BYU–Idaho Creates 4x The Docs In 1/4 Of The Time It Used To Take

The Company

Brigham Young University - Idaho (BYU-Idaho)

Brigham Young University - Idaho (BYU-Idaho) has the same challenge as every other university when it comes to teaching students, parents, faculty, and staff how to use campus technology. They needed to create and maintain help documentation for easy user self-service. 

The Challenge

Content creation limitations

The biggest challenge Arlen Wilcock, BYU - Idaho's Faculty Technology Consultant, faced was content creation for documentation. His team used Adobe InDesign to create PDF guides to help users navigate campus technology.

However, InDesign wasn't very intuitive for all of the student employees. The result was that only three members of the staff were able to create documentation. 

Not only did that slow down the initial content creation process, it made maintaining documentation nearly impossible. 

Additionally, the format of the documentation (PDF files) was not user-friendly. The result was low documentation usage and constant questions and mistakes from users. 

"We figured that faculty would have the PDF sitting on their computer. But that’s just not how people work anymore. If it’s not available online where they are at, and easy to access, they’re not going to go there."

Arlen Wilcock
BYU - Idaho, Faculty Technology Consultant

The Solution

Knowledge ops solution for simpler content creation and better documentation

Arlen needed a system for easily creating documentation that users could find and follow with ease. He noticed that another department was using ScreenSteps, and he saw how quickly they were able to create the documentation. When he tried it out for himself, he was hooked.

Not only was the barrier to entry for content creation significantly smaller, the ScreenSteps Google-like experience would allow faculty members to find the documentation they needed in a way that was familiar to their current habits. 

The Results

More contributors, faster content creation, and better usage

With ScreenSteps, Arlen's entire team of 37 students was now able to create content. Not only did it take less time to create content, but they are all able to contribute more articles because ScreenSteps was so easy to use.

BYU – Idaho now has over 2,000 articles in ScreenSteps that are being used by thousands of faculty members and students across the globe. But Arlen is also quick to point out that a more robust knowledge base wasn't the only goal. The goal was for faculty, students, and employees to be able to find help when they need it. And ScreenSteps is helping them do just that.

Before ScreenSteps, if a faculty member was looking for how to perform a task and couldn’t find it, they would call in, and the support team would answer the question and then email a link to the PDF. Now, nobody has to guide them through the process of how to find answers. They can self-serve themselves. 

"In the old system, faculty and students had to click 3 or 4 times to find the article that would help them. But with ScreenSteps, if they have a question about how to randomize quiz questions, they just type in “Randomize,” and they get an article on how to randomize quiz questions."

Arlen Wilcock
BYU - Idaho, Faculty Technology Consultant