User Manual?
Any update on a user manual? I am a geek and could spend hours trying to figure this software out, but I CANNOT expect my pastor, administrator, choir director and others who collaborate on our services to do the same.
I am not expecting a complete training system, but a simple set of instructions for the standard ways to input announcements, bible verses, songs, and liturgy, and then how to run the presentation, would be invaluable.
Until a simple user manual is produced I cannot even ask my church to review Proclaim.
Jim
Comments
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Information (FAQs and instructional videos) should be posted to the website this week.
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Scott,
I am a total "neophyte" when it comes to this software, I would concur with Jim (see previous post) on the need for a users manual and for the same reason, but, I'd go Jim one further and ask where is this website? This program could be very powerful with a proper tutorial and user manual. Is there any possible advent of these?
Ward.
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Ward H. Squires said:
I am a total "neophyte" when it comes to this software, I would concur with Jim (see previous post) on the need for a users manual and for the same reason, but, I'd go Jim one further and ask where is this website? This program could be very powerful with a proper tutorial and user manual. Is there any possible advent of these?
You can find our support materials on our site at http://proclaimonline.com/support/
We will be posting more articles and videos as they are produced.
Thanks,
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You really need a detailed, I mean detailed, instruction manual. We have several people on our presentation team and unless it's easy they can't do it. Can you please put together, not different articles, but a step by step manual for users. What you have up there now is in no way enough instruction. We currently use Easy Worship but people with Macs can't use it so that limits the number of people who can help out.
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I don't need a simple how to add content. I can guild my leaders in that. Though it is slightly easier that they can jump on an see them. But i need more detailed instructions for each type of content. Like songs and headings for files for songs (like inclosing headings in boxes [1] ). Not, here is how to add a song, that is simple enough.
I guess, like with Logos, some other site needs to start creating videos, i.e. http://www.logos4training.com/.
Video's are not the best way to train because content is presented overtime. A manual is much easier to search or a Wiki might be a good idea because church music leaders and pastor's would have actual hands on uses, and a wiki is much easier to search than even a manual.
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I am a fairly new user of Proclaim and found it to quite intuitive, but seeing that I have to train both my volunteers and ministry staff, my music director and I (production director) have started a google doc that we can share and use as a training aide/resource.
If there is interest in collaboration, I would be willing to create a duplicate document that is not my church specific that the community could edit/add as a living how to guide - as I personally hate recreating the wheel...
here part of a page, a good bit of the info I have I have garnished from combing thru the forums and just putting everyones good work into 1 doc - again I hate recreating the wheel ;-)
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Just my 2 cents,
It should not be up to the users of the software to produce the user's manual to operate the software. I have the same gripe with the rest of Logos' products.
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Hunter Clagett said:
You can find our support materials on our site at http://proclaimonline.com/support/
We will be posting more articles and videos as they are produced.
Wonder about a Proclaim wiki for user and Logos collaboration ? that could include release notes, etc ?
Keep Smiling [:)]
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tom collinge said:
Just my 2 cents,
It should not be up to the users of the software to produce the user's manual to operate the software. I have the same gripe with the rest of Logos' products.
In my experience, 'manufacturer' manuals, on their own, never are as helpful as community driven documentation. My reason for this belief is, that the creators of software have a vision of what they are doing and how it will be used etc, but sometimes from their perspective they can't see things or communicate them quite the same as the user base. obviously however the more mundane this button is for this and this one for that type of thing usually doesn't matter who puts that info down, if needed at all.
But things such as how to append url's to get a youtube video to autostart in full screen in HD, at 3:33 into the video are probably gonna come from the user base rather than the designer of the software.
Now in a perfect world, IMHO, the designers as well as the user community work together to build the 'manual', just as both work on building the program itself (ie the forums requesting new features, bugs reported etc) That being said, if Logos wanted to host a wiki that the user community could help build collaboratively that would be a bit easier to use as a training tool than the forums alone.
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You said it more concisely than I did Keep Smiling! Logos, you already have the infrastructure obviously for a wiki...
(edit)
I just created a new wiki page, it hasn't shown up live yet directly on the Wiki page, and I haven't had time to properly format it - If one of you good people is good at that...
http://wiki.logos.com/Proclaim_%E2%80%93_Church_Presentation_Software
I will try to upload screenshots as I can.
drew
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I am a veteran of PCs from DOS 6 through Win7,.. so I have some idea of how software works. I admit to being a bit behind. However, when trying to learn this program, I could really use a searchable "Help" manual. For example: "how do I edit the Quick Screens? Another person put an item there and I have been told to delete/replace it. I can not figure out how to do it. I do NOT have the time to go through YouTube vids, just praying that it'll get covered.
I agree manuals can be useless,... but they can also be a "Make or Break" feature.
Jim Herzog
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Searching the Help section has resulted in fewer answers, if any, then I can get via asking questions on the forum. Too bad since that is unexpected and dependent on volunteers. Which when they answer they are quite good but unofficial.
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We have recently made our help site better. This training page lists many common topics: http://support.proclaimonline.com/hc/en-us/categories/200243165
Plus, searching your exact question came up with this article about quick screens. http://support.proclaimonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/202666479-What-are-Quick-Screens-
The only quick screen you can change is the Logo quick screen which this article talks about.
I hope that helps!
Jordan Sjodin
Mac | iOS | Android | Windows | Web Developer
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During my 35 year career as a mainframe programmer (starting in 1965 with punched cards and paper tape) the one thing I hated most was documentation. More than 90% of the work you do is never used or out of date with the next release. So far, I have found the path taken by the proclaim developers to be more than adequate in answering all my questions, either directly or pointing me to a pertinent video or forum post. I would much rather have those developers using their creativity fixing bugs and adding features than producing a user manual or holding some tech writer's hand.
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Brendon Marks (BCBC) said:
... I would much rather have those developers using their creativity fixing bugs and adding features than producing a user manual or holding some tech writer's hand.
[Y]
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[quote]More than 90% of the work you do is never used or out of date with the next release.
Because Proclaim is subscription-based, we release frequent updates, many of which change the user interface of the Proclaim. Because I find it helpful to include as many screenshots or .gif's in these articles as possible, it often involves a lot of work, as Brendon pointed out, to keep these up-to-date, especially as the volume of content on our support site grows.
We rejected the notion of a formal user manual because it would become obsolete quickly, but the support site is intended to answer questions mainly about your workflow (particularly when it becomes stopped up). As always, keyword searches tend to be your best friend when you've got a quick question about Proclaim.
As Jordan pointed out, this website was re-designed a few months ago to have a more formal structure in the training section. Many of the articles that are featured on that page are informational, similar to a chapter or section in a manual. I encourage you to take a look at a few of the articles there to get an overview of a feature you're wondering about.
If there are any questions in particular you'd like answered, or that you didn't find the answer to, I'd love to know. New articles are added frequently and we welcome your requests
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My husband and I have been tasked with learning this software and training others in our church of 60 people, none of us very computer literate, but we do have one person who is good at PowerPoint. So we thought we would study through the manual. Since we couldn't find a manual, (seriously??) we tried to read some of the FAQ's but the ones we found assumed you pretty much knew how to use the program already and just were clarifying some detail. But they made no sense at all to someone who was trying to get the thing started up. Fortunately, we found a pretty good video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=b0lgFswOe0k. You can't see what his mouse is doing very well, but if you keep replaying the different parts and comparing it with your program, you can get the general idea. Here's what I would like.... that poor trainer is suffering from a cold and I am wondering if there is anyone out there with a video editing program who could take out all the snorts and chokes to make it more pleasant to use as a training video? Also, I have seen on some youtube videos that people have added arrows or comments to highlight aspects of the video. If someone could point with a nice big arrow to where the microscopic, nearly invisible mouse pointer action is happening, that would be terrific. Then they could upload the edited program back to youtube and it would be more usable for small group training. Also, I saw that someone tried to start a wiki, which seemed like a good idea until I looked at it and saw that so far it is just selling the sizzle and not the steak. I wish the developers would hire a good tech writer or someone who is a natural teacher and sit him down with some "newbies" - watching to see where they get confused. They could develop a searchable pdf, google doc, wiki, or something similar that starts out at the "Proclaim For Dummies" level and then adds on the fancy stuff that is in the FAQ's.
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