[CASE] Dr.Explain makes it possible to use Migris software daily without attending the extensive training courses

Are Tømmerås, Senior Geologist, tells us how Dr.Explain smooths things down for Migris in creating user help-documentation with integrated tools in it, that can be easily published online.

DE: Please tell us about your company

Migris (migris.no) is a small company established in 2005 with a main office in Trondheim, Norway. We develop software tools (Migri and MigriX) for use in oil and gas exploration.

The purpose of our software is to predict the chance of finding oil or gas in a reservoir before a well has been drilled. To do this, we run probabilistic fluid flow simulations on geological models of the subsurface.

DE: Please tell us about your role in the company

I work both on the development of the software (mainly user interface and designing/testing new features) and on applying the technology in case studies for clients.

DE: Why is user help documentation important to your company? What will you gain by your project?

It is important for our users to be able to quickly find help on how to take advantage of the software daily. Ideally, we want our users to be able to quickly start using the software without needing to go attend extensive training courses before. For this purpose, we use a combination of Dr.Explain docs and Youtube videos demonstrating different workflows and how-to’s. The videos can also be accessed directly from the docs.

Have a look at the online version of the MigriX docs here: https://migris.no/migrix-userguide

DE: How did you manage to solve the problems with help docs before? What software did you use for that kind of work?

We have been using Dr.Explain for the last 5-6 years. Before this we had a small collection of html pages which were edited using MS Word.

DE: Did you compare Dr.Explain to other solutions/ways?

No, not really. We did a trial of Dr.Explain first and found that it was a good match with our requirements.

DE: Why did you choose the Dr.Explain software?

It was recommended to us by another software vendor, mainly because of the ability to easily annotate screenshots within the application. We have a lot of different panels and dialogs in our software, so this was a feature we saw as very useful. The option to easily publish our docs online is also very useful for us. We build both a static version of the docs which follows the software installation and an online version which is always up-to-date with the latest changes.

DE: What results did you receive? How do the results influence your business?

We are very happy with our current help docs and the integration with our tools. From any dialog or panel in the software, we can now click on Help and open the relevant page in the docs. I think our main focus going forward will be to create more videos and embed these directly in the docs.

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To learn more about Migris Company and MigriX software please visit migris.no