As I learned to code while attending General Assembly’s full stack engineering bootcamp, I quickly realized how important good documentation was to the success of all developers. As a cohort of beginners, we used documentation to learn, but even our experienced teachers let us know that they too rely on documentation to help them code. Throughout the bootcamp I kept thinking about technical writing, how it resonated with my interest to learn, ability to write, and desire to help others. Learning to code was exciting and being able to use that knowledge in a way that helped end-users and developers was something I knew I wanted to pursue professionally.
A friend of mine told me about Oregon State University’s online technical writing course and I thought it would be a great way to add some technical writing concepts to my repertoire. Since enrolling, I have learned how imperative mood and user-centric design contribute to good documentation. Our first assignment was to write a one page memo explaining a change to an existing procedure and detail the new process. I found this simple exercise was a great warm up for the course, check it out below!
Memo
To: All staff
From: Brandon Carter
Subject: Zoom Client Changes
Date: 11/05/20
cc: Support team
As Zoom has become a major communication channel for our company, we have identified some ways to improve the functionality and experience of our zoom meetings. Previous directions were given to use the Zoom web client through your internet browser. While the web client does give easy access to start or join a meeting, it is lacking many vital features available to you.
The Web client does not allow you to:
- Share your screen in a zoom room
- Display upcoming meetings
- Display synced calendar events (if you added a third-party calendar service)
- View, edit, start, or delete your scheduled meetings
- Pre-assign participants to breakout rooms (if set up by the host)
- Start local recordings
By updating our instructions on Zoom to use the desktop client instead of the web client you will have access to these additional features. We apologize for any difficulties caused by the previous directions that did not express the advantages of the desktop client over the web client and we strongly recommend using the desktop client moving forward so all features are available to you.
To gain access to the desktop client, follow these instructions.
Install the Desktop client:
- Download the client through this link https://zoom.us/support/download
- Navigate to your downloads folder.
- Double Click the Zoom.pkg file to start the installer.
- The installer will prompt you to select a destination, choose install for all users.
- Click continue, then click install to finish the install.
- You should see a message that the install was successful.
If you have any problems installing the Zoom desktop client, need assistance with any features, or would like some useful tips on zoom etiquette, please reach out to our support team or email me directly at bcarter@support.com.
The objective of this memo was to describe the task in a way that anyone regardles of skill level could understand, I think it turned out well. Our next assignment is a full manual/tutorial with illustrated instructions, I’m excited to get to work and share it with you in my next post!