Using knowledge base software to create software training materials

As a knowledge base software solutions provider, we expected that most of our customers would be creating how-to articles and troubleshooting information for their software products. While this is definitely a common use, we’ve found that our customers started to use KnowledgeOwl in a variety of creative ways.

“Oh, we are using KnowledgeOwl for that!” has become one of my new favorite phrases, and it’s usually something I would not have thought of on my own. One of our earliest adopters used HelpGizmo to build a new employee training portal, and at the time we thought this would be an edge case.

Now we are learning how people use and want to use our knowledge base software, and it is amazing how many different ways it can be utilized to help people store, organize, share, and search information.

One of our customers who has found a creative use for KnowledgeOwl is the SurveyGizmo Training Team. Originally the training team used KnowledgeOwl to create a public knowledge base for their Online Academy, which provides live and recorded training webinars and video content.

In addition to creating all the video and webinar software training materials for our customers, the team is also in charge of in-person events and training, like the SurveyGizmo Unconference in Boulder and Ultimate Trainings across the country.  For these events, we create software training materials called Reference Guides for each of our attendees.

I was impressed and excited when Aleta, the Queen of Customer Training, told me they were using KnowledgeOwl for the reference guides moving forward. She recently discussed this in her review of KnowledgeOwl for our website:

I coordinate training events all over the country and for years we have paid to have our training reference guides printed and shipped to our event venues. This year, instead of creating and printing our training material, I opted for an online version and boy am I happy I did!

I now use KnowledgeOwl as my online reference guide; saving me a ton of money on printing and shipping costs. Also, having an online reference guide means that I can update it often, ensuring my training attendees always have the most up to date version of documentation!

I am so happy that I have KnowledgeOwl! It is simple to use and makes my documentation look very professional! I love you KnowledgeOwl!!!!

As a training for SurveyGizmo, I just got to see the reference guides in action in Dallas, Texas. What was really awesome was that, when our training referred to the materials in the reference guide, they could pull up and show it on the projector. I could see the attendees following along on their laptops, and it definitely increased the engagement with the software training materials.

What’s more, having the reference guide online made it so that our attendees could easily follow links to access additional materials that were mentioned in the guide, including online tutorials and articles;  videos and webinars; and other websites and online tools.

So there you have it: creative use of KnowledgeOwl #13 is online software training materials! We should probably share the first twelve at some point too, and we are sure there will be more to come.