Improving documentation with content reuse

Anyone who’s worked in a customer-facing role knows the pressure to find the correct answers quickly. Emotions are high when something is broken, or there’s an outage. The customer is angry. You’re stressed. And your boss is watching and wondering why the problem hasn’t been fixed. You need to troubleshoot quickly and provide the right information ASAP.

As a support professional, you want to give customers and stakeholders the best possible experience. But that isn’t easy when you don’t know where to find the answers to essential questions. Locating the correct information can sometimes feel impossible in today’s tech landscape. Knowledge is abundant yet dispersed, often leading to confusion rather than clarity.

Before joining the technical writing team at BigPanda, I worked in customer-facing roles, handling everything from inbound support to being a reference librarian. I know the importance of well-organized, accurate, and easily accessible information. And I’ve seen the pitfalls when the management of information sources breaks down.

The search for answers

When I worked as an inbound support agent, I dealt with information overload every day. Often, an answer was buried in a difficult-to-find document that wasn’t in a central location. Some information was stored on internal platforms. And other answers existed in customer-facing materials. Deciding where to check first sometimes felt like a gamble.

With so many information sources, teams often missed updates when products changed. The scattered knowledge silos caused inconsistent messaging and sometimes resulted in agents presenting the wrong information. And that led to angry customers and more stress on the support team.

More information sources means more maintenance. Without the ability to update everything simultaneously, pages can quickly become outdated. This disparity not only frustrates users seeking reliable information but also impacts operational efficiency. Sometimes, it requires adding staff to keep up. Knowing where to find accurate answers can feel impossible without a proper system for organization and updates.

More intelligent content management

At BigPanda, the technical writing team’s approach to these challenges revolves around content reuse and intelligent information architecture strategies. What if you could write something once and use it across all information sources?

Thanks to content reuse, we can do just that.

Pieces of reusable content are like building blocks. We can edit each block individually and reuse it, allowing us to build pages across multiple platforms with pieces of existing content. When we create a new page for BigPanda documentation, we consider whether some of the information already exists or if we might reuse the new content elsewhere.

For example, we may define a term like “alert correlation” in several places in our documentation. With content reuse, we can ensure the consistency of our terminology and definitions. Creating reusable blocks within our documentation helps ensure systematic and comprehensive updates. It keeps our materials current and enhances consistency across platforms, from our documentation site to the BigPanda platform itself.

Content reuse: Big to little, from start to finish

Instructions are easiest to follow when they include context. One of our core principles is the “big to little, from start to finish” approach. This means we start with a process’s overview or initial steps before diving into specifics. Each documentation page begins with a broad introduction that provides an overview of a concept. Then, as the page progresses, we dive into specific details.

We align our documentation closely with the in-product user experience so it’s easier for you to navigate and find exactly what you need. (And spend less time searching for answers.)

Our team’s commitment to content reuse and intelligent information architecture creates exciting possibilities. As we continue to adopt content-reuse practices, we can create variables on the BigPanda Docs site. Variables are pieces of text that can change depending on the reader’s preferences or location. For instance, when you’re logged in from a particular region, the site can swap out blocks of text depending on your specific context.

This is especially helpful for users in regions with specific regulatory needs or varying URLs for workflows like sending API calls. Whether you’re an EU customer with distinct requirements or a user in the United States, variables allow the documentation to adapt seamlessly to your region’s specific requirements.

We want to make the BigPanda platform as intuitive as possible. Part of this process involves meeting you where you are. Content reuse will allow us to further integrate documentation within the BigPanda user interface. When we create a content building block, we can reuse it across all platforms, allowing you to get the information you need while working in BigPanda.

Our commitment

We’re committed to transforming how information is managed and accessed. Whether it’s helping support agents find precisely what they need or making the site easier for customers to navigate, our team is driven to make our documentation as user-friendly and accurate as possible. Using our content reuse strategies and information architecture best practices, we’re paving the way for a more seamless user experience where finding answers is efficient rather than overwhelming.

Visit docs.bigpanda.io to learn more about the BigPanda platform and our latest releases.