Expected:
- Ability to understand Slash command feature from input box
Observed:
- No ability to understand Slash command feature from input box
Impact:
- There’s no easy way for an end user to understand how to use the slash command or markdown formatting features from the input box. This is significant because there’s a ton of power in slash commands, and if it’s not obvious how to get to end user help, there’s a very low probability the majority of users will understand the value and potential of the system.
Examples of possible solutions:
- Link to end user documentation, either in-product or on the web,
- Enable slash command help to have longer descriptions, accessible using on_hover in the menu description, or in auto-complete,
Screenshot:
Note:
There are potentially internal debates on this topic that I’ll aim to anticipate and address here:
1 - End users may be on an old version of Mattermost and end user help may be out-of-date
- The core end user help used to ship as part of the product, and be version specific. It doesn’t have to be complete, but it should be available.
2 - Maintaining documentation on end user features in the product is a lot of work
- The end user documentation should be prioritized with other investments. The context here is that if end users don’t have a way to easily understand the features, there’s no value in the features.
3 - The system should be intuitive and not require end user documentation.
- It makes sense to go as far as we can on good design, however there’s no way an end user can figure out markdown or our slash command system without a link to documentation.
4 - Slash command documentation doesn’t include custom commands
- We should make it easier to extend the documentation for custom commands created by customers.