influxdata / influxdata/influxdb

Bring documentation to the UI

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#19,838 2 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee Claimed by @mnorriswalker View on GitHub
proposed
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Description

# Proposal – In-product documentation

### Problem
InfluxDB and the InfluxDB documentation feel very separate. There are only a handful
of documentation links throughout the InfluxDB UI. We want to bring more documentation
to the user without them having to leave the UI.

### Goals
- Provide simple, context-specific documentation to users while they're in the UI.
- Deep link into the full docs so they can get more information if they choose.
- Provide in-UI docs for both InfluxDB Cloud and OSS.
- Set up an in-UI docs framework that the docs team can easily manage. Raw content
would be in Markdown and maintained by the docs team.

### Proposal
- Provide a persistent link/icon on every page that toggles the in-UI documentation.
- The in-UI documentation would come and go as users request it, possibly in a modal or some type of overlay.
- The content for the in-UI documentation would be page specific.
Content could be loaded dynamically based on the current route/view.

_The following mockups are not meant as design direction. They are simply meant to demonstrate a potential solution and illustrate the items discussed in this proposal._

![ui-docs-mockup-1](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/181484/97371840-d1810300-1877-11eb-9258-f804c3a51476.gif)
![ui-docs-mockup-2](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/181484/97371846-d3e35d00-1877-11eb-84b8-dea62b0d42b0.gif)

## Other potential solutions
- **WalkMe:** WalkMe is great at handholding users through workflows, but it may be
overkill for providing just simple, succinct documentation. Unfortunately WalkMe
can be a pain to edit and it's only available to use in InfluxDB Cloud.

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