Best Help Authoring Tools (HAT)

Help authoring tools (HAT) are programs designed to assist technical writers in designing, publishing, and maintaining software help documentation. The resulting text is used in explanation guides, FAQs, manuals, and help files. They are aimed at reducing the time and effort needed when creating assistance materials for both employees and end users. Many help authoring tools (HAT) also provide the functionalities of knowledge base software, which allows technical writers to maintain and update a central knowledge base containing all software help text that they created about their product. This knowledge base, which is often a user-accessible web page or document, can be updated as soon as technical writers add new text or images. Despite being used by specialized technical writers, HATs are often considered development tools since they allow development teams to create and maintain help documentation for their existing software products and any new features that might be added.

Technical writers use help authoring tools to create software help documents and online help resources from start to finish. With these programs, they can write, edit, and export documents to be shared with editors, administrators, and other coworkers. Depending on the documentation tool used, creators can even design images or simply use a screen capture feature to supplement their software help text and enrich the user experience. When the documentation is in a user-ready state, the help authoring tool allows writers to publish the documentation digitally. In some cases, HATs also allow teams to manage other aspects of their customers’ self-help experiences. For example, some tools allow product teams to create and embed widgets at various points in the user journey, guiding the user towards a software help knowledge base if needed.

Most HATs allow technical writers to centralize their software help documentation in a single database, which can then be exported in various formats such as HTML, CHM help files, XML, PDFs, and more. Help authoring software also allows technical writers to use and update their pre-existing software program documentation by supporting various file types for import. This also provides flexibility for writers who prefer to use a separate writing tool outside of the HAT, as they can simply import the source text when it’s complete and use the HAT to design, publish, and maintain the finished product.

Ultimately, HATs help companies produce, add to, and manage a single source of truth for their users’ software help needs. By streamlining the writing process and providing useful features like content collaboration and file importing, HATs help teams produce technical documentation, content for faqs, help manuals, and more.

What Does HAT Stand For?

HAT stands for Help Authoring Tool. However, HATs can extend beyond documentation authoring to allow teams to manage various aspects of their customers’ software program self-help experiences. 

The following are some core features within help authoring tools (HAT) that can help users create and maintain software help documentation:

Text editing: At their most basic, HATs provide text-editing functionality to create software help documentation. These editors will often include several features to make the help authoring process more efficient, such as templates, automated style and grammar suggestions, and more. In many cases, a HAT’s user interface will act as a full-fledged word processor.

Code editing: Many HATs include a code view that allows front-end web developers to manipulate help documentation webpages. This type of editing usually includes HTML, CSS, and JS code editing capabilities so that technical writers can create software documentation that lives in a web-based format as opposed to a text document. Some solutions also include features for HTML help and suggestions, allowing teams to build web pages more easily.

WYSIWYG editing: Many HATs provide WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors, so technical writers without experience in front-end development can author and manage software documentation web pages via an intuitive visual user interface. These types of editors can also be helpful for quickly adding useful images to a product’s help documentation.

File importing: HATs allow technical writers to import source text or source code from various file formats, such as Microsoft Word documents, CHM files, HTML files, and more. The text and images from these source files can then be manipulated and managed within the HAT to produce the desired result for publication.

Content management: While HATs are used explicitly to author and manage software help documentation, they typically share similar features with content management systems (CMS). Like CMS tools, HATs allow users to manage, store, and track content projects from creation to publication. The key difference is that each content project is specifically related to software explanation guides, faqs, manuals, and help files.

Templates and libraries: Most HATs provide templates that provide base-level formatting and visual layouts for technical writers to work off of. These templates provide suggested layouts for various software help formats. Along with these templates, many HATs offer media libraries for authors to pull images, motion graphics, and more.

Content collaboration: Help authoring software allows multiple technical writers to work on the same guides and documents concurrently. This streamlines communication about projects and enables efficient productivity in a remote environment. HATs’ content collaboration capabilities include version control systems; meaning teams can keep track of historical changes and revert to older versions of their documentation when necessary.

The common benefits of help authoring tools (HAT) include:

Scalability: Software providers must supplement their products with a lot of documentation to guide their users. From simple user guides to complex technical documentation for APIs, user knowledge management must be constantly considered and supported as a company adds to its product lines and features. HATs make this process scalable and manageable by both importing existing documentation and providing standardized tools for adding to that documentation. 

Efficiency: Most HATs centralize all of a company’s technical documentation, online help content, etc., to a single source. By storing all software help source files in a central database, HATs facilitate more efficient content reuse. Technical writers can manage, edit, and add to their existing documentation once, then use the HAT to choose where, when, and how that documentation is presented. In some cases, teams can even set conditional publishing standards so that different help documentation is shown to different users. This prevents teams from wasting time with repeated tasks, allowing them to focus on new documentation rather than manually managing existing content. 

Better customer support: HATs primarily boost a company’s ability to provide helpful documentation to its customers. By curating user-friendly documentation with clear elements like a table of contents, visual aids, and more, companies empower their users to self help rather than rely on customer support channels. Having thorough self-help systems in place saves companies time and mitigates costs related to supporting their customers.