be the most important information about the demo
| anyway? But sure, _click_
|
| > Demo Created
|
| > You can now create your very first guide!
|
| > Next
|
| Another screen that says nothing and where I do nothing? I don't
| even know in what way a demo was "created". I just want to see
| what the documentation looks like, but I guess this is a demo of
| an admin interface. There's a slow video here showing me things I
| can't do on this screen. Am I supposed to memorize what happens
| in the video to use on a different screen?
|
| After this I get into the admin UI which seems straightforward -
| I didn't play around much with it, but it doesn't look too
| complicated. You should jump here in a single step after I click
| the demo button on the landing page!
| octobereleven wrote:
| Great, points! I agree that it could be quicker.
|
| I wasn't so sure about including the second step before
| creating the Demo, but that was sort of my safety so people
| don't "accidentally" create it.
|
| And, overall it could be less steps for sure.
|
| Thank you so much for this feedback.
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(page generated 2022-09-28 23:02 UTC)