We have discovered one of the coolest tools (outside of Pathagoras, of course) on the market. It's called Iorad (tm). It is a wonderful tutorial-building app, and the best one we have seen.
As a tool for Pathagoras, this app/program
allows us to quickly create tutorials for our users. We can quickly capture the individual steps needed in to accomplish a particular
task and offer meaningful step-by-step lessons for the many, many features of Pathagoras. Iorad captures all the mouse-clicks and hot-key presses used in each process.
Here is our current library
of tutorials. It's 20 deep so far, but that is very small compared to
where we are heading. But even these 20 should be helpful for most
beginners. (More experienced users will probably appreciate them as
refresher courses.)
On replay, it shows everything in the same step-by-step fashion as when recorded. It prompts for similar mouse clicks from you as you review the tutorial.
Actually, Iorad
offers you several replay options:
(1) you can step through the process as if you were sitting at the computer performing the tasks. For this, use the 'Try' option. You will be prompted for
an affirmative response in the form of a mouse click in the appropriate
spot;
(2) you can simply watch, read and listen* as the lesson is automatically played. Select the 'View' option;
(3) you can print out the lesson via PDF with screen shots and instructions together.
*For options 1 & 2, Iorad offers a pretty realistic computer
voice-over so you can listen to the lessons as well as read and perform them.
We have several dozen more tutorials already outlined. One or two will be added just about every day for the next few weeks. So, come back often. Also, we would love to hear from you on what topics you would like to see covered. Your responses will help us to prioritize things.
On top of all of the above, Iorad is available to you for your own office's use. To the extent that you have a specific protocol you want your users to follow (with Pathagoras or otherwise), you can sign up for a personal Iorad account and record your own tutorials. It's free. (The version I am using is not free, but it has more bells and whistles than you likely will need. But the 'personal' version really is free.) (Disclaimer: I do not have any financial relationship with Iorad. I get no referral fees, payments or freebies from them. I just really, really like their product. And their service reminds me of, well, me. Excellent!)
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