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My Portfolio / Documentation / Configure Workspaces

Breaking up a saturated settings article

Aim: Separate the content in the Configure workspaces page into task-based articles that are organised around the administrator's technical workflow and clearly delineated from "get started" content.

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Problem

 

The problem with the Configure workspaces article was three-fold:

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  1. The article had grown significantly over time and included many sections, with subsections nested within these. This was departure from the intended goal of maintaining a flat hierarchy of content, which compromised the ease of locating information within the documentation.

  2. The article's contents violated reader expectations based on the title. Visitors were coming to the Configure workspaces article instead of the Getting started article for information about how to initially set up Citrix Workspace rather than to customise workspaces after Citrix Workspace had already been installed and configured.

  3. The article's contents were organised around the settings in the Citrix Workspace admin console, which lacked a “flow” or description of tasks that administrators could recognise as post-implementation considerations.

 

Note: The Configure workspaces article was one of many that was updated as part of a doc set restructure, described in another portfolio item: Creating a new IA and content strategy for product documentation. The page that you're reading, currently, delves into the specific changes made to the Configure workspaces article.

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Configure Workspaces June 2021.png

Snapshot of Configure workspaces article in Citrix Docs, June 2021

Process

1

Assess

The Configure workspaces article was assessed as part of the wider discovery research conducted for the restructure of the Citrix Workspace doc set as a whole.

2

Plan

I created and shared a plan for the Citrix Workspace documentation within a strategy report, which included plans for the Configure workspaces article.

3

Implement

The Configure workspaces article was dealt with in Phase 3 of the broader implementation plan for the information architecture of the Citrix Workspace doc set.

1. Assess

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According to customer-facing colleagues at Citrix, 40-60% of queries to Supportability were “How do I set up/install/configure Citrix Workspace?” Analysis of search queries revealed that visitors were seeking answers to setup questions in the wrong parts of the documentation. Specifically, visitors were going to the Configure workspaces article instead of the Get started with Citrix Workspace article. This was problematic because the Configure workspaces article wasn't intended for helping customers complete an initial implementation, but to customise appearance, features, and preferences afterwards.

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I took this as an opportunity to create articles dedicated to specific settings found in Workspace Configuration, complete with titles that reflected the task at hand rather than the name of the console in Citrix Workspace for configuring these settings. The appetite for this was supported by survey data, with suggestions for improving our instructions with real-world examples and use cases for setting up Citrix Workspace.

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2. Plan

 

A new information architecture (IA) and its supporting system of navigation was designed and included in a strategy report. The aim was to help administrators find what they needed based on the first two tiers of information in the left-side table of contents (ToC).

 

Part of the problem was that existing documentation mimicked the Citrix Workspace console instead of the administrator journey. The plan was to split the Configure workspaces article into more detailed and specific content that mapped onto a logical flow of post-implementation tasks. Below are parts of a table from the initial IA strategy report. It includes planned parent articles (Tier 1), their child articles (Tier 2), and first-level headings (Tier 3) within child articles. This plan was iterated on as the restructure effort for the Citrix Workspace documentation progressed.

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3. Implement plan
 

The planned desaturation of the Configure workspaces article was conducted in Phase 3 of the restructure effort for the Citrix Workspace documentation, outlined in Creating a new IA and content strategy for product documentation. I iterated on articles as I sought feedback from SMEs throughout the implementation.

Outcomes

 

The desaturation of the Configure workspaces article resulted in the creation of six new articles and repurposing the Configure workspaces article (seven articles in total). These articles were ordered around the administrator technical workflow and outlined in the Get started article as next steps. Specifically the seven pages were:
 

  • Prepare for Citrix Workspace

  • Configure access to workspaces (the repurposed Configure workspaces page)

  • Integrate services into workspaces

  • Manage your workspace experience​​

    • Customize the appearance of workspaces

    • Customize workspace interactions

    • Customize security and privacy policies

 
The above work involved edits to related content, updating existing content, adding and changing links to new pages and sections across the doc set, and updating the ToC and Citrix Workspace landing page. I communicated these changes and what they meant for documentation to colleagues:

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1

Repurposed article

Due to the difficulty changing article URLs in the docs-as-code framework we had in place, the  the Configure workspaces article was repurposed for a more specific topic: Configure access to workspaces

-1

Deprecated article

+6

New articles

I deprecated an article for a product that Citrix no longer supported. For customers that hadn't yet transitioned to Citrix Workspace, I moved relevant content to appropriate sections in the Configure access to workspaces article.

Giving a sense of how saturated the original Configure workspaces article was, the content was redistributed across seven articles, six of which were new, organised according to key administrator tasks.

Challenges and learnings

 

Aside from the challenges and learnings outlined in Creating a new IA and content strategy for product documentation, I was unable to follow up to see how more significant changes such as this impacted page views, search behaviour, and satisfaction. I rounded this work off just before transitioning to a new role at a different company, and so I decided to leave some suggested next steps for colleagues, including:

 

  • Examining changes in information-retrieval behaviour, including search terms and CTRs.

  • Eliciting feedback from customers and stakeholders on the new articles.

  • Validating the new ToC with tree testing.

 

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