Building an HTML/PDF manual creation system using Markdown

Ryobi Systems Co., Ltd. Overview

・Established: December 1969

・Capital: 300 million yen

・Number of Employees: Consolidated 1,556 (as of December 2019)

・Business Areas: Provision of information services for public, medical, social security fields and private companies, system construction, outsourcing business, software development, and others

 Services

- Manual Creation

・Building an HTML/PDF manual creation system using Markdown

Background

Ryobi Systems Co., Ltd. has expanded its business in the fields of administration, healthcare, and welfare since its establishment, and has also expanded its business in the fields of education, transportation, and distribution, and has expanded its original brand system nationwide. It boasts a high brand power and share.
In order to release one of our products, the "General Affairs Office System", we were considering outsourcing the creation of manuals that we had previously created internally.

General Affairs Office System

Challenges before implementation

I want to create user-oriented manuals

The existing manual had the following issues:

①The content describes the screen and functions, but does not take into account the user's perspective.

②We manage manuals with different contents for each customer, and it took a considerable amount of time to update the common parts of the manuals.

③The manual's format was different depending on the creator.

④I was creating manuals with Word, but from now on, web manuals will be necessary.

The manual was focused solely on explaining the screen and functions, leading to confusion and a constant stream of inquiries.

Public Business Division Internal Information Services Department
General Affairs Office Group Mr. Kanazawa

Therefore, we have finalized our plan to review the structure and content of the user-oriented manual and convert it to PDF/HTML format.

We received an inquiry on the Human Science website in April 2019.

Reasons for Choosing Human Science

Technical ability to create manuals using Markdown

At Ryobi Systems Co., Ltd., GitHub has been introduced and specifications were created in Markdown. We wanted to revise the manual in-house using Markdown after it was created by the production company.

"When outsourcing, we contacted 3 or 4 companies, but the response was always "if it's in Word, we can do it" when we consulted about creating it in Markdown. Human Science was the only company that could create it in Markdown."
(Public Business Division Internal Information Service Department Internal Information Responsible Mr. Kanazawa and Mr. Manabe)

* What is Markdown?
Markdown is one of the lightweight markup languages, which has the features of creating highly readable documents with simple notation and easy editing with text editors. It is widely used in the IT industry, including engineers, as it is adopted by well-known web services such as GitHub and Qiita.

Introduction Process

Adoption of Markdown

At Ryobi Systems Co., Ltd., we have been using GitHub and Markdown to create specifications documents. By converting the manuscript data from Word to Markdown, we are able to maintain the manuals in the same environment as when creating the specifications, so we have decided to adopt Markdown for the manuals as well.

In addition, by using GitHub and adopting Markdown, it is easy to revise manuals for each customer by simply merging common parts. Furthermore, there are advantages such as being able to achieve uniform design elements such as font size and color through simple procedures.

Manual data creation for one-source multi-use

We have built an output system using the open source document creation tool GitBook to convert manuscript data created in Markdown to both HTML and PDF formats.

HTML Manual

PDF Manual

Development of auxiliary tools

After establishing a Markdown to HTML/PDF conversion system, we have developed a GUI tool with several auxiliary functions to facilitate the maintenance of manuals more easily.

For example, in the basic specifications of this system, it was necessary to manually make changes to the Markdown file in order to change the order of chapters and sections in the manual. However, with the GUI tool, it is now possible to change the order intuitively.

Evaluation of Human Science Co., Ltd.

Satisfied with the user-oriented manual that was completed with our trust

Developers have their original development tasks.

When creating manuals, I was thinking of completely outsourcing to an external production company.

By sharing specifications and development demo environments, we were able to create user-oriented manuals without spending our own time and effort.

Public Business Division Internal Information Services Department
General Affairs Office Group, Mr. Manabe

In the situation where we needed a company that could create a manual for Markdown, our only option was Human Science Co., Ltd.

Not only do we support Markdown, but we are also satisfied with the manual that accurately reflects our intentions without having to spend time on our own confirmation.