Support needed!

[John Sgammato]

It seems to me the safest approach is to escalate it to your manager, explaining why your current tools are the right tools for the job. Explain how sophisticated your docs are and why Word won't be up to the task. The challenge would be to make the docs less sophisticated and harder to manage as a trade-off for the suggested flexibility. 
Then you could opine that the problem was not a lack of flexibility, but rather a lack of training if the person truly needed to edit the doc at that moment, or else possibly the original complainer simply overreacted to a perceived blocker while you were out of the office. 
Never complain to the boss - but raise the issue with clarifying information and provide an "out" if possible. In this case, the clarifying info supports the manager, and the out is that the original complainer is solving the wrong problem. Redefining the problem on more favorable terms is a useful strategy.
Good luck!
john

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of laura at lavadome.net
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 3:58 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Support needed!

 Dear all

 Please tell me I'm not going mad or being unreasonable.

 Have just come into work to find that the company which acquired us a  few months ago wants me to use Powerpoint for creating datasheets  instead of InDesign (definite) and "a more flexible tool" (Word) instead  of our beloved Framemaker (proposed).

 I could cry. I am the only tech author in the company of about 100  people and the marketing department used PP for datasheets which they  say is "adequate" for the job. This all arose on Friday when someone  else needed to edit a version of my ID files when I was on holiday.  Now  I come in to find:

 "...For more technical documentation (e.g. product manuals) then I  understand the argument for use of a more specialist tool - but even  here we can use more flexible tools."

 Such as????? I have long user guides with masses of conditional text. 
 Just let Word have a shot at that. In fact, they were trying to do just  that before I started this job 4 years ago - and it wasn't working.

 Sorry to clog up the forum with this but I think of you all as friends  who feel the same way about FM as I do.

 How do I persuade them otherwise? In fact, it's just one person really  I think I need to convince - not in my office.

 I can just about cope with datasheets in PP but using anything other  than Frame for long user guides is unthinkable.

 L

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