Always wishing for more examples? Check out SAS’ new enhancement to the documentation

0

Sometimes the questions are complicated, and the answers are simple. - Dr. Seuss

It seems appropriate that this blog include a Dr. Seuss quote about learning when discussing a new simple, yet deceivingly powerful initiative to help SAS customers with their journey to discover as much as possible about our products. If you haven’t heard of our SAS Help Center, it serves as your gateway to SAS documentation on SAS products and services. It is organized in topic-focused collections, making it easy to navigate.

For some time now, the leadership here in SAS Publications has heard what our customers have been saying about the need for supplemental materials to enrich the value of SAS documentation in the Help Center.

Since we value the customers’ opinion above all, SAS Publications has recently added a new feature to the SAS Help Center that allows customers to learn about related resources associated with the documentation they are reading. With this new feature, we have made it easier for customers to discover and explore the wealth of helpful materials SAS already provides. These SAS-created resources could be videos, blogs, white papers, sample code, examples, and more. The first iteration of this feature quietly went live in the Help Center during September of 2018. And since then, our technical writers have added SAS-authored resources to their Help Center pages.

To find this bounty of useful information, be on the lookout for a sticky “RESOURCES” button on the far-right side of the page when exploring documentation in the SAS Help Center:

Clicking the “RESOURCES” button will open up a list of Related Resources. This will allow the user to select a menu item.

When the chosen resource is selected, it will be displayed in a new tab.

We here in SAS Publications think it is important to highlight work like this because we value a quality learning experience, and take seriously efforts to shape our relationship with our customers. A quality customer experience is one where it is easy to find the resources that directly answer the customer’s questions: the customer shouldn’t have to hunt high and low, and then wonder whether they’ve found “everything” that answers their questions. We will work to ensure customers have a one-stop location tied to our Documentation’s Help Center that will allow them to get the most value out of their SAS investment.

But Publications wants this tool to be used and grow – and we can’t do this alone. We need customers to discover and use this tool, and give us feedback on how we can improve this unassuming, yet important, initiative in future phases.

To that point, please feel free to contact me if you have questions or ideas about the related resources initiative. We look forward to hearing from you, working with you, and most importantly, providing a quality-focused customer experience.

Share

About Author

Shannon Lasater

Senior Project Manager

Shannon is an engineer by training. He has worked in numerous roles for public and private entities in the transportation, environmental, and education sectors. In his latest job at SAS, he oversees special, innovative projects for the Publications Division.

Leave A Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to Top