Today is the day! The 1000th deployment for the MultiSafepay Documentation Center. This article is about why we are proud of this, the challenges we faced last year and the future of our Documentation Center.
Fast innovations & good documentation = challenge
In November 2018, three MultiSafepay employees from our Integration Team decided one thing: Our documentation must be better.
MultiSafepay.com has been the main source of knowledge for our partners and merchants until now. The big problem here, however, was that due to constant and rapid developments in the market, it was extremely difficult to keep the information up-to-date.
Ten years ago, we only had a few ecommerce plugins, but today we support 30+ payment methods and 50+ integrations! Keeping the information on these subjects correct and up-to-date, turned out to be a major challenge in practice. What
Incorrect or outdated information on the website
It’s no secret that merchants and most tech-savvy individuals don’t always speak the same language. With constantly developing content such as this, it became clear that keeping all this content updated and correct on our website was no easy task. This was even more the case when this content was not being written or updated by the product specialists themselves.
Looking to the future, the number one priority became clear to us: Quality.
All content about our products had to be correct.
The solution for this? A four-eye check. All content is reviewed by at least two employees before it is deployed online.
The chosen technique
There are several options for developing an extensive documentation system. We decided to opt for a static webpage deployer due to the security, speed and ability to work entirely through GIT.
After comparing a number of options, we chose Hugo.
The developers were already familiar with GIT and the product specialists learned it quickly. Once an adjustment has been approved, it goes to the master branch via a pull request. From here, we have a deploy tool that puts it on the web server.
January 21, 2019 - Documentation Center 1.0
On Monday January 21, 2019, the time had come, the first version of our Documentation Center went live.
During the development, we always kept our goal in mind:
- Keeping all online information up-to-date and correct.
The objective of our Documentation Center was to create a database of knowledge. The user experience was the priority for us, which meant we could create the content in a different way. A good example, we didn’t have to make any changes to our content, just for SEO purposes. It also allowed us to direct users to contact us directly, if there was anything that wasn’t clear to them.
After the launch, we immediately noticed that our tickets were handled considerably faster. Merchants found the answers to simple questions online, now we could take the time to really help our merchants with more complex issues.
Documentation Center 2.0
In January of 2020, Documentation Center 2.0 went live. The goal was to improve the UX and be mobile. The source code has also been made public so that anyone can make a proposal to improve the content.
The future of Documentation Center 3.0
We have noticed that adding content never stops. We adjust the content every day based on these changes, innovations and input from merchants or colleagues.
In Documentation Center 3.0 we want to make the API examples more dynamic and switch to a more complete HTML deployer.
Our doors are open for MBO or HBO students to pick this challenge up. Would you like to carry out this assignment - as an employee or intern?