Technical Documentation Software

The term Technical Documentation Software is a very broad one, that could refer to a multitude of fundamentally different tools or solutions.

When used, it will clearly refer to a system that can be used to produce technical documentation (product manuals, online help, in-app help, knowledge bases, eLearning content for a product, and much more). But depending on the use case, this could mean anything from Microsoft Word to simple wikis to help authoring tools (HAT) like MadCap Flare or RoboHelp to hybrid wiki/HAT tools like Confluence or to full-fledged enterprise CCMS solutions like Paligo, Schema ST4, Tridion Docs, etc.

The use case for the simpler tools may be for quick and easy documentation of a single product for example, where other solutions may be overkill. When content reuse is important, HAT tools may do the job if the documentation is not too complex or the documentation team is not large.

For larger teams, more complex documentation and for enterprise companies with strict requirements on structured authoring, content reuse, collaboration, review, approval, versioning, localization, and publishing workflows, a CCMS will usually be the solution of choice.