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ADR 0015 — Help Center / Learning Hub (Meraki-inspired)

  • Status: Accepted (locked 2026-05-08, formalized 2026-05-09)
  • Date: 2026-05-08
  • Deciders: TLSStress.Art project
  • Targets: v4.7+ (skeleton in next sprint; content authoring ongoing across releases)
  • Source memo: discuss_help_center_2026_05_08.md

Context

Operators landing in the dashboard for the first time face a high-cognitive-load surface — 9 NGFW vendors × 3 catalog kinds × 5 inspection profiles × 3 topology modes × N test plans. Without in-app guidance the bench leaks into "tribal knowledge held by whoever installed it last", which violates the project_quality_excellence_policy_2026_05_08 standard.

User confirmed 2026-05-08 with a Cisco Meraki sidebar screenshot as the reference design. Meraki's Help Center is one of the few network-product UIs where on-page help, glossary, primers, how-tos, and AI Q&A all live in the same right-rail surface — operators never leave the workflow to learn the workflow.

Decision

Ship a Help Center as a first-class right-rail surface in the dashboard, modeled on the Meraki sidebar. Composed of 7 components, all queryable from the existing Find palette (Cmd+K) for cross-cutting search:

  1. Cmd+K palette — already shipped (Find Palette PR-1..PR-5). Glossary entries surface here in PR-6 of Find Palette.
  2. Tooltips — short context bubbles on every non-obvious UI element, linkable to a Glossary entry.
  3. Glossary — 25+ initial terms (TLS Inspection, BGP saturation, Quadrant decomposition, RFC 9411, NetSecOPEN, Inspection Profile, etc.). YAML-source-of-truth in platform/help-center/glossary/.
  4. Primers — 8+ initial primers. One-page concept walkthroughs (e.g. "What's a quadrant decomposition?", "Why does BGP saturation matter?"). Markdown-source-of-truth.
  5. How-tos — 10+ initial workflows. Step-by-step playbooks (e.g. "Configure FTD via FMC for TLS decryption", "Run a capacity-fitted BGP saturation test against a Cisco FTD CSF6160"). Markdown-source-of-truth.
  6. Videos — short (1-3 min) walkthroughs hosted via Mux (consistent with marketing site infra).
  7. AI Q&A — natural-language Q&A grounded in the above content via vector embeddings + retrieval-augmented generation. LLM choice deferred (see Open Questions in source memo).

Sidebar layout (Meraki-mapped): Help Center / Community / Learning Hub / DUT info / API docs / Marketplace / What's New.

Roadmap

PR Scope Lands
Help Center PR-1 Skeleton route + glossary YAML schema + 3 langs (pt-BR / en / es) next sprint
Help Center PR-2 Tooltips component + 5 highest-impact insertions next sprint
Help Center PR-3 Glossary content (25 terms) + Find Palette PR-6 wiring +1 sprint
Help Center PR-4 Primers (8 initial) +2 sprints
Help Center PR-5 How-tos (10 initial) + Videos shells +2 sprints
Help Center PR-6 AI Q&A endpoint + RAG pipeline +3 sprints (depends on LLM decision)

Open questions

Tracked in source memo discuss_help_center_2026_05_08.md:

  1. Community channel — Discord / GitHub Discussions / Slack / Discourse / hybrid? (cross-ref project_community_strategy)
  2. Marketplace timing — alongside Help Center or after Certification Program ships?
  3. LLM choice for AI Q&A — Claude / GPT-4 / open-source local?
  4. Translation pipeline — manual + glossary-locked vs LLM-assisted?

Consequences

  • Positive: lower onboarding friction; reduces support-ticket volume; differentiates against IXIA's documentation-as-PDF approach.
  • Negative: ongoing content authoring debt; LLM cost (RAG inference) when AI Q&A ships.
  • Reversible if needed: each component is independent; we can ship 1-3 and delay the rest if scope pressure demands.

References

  • Source memo: discuss_help_center_2026_05_08.md
  • Cross-ref: project_quality_excellence_policy_2026_05_08.md
  • Cross-ref: project_community_strategy_2026_05_08.md
  • Cross-ref: project_dashboard_find_palette_2026_05_08.md