Announced: May 3, 2022
We're taking the next step to deliver a more consistent, familiar and helpful Watermark experience: we're combining our five remaining self-service help centers into one.
We're carrying forward the content you count on and are making some serious improvements so it's easier and quicker than ever to find answers. In the refreshed Watermark Help Center, you’ll find:
- A curated selection of public resources that are easy to bookmark and share
- Significantly improved search, with filters to narrow your results by product
- A central hub for release notes and other product and Watermark updates
- More ways to get help, including a handy web form you can use to get help 24/7 (available now) and live chat support during business hours (coming in June)
And that’s just the beginning! See below for more on what to expect and how you can get the most from your new Watermark Help Center.
What’s different about the refreshed Watermark Help Center?
How do I access the Watermark Help Center?
Do I need another account to access the Watermark Help Center?
Will I need to update my bookmarks?
Is there role-based content in the Watermark Help Center?
How else might this help center be enhanced in the future?
How is the Watermark Help Center different from the Watermark Academy?
What’s happening and why?
We’re refreshing the Watermark Help Center and expanding it to cover all Watermark solutions!
Our mission is to give you one, easy-to-navigate space where you can find the information and support you need for all of your Watermark solutions.
To do that, we’re combining five separate help centers into one, updating our product knowledge bases, adding more tools and content, and addressing several pain points we know you’ve encountered with previous help resources.
When is this happening?
The refreshed Watermark Help Center will go live in late May- early June 2022, and access will roll out for most products* between May 24 and June 7th.
Watermark Administrators will be notified when their product is connected to the Watermark Help Center.
* The timeline will differ a bit for Tk20 and Aviso, but the process for follow-up will be the same. Tk20 customers can expect to see us redirect to the refreshed Help Center with the next Tk20 release this summer. Aviso customers will begin to see some content in the Watermark Help Center come June, with more resources to follow. We will ensure that current product-specific support avenues will continue to be supported. All Aviso users should continue to follow the best practices for getting support for that product.
What’s different about the refreshed Watermark Help Center?
There’s a lot to be excited about!
Although these changes may require us all to reacclimate a little, we promise the benefits are worth it.
Everything in one consistent place.
Expanding to cover every Watermark solution, the refreshed Help Center will truly give you one place to turn for answers, with a consistent, predictable and navigable information architecture you can follow to find what you need, regardless of which solution you use. To accomplish this we’re migrating the existing help content for Course Evaluations & Surveys, Faculty Success, Planning & Self-Study, Curriculum Strategy, and eventually Aviso, to live alongside the content we centralized for our other solutions in 2020.
As part of bringing content together, we’ve also refreshed how things are organized so you can easily navigate to find what you’re looking for. You’ll find content organized by key topics and tailored to the specific audiences that are involved in using each solution on your campus, including administrators, faculty, students, and even your IT teams.
Much better search, with filters to narrow your results.
The ability to filter content by product is a highlight here, and makes the search results much more navigable - especially with all product content in one place. Another great search feature is the “breadcrumb” trail that specifies where an article is in the site map, so you can more easily determine if that article is likely to answer your question. With these tools on hand, it’s going to be so much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Content is fresh and current.
All of the content in the refreshed help center has been reviewed and updated! This was a great chance to give everything a once-over and confirm these resources reflect how each product works today. You can also count on us to continue to update and review content to keep things fresh going forward!
Chat support for all products.
If you are looking for the quickest help between 9am and 5pm ET, our updated chat support helps you skip the phone call queue and get right to an online agent who is available to go back and forth with you to answer your questions. We originally launched this service in 2020 for a portion of our products, and the results have been great. Now we’re excited to extend it to all products! You can expect to see it in June for most products, with Aviso to come later this summer.
A web form for Support requests, right from the help center.
If you spend time looking through our available resources and can’t find the answer but you don’t have time to chat, or it’s after our phone and chat support agents have signed off for the day, use the handy in-site form to send a message to our 24/7 Support Team. The experience here will be similar to emailing support@watermarkinsights.com, but without the extra clicks to your inbox. And what’s even better - your web form submission will route automatically to an expert on that product so you’ll get a reply sooner.
A central hub for release notes and other product news.
Every product has a “News & Updates” area with release notes and other product announcements so you can keep up with, catch up on, and refer back to changes more easily. Plus you can keep up with broader Watermark news more easily through the Watermark Updates area!
Easy to link to.
It may sound simple and silly, but we’re really excited about how easy it is to share links to specific articles with this updated help center! Because the majority of content is public, we can reference specific articles to help answer your questions and point you directly to release notes when we announce things - something we’ve long wanted to do for Faculty Success and Course Evaluations & Surveys. And it means you can share articles easily too, whether within your project team or directly with your faculty and students, so you don’t have to create as much of your own content.
How do I access the Watermark Help Center?
There are two ways!
- You can reach the Watermark Help Center directly by going to the homepage URL, or by following a link shared with you in relevant Watermark messages (such as an email from our support team, a link in a release announcement, etc.).
- You will be able to access through the Help Center link in your product app bar or navigation bar, either a "?" or a Help link. The "?" or Help link will be updated to route to the new Help Center late May to early June 2022 for each Watermark product. Watermark will notify you through a release announcement when this change is made and you gain access to this new help center through your product(s).
❗ Please update any bookmarks you created for the old help centers after you receive word that the new one is live, and consider sharing this information with others on campus who may also have outdated bookmarks.
Do I need another account to access the Watermark Help Center?
No! The majority* of the content in the Watermark Help Center will be public, including:
- Product help documentation
- Release notes and announcements
- Access to chat support
- Access to the web form for contacting our Support team
We’re making all these resources publicly available so it’s easier for administrators, faculty and students to get help when they need it, and share resources with others.
Users will still be able to access the help center directly from within Watermark products, but they won’t have to. It’ll also be easier to access help articles you’ve bookmarked or received over email (e.g, from support, in a release announcement) - you won’t have to worry about logging into the system first before clicking that link!
* We say majority above because there are some anticipated features on the help center roadmap that will be for administrator eyes only. As we introduce these features, we’ll work to keep things as straightforward as possible, and will share instructions on how to access new restricted content when the time comes.
Will I need to update my bookmarks?
Yes. While we're working to redirect as many links as we can behind the scenes, we cannot guarantee that we’ll be able to do that for every page you and your users have bookmarked. For the smoothest experience, please plan to update your saved bookmarks when the Help Center switches over.
Is there role-based content in the Watermark Help Center?
Yes! The Watermark Help Center includes content for administrators as well as IT teams, faculty, and students (where applicable by product). While role-specific content is no longer restricted to just the users with that role (it’s public to everyone), users in specific roles can still easily find and drill into the sections of content authored for them.
Here are a few examples you might be wondering about:
Role-Based Content for Student Learning & Licensure, Taskstream LAT, LiveText and Tk20
Within the area for each product, you’ll find content grouped into role-based sections for students, faculty/supervisors/mentors and administrators, as well as integration and technical FAQs designed for colleagues in IT. For example, on the Student Learning & Licensure category homepage you'll find subsections for Student Role, Faculty, Supervisor or Mentor Role, Admin Role, Integrations & Technical FAQs alongside News & Updates.
Faculty Resources for Faculty Success
If you’re a Faculty Success user, you’ve likely encountered, and perhaps bookmarked, several resources authored specifically for faculty like the Faculty/Staff Guide and topic-specific pages on importing CVs, importing publications, and customizing CV reports. All of these now live in the Faculty Success area of the Watermark Help Center!
The new hub for faculty content will be the Faculty/Staff Guides section in the Faculty Success Getting Started area. There users will find the overviews and feature-specific resources they’re accustomed to, with links out to other relevant articles with additional detail.
As part of connecting Faculty Success to the Watermark Help Center we’ll also update the in-product links to these faculty resources to point here, and redirect the old pages to the corresponding new locations so that any old bookmarks still take you to the intended content.
Role-Based Sections for Course Evaluations & Surveys
The Course Evaluations & Surveys documentation in the Watermark Help Center includes sections specifically for Instructors, Teaching Assistants, Administrators and CES Administrators, just as the previous help center did.
How else might this help center be enhanced in the future?
We’re actively exploring several additional enhancements! A top priority after the launch this May is adding a client discussion forum to provide system administrators a place to connect with each other, share experiences, problem-solve and express needs. We’re also working toward sharing product roadmaps with you through the help center, and are evaluating options for providing an avenue for administrators to submit product enhancement ideas directly through here as well. We’ll keep you informed as we make progress on these features!
How is the Watermark Help Center different from the Watermark Academy?
The Help Center is designed to be a quick reference. Available to everyone free-of-charge, it provides answers to tactical how-to questions and is a great resource for experienced Watermark users to tap for refreshers on how to do something, or to learn more about new features and updates.
In contrast, the Academy is designed to teach and connect more of the dots, with content delivered through free webinars as well as more advanced fee-based offerings like consulting hours and certifications. It’s a great starting point for new users to learn about their product, and for more experienced users to develop and show mastery through completing a certification course.