##  [Software support and Artificial Intelligence: a 5 part series](/blog/software-support-and-artificial-intelligence-5-part-series) 

By

 [Kristof Van Tomme](/users/kvantomme) 

 

 

CEO, Co-Founder

Jul 26, 2016

 

Technical writer teams are asked the impossible: chronically understaffed, fulfill growing expectations, while dealing with the disruptions of a barrage of technological innovations.

Technology however doesn’t need to be a curse, it could be a blessing: new technologies could also be used to help technical writers. In this series I want explore how artificial intelligence and new/rediscovered interaction models for software documentation could redefine technical writing and its deliverables:

**Part 1: [Documentation at a crossroads](http://pronovix.com/blog/software-support-and-artificial-intelligence-part-1-documentation-crossroads)**  
What jobs do we need documentation to fulfill? Why is documentation under pressure? Why do we need AI in documentation?

**Part 2: [The Helpful co-worker model](http://pronovix.com/blog/software-support-and-artificial-intelligence-part-2-helpful-co-worker-model)**  
Teaching and giving advice is part of human nature. Helpful co-workers as a support services: when are they successful and how do they fail?

**Part 3: [Clippy: misunderstood brilliance before its time](http://pronovix.com/blog/software-support-and-artificial-intelligence-part-3-clippy-misunderstood-brilliance-its-time)**  
Microsoft’s Clippy was a great idea: sometimes it does pay off to give people advice even if they didn’t ask for it yet. So why did it fail?

**Part 4: [Repeating Clippy’s mistakes with Walkthroughs](https://pronovix.com/blog/software-support-and-artificial-intelligence-part-4-repeating-clippys-mistakes-walkthroughs)**  
Learning from Clippy’s mistakes. How can we define proactive support? How can we avoid repeating Clippy’s mistakes?

**Part 5: [Automated proactive support as embedded messages](https://pronovix.com/blog/software-support-and-artificial-intelligence-part-5-automated-proactive-support-messages)**  
What are our next steps to explore the application of AI in documentation? How can we use a messaging framework to send highly relevant chunks of content to a user?

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