Improve User Docs: Engineering & Support Feedback Tracking

As RisingWave evolves, ensuring our user-facing documentation remains accurate, comprehensive, and user-friendly is paramount. This involves not only understanding customer needs but also leveraging the invaluable insights of our engineering and support teams. This article outlines our approach to centralizing feedback from these teams to drive continuous improvement in our documentation.

To streamline this process, we've created a consolidated tracking system for feedback and ideas related to enhancing our user-facing documentation. This system serves as a central hub for capturing suggestions, identifying areas for improvement, and fostering collaboration between engineering, support, and documentation teams. By working together, we can ensure our documentation effectively addresses user needs and empowers them to succeed with RisingWave.

The Importance of Engineering and Support Team Feedback

Our engineering team possesses deep technical expertise and a thorough understanding of RisingWave's inner workings. They are uniquely positioned to identify areas where documentation may lack clarity, accuracy, or completeness. Their feedback is crucial for ensuring our documentation accurately reflects the latest features, functionalities, and best practices.

The support team, on the other hand, interacts directly with users, gaining firsthand knowledge of their challenges, questions, and pain points. They understand which aspects of the documentation are most frequently consulted and where users encounter difficulties. Their feedback is invaluable for identifying areas where documentation can be improved to better address user needs and reduce support inquiries.

By consolidating feedback from both teams, we gain a holistic view of our documentation's strengths and weaknesses. This enables us to prioritize improvements effectively, ensuring our documentation remains a valuable resource for our users.

Guides: Enhancing Clarity and Completeness

Our guides serve as a comprehensive resource for users seeking to understand and utilize RisingWave's various features and functionalities. To ensure these guides remain effective, we actively solicit feedback from our engineering and support teams on areas where improvements can be made. Let's delve into specific sections and potential enhancements.

Install & Operate: Streamlining the User Experience

The installation and operation guide is often the first point of contact for new RisingWave users. It's crucial that this guide provides clear, concise instructions and troubleshooting tips to ensure a smooth onboarding experience.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering team can provide insights on the latest installation procedures, system requirements, and configuration options. The support team can share common installation issues encountered by users and suggest improvements to the troubleshooting section.
• Potential Improvements: We can enhance the guide by adding more detailed explanations of installation prerequisites, providing step-by-step instructions for different operating systems and environments, and expanding the troubleshooting section with solutions to frequently encountered problems. We could also consider incorporating video tutorials or interactive walkthroughs to further simplify the installation process. The goal is to make the installation process as seamless and intuitive as possible for all users, regardless of their technical expertise.

Apache Iceberg: Integrating with Data Lakes

RisingWave's integration with Apache Iceberg allows users to seamlessly query and analyze data stored in data lakes. To ensure our documentation accurately reflects this functionality, we need to gather feedback from experts familiar with both RisingWave and Iceberg.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering team can provide insights on the latest Iceberg integration features, performance optimizations, and best practices. The support team can share user queries related to Iceberg integration and identify areas where documentation can be improved.
• Potential Improvements: We can enhance the documentation by providing more detailed examples of how to use RisingWave with Iceberg, including common use cases, data modeling strategies, and performance tuning techniques. We can also include troubleshooting tips for common issues encountered when integrating with Iceberg. The aim is to empower users to leverage RisingWave's Iceberg integration effectively for their data lake analytics needs. This involves not only providing technical details but also illustrating practical applications and best practices.

SQL/Python/UDFs: Mastering Data Transformation

RisingWave supports a rich set of SQL functions, Python user-defined functions (UDFs), and other data transformation capabilities. Documenting these features effectively is crucial for enabling users to perform complex data analysis tasks.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering team can provide insights on the latest SQL functions, UDF capabilities, and performance considerations. The support team can share user questions related to data transformation and identify areas where documentation can be improved.
• Potential Improvements: For instance, the suggestion to "Create streaming job: mention snapshot_backfill for isolation" highlights a specific area for improvement. We can enhance the documentation by providing clear explanations of the snapshot_backfill feature, its purpose, and how it ensures isolation in streaming jobs. We can also include examples of how to use snapshot_backfill in different scenarios. Furthermore, we can expand the documentation to cover other advanced SQL functions, UDF best practices, and performance optimization techniques for data transformation tasks. The goal is to provide users with a comprehensive understanding of RisingWave's data transformation capabilities and empower them to perform complex data analysis with ease.

Client Libraries: Seamless Integration with Applications

RisingWave offers client libraries for various programming languages, enabling developers to integrate RisingWave into their applications seamlessly. Ensuring our client library documentation is comprehensive and up-to-date is vital for developer adoption.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering team can provide insights on the latest client library features, APIs, and best practices. The support team can share user queries related to client library usage and identify areas where documentation can be improved.
• Potential Improvements: We can enhance the documentation by providing more detailed examples of how to use the client libraries in different programming languages, including code snippets and best practices. We can also include troubleshooting tips for common issues encountered when using the client libraries. Furthermore, we can consider creating tutorials or sample applications that demonstrate how to integrate RisingWave into real-world applications using the client libraries. The objective is to provide developers with a smooth and efficient experience integrating RisingWave into their existing workflows.

WebUI: Visualizing and Managing RisingWave

RisingWave's WebUI provides a graphical interface for visualizing and managing RisingWave clusters. Documenting the WebUI's features and functionalities is essential for empowering users to monitor and control their RisingWave deployments.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering team can provide insights on the latest WebUI features, performance metrics, and management capabilities. The support team can share user questions related to WebUI usage and identify areas where documentation can be improved.
• Potential Improvements: Addressing the specific feedback to "Document how to make user admin" is crucial. We can enhance the documentation by providing clear instructions on how to create and manage user accounts with administrative privileges in the WebUI. We can also include explanations of the different user roles and permissions available in RisingWave. Additionally, we can expand the documentation to cover other WebUI features, such as monitoring cluster health, managing connections, and querying data. The intention is to make the WebUI a powerful and intuitive tool for managing RisingWave deployments.

Workload Testing: Ensuring Performance and Scalability

Proper workload testing is crucial for ensuring RisingWave's performance and scalability. Our documentation should provide guidance on how to perform effective workload testing and interpret the results.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering team can provide insights on the best practices for workload testing, performance metrics to monitor, and tools to use. The support team can share user experiences with workload testing and identify areas where documentation can be improved.
• Potential Improvements: Addressing the feedback to "Improve the datagen source documentation to make it suitable for users" is important. We can enhance the documentation by providing more detailed explanations of the datagen source, its capabilities, and how to configure it for different workload testing scenarios. We can also include examples of how to generate realistic data and simulate different user behaviors. Furthermore, we can expand the documentation to cover other aspects of workload testing, such as performance monitoring, bottleneck identification, and scalability analysis. The aim is to empower users to thoroughly test their RisingWave deployments and ensure they meet their performance requirements.

FAQ: Addressing Common Questions and Concerns

Our FAQ section serves as a valuable resource for addressing common questions and concerns raised by users. Keeping the FAQ up-to-date and comprehensive is essential for providing quick and helpful answers.

• Gathering Feedback: Our engineering and support teams are the primary sources of information for identifying frequently asked questions and emerging issues. They can contribute to the FAQ by adding new questions and answers, updating existing entries, and ensuring the information is accurate and relevant.
• Potential Improvements: The reference to the GitHub issue (https://github.com/risingwavelabs/risingwave-docs/issues/821) highlights a specific question or concern that needs to be addressed in the FAQ. We can enhance the FAQ by adding a new entry that directly answers the question raised in the issue. We can also review the existing FAQ entries and identify areas where updates or clarifications are needed. The goal is to make the FAQ a comprehensive and reliable resource for users seeking answers to common questions.

Moving Forward: A Collaborative Approach

Centralizing feedback from engineering and support teams is a crucial step towards improving our user-facing documentation. By fostering a collaborative environment where these teams can share their insights and suggestions, we can ensure our documentation remains accurate, comprehensive, and user-friendly. This, in turn, empowers our users to effectively utilize RisingWave and achieve their data streaming goals. We encourage ongoing participation and collaboration to continuously refine and enhance our documentation, making it an invaluable asset for the RisingWave community.

This ongoing effort will involve:

• Regular Feedback Sessions: Scheduling regular meetings or discussions where engineering and support teams can share their feedback and ideas.
• Clear Communication Channels: Establishing clear channels for submitting feedback, such as a dedicated email address or a shared Slack channel.
• Prioritization and Tracking: Implementing a system for prioritizing feedback and tracking progress on documentation updates.
• Continuous Improvement: Embracing a culture of continuous improvement, where feedback is actively sought and used to enhance our documentation.

By embracing this collaborative approach, we can ensure our documentation remains a valuable resource for our users, empowering them to succeed with RisingWave.

For more information on best practices in technical documentation, visit the Write the Docs website.