APM's company culture focuses on quality, consistency, and efficiency, as well as support for its staff of trade professionals. To best support employees faced with learning to use new software, the company needed to provide a training solution that was easily accessible and user-friendly. HexaGroup decided to build an animated multimedia tutorial for APM Time Tracking.

The tutorial would need to be of a manageable size, portable and easy to access via CD-ROM or the company intranet, and easy to use. It would require streamlined, logical navigation tools, as well as clear instructions and realistic examples. Also, since novice PC users are notoriously skilled at breaking software, the tutorial would have to be as 'unbreakable' as possible.

An effective tutorial would need eye-catching animation, complete with audio explanations, but because there was no guarantee that all PCs playing it would be equipped with sound cards and speakers, the tutorial could not rely solely on audio content. The text of the audio script would need to appear onscreen for the benefit of users without sound capabilities.

The tutorial would also need to be structured in such a way that it could serve as either a classroom training tool, with a linear structure, or an interactive reference tool. This would make the tutorial useful beyond an employee's initial training; if, for example, a user had been working with the system for a year before ever needing to add a new project, that user could simply pull up the tutorial and revisit the "Creating a New Projec" section.

HexaGroup chose Macromedia Flash technology to create the APM Time Tracking tutorial. While our creative staff started work on the visual layout of the tutorial, our content developers worked with APM staff, both field supervisors and accounting managers, to learn about the software, the users, and the tasks that users perform on the software. This collaboration led to the first draft of the tutorial script, which was polished and approved by APM before the next phase of the project began.

With the script approved, the HexaGroup team moved on to create storyboards for the various screens in the tutorial. Again, APM gave feedback and the appropriate changes were made to achieve precise, detailed, and factually correct storyboards. With these approved, our content team and Flash programmers went to work to produce a first draft of the actual tutorial, complete with all animation and voiceovers.

All the collaboration and careful planning through the early phases of the project paid off with that first draft being adopted it without further changes. Not only was the content what APM wanted, but the main tutorial file, animation and sound and all, was no larger than 10 megabytes making it very portable and the selected technology was the best solution for web distribution.

The tutorial that HexaGroup created is easy to use and understand. With slick animation that includes plenty of actual software tasks, it brings the APM Time Tracker software to life. Users quickly become accustomed to the interface, and can see how it works in real time.

The completed tutorial is small and self-contained, making it easy to copy onto laptops, portable drives, and the company's intranet, as well as CD-ROMs. Users can run through the entire tutorial or skip to the part they need to review, depending on their own familiarity and comfort level with the software.

In addition to being visually attractive, the tutorial features voiceovers that lend a friendly, conversational dimension to the experience. Should a user not be able to take advantage of the sound component, the text being spoken is also displayed in the left margin as the tutorial plays.

The bottom line is that APM's professionals now have a professional-grade tool to help them quickly and accurately complete their employee and project tracking tasks, so that they can get back to the jobs they've been hired to do.