Emails - Pronovix/WalkHub GitHub Wiki

Hi,

I'm reaching out to you to tell you about an open source tool that can help your organization save money and time while getting people up to speed using your website and intranet. Pronovix, a company that's active in the Drupal community is working on an open source Drupal based product that could significantly improve your training experience, increase the engagement of your users and reduce the time people need to learn and execute tasks on your platform.

About 2 weeks ago they started a fundraising campaign for Walkthrough.it, a sort of GPS for the Internet that guides website visitors, content creators and administrators through complex forms, processes and configuration workflows one step at a time.

I believe your organization could use it to:

  • Introduce (less technical) people to your website
  • Increase conversions on complex forms
  • Document business processes
  • Share best practices

So far when making tutorials, you had 2 formats: Text or video. Text is easy to update and skim through, but a user needs to understand what is written to find their way. Video gives you much more context and makes it easier to figure out what needs to be done. But change a single picture in your content and your tutorial does no longer look up to date. Both tutorial types share the drawback that a user will have to switch back and forward between the documentation and the site where she/he is completing a process.

Their prototype has the best of both worlds: It's text based so you can easily edit, collaborate and translate tutorials and it's using javascript to interact with the HTML elements in your browser, so it's as visual and interactive as a video tutorial. Additionally it's running on the site where you need to perform the process.

To achieve this they've extended the Selenium testing format: that means it's really simple to create walkthroughs (just record what you do in the browser) and a user can switch real-time between a video-like auto-play mode and a step by step walkthrough.

They've started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for this project. Their minimum target is a modest 5000$. When they raise that money they have committed to develop and maintain: -Walkthrough, a Drupal module (at least for Drupal 7 and 8) that plays tutorials -WalkHub, a Drupal distribution that makes it really easy to create a Walkthrough server on which you can create and collaborate on tutorials -An export function in WalkHub that lets you export walkthroughs into tour YAML files (for the Tour module in Drupal 8 core)

They've already got 20 individuals backing them, including key people from the community such as Lee Hunter, the new documentation lead for Drupal. But to make this project a reality they'll need the backing of a few organizations that come in at the organizational contribution levels. If your organization does, you will be able to help define the features that make it into the walkthrough collaboration platform (the WalkHub distribution).

Pronovix is an active member of the Drupal community. They've worked on some of the most prestigious Drupal projects out there. They have what it takes to bring this project to a good end.

You can see a video demo of the tool on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKb_Ofu52_g And you can see how easy it is to create a walkthrough at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPetLDQ8dUc

You can find the fundraising campaign at http://igg.me/at/Drupal

If you have any questions, or if you or your colleagues would like to see a live demo before you commit, get in touch.