Support Docs of Snowplow Analytics: A Place to Write

...When we remove the pre (finding the pen, the paper, the notebook, the software) and the post (finding a way to publish it), it turns out that we write more often, and writing more often leads to writing better.

— From A place to write — Seth's Blog

The concern of this repository is the facilitation of writing process for tech support engineers of Snowplow Analytics. It is an unabashed fork of JupiterOne docs that I am grateful for opening the door between Github Markdown and Zendesk Helpcenter!

The Repo consists of:

• Knowledge base created and utilized by support engineers of Snowplow Analytics
• Scripts that handle pushing these into a particular Zendesk Help Center.

Both current trends (mozzila, gitlab) and old practices (wikiwikiweb) imply that any useful documentation needs to be created with

• ease — works out of the box, as few steps as possible, no extra learning needed
• speed — proximity to CLI & code editor, both intimatelly known for operational purposes

Visualized, the process of creating and publishing a document looks roughly like this

• 1. pre-prod
• 2. prod
• 3. post-prod

1. pre-prod

• Use Start Menu (Win) or Spotlight (Mac) to call parse-yaml script (powershell at the moment) which
  • Creates a new document in right folder
  • The new document is populated with a template — we are using single-template documentation
  • Updates the index in config.yaml, which is used later to maintain the state (diff between what's in ZD and REPO)
  • All of this should take ~5 seconds of the writer's time, without mouse

2. prod

• This is where the KB is created
• Style-Guide && KB-Structure need to be paid proper attention, but are not a concern at this point

3. post-prod

2. After work on documents is done, it gets to be pushed to zendesk — currently by running the publish.js locally.
   • Later it should be ran automatically upon git pushing the new content to github via github action
   • This converts the markdown into html
   • Updates the state in config.yaml
   • Creates proper links to static assets hosted on github (they are not pushed to zendesk)
   • For a writer, this should take also ~5 seconds

sources

• JupiterOne/docs: JupiterOne documentation
• The importance of a handbook-first approach to documentation - GitLab
• MDN Web Docs evolves! Lowdown on the upcoming new platform - Mozilla Hacks - the Web developer blog
• A place to write — Seth's Blog
• Why Wiki Works