Varibill Documentation Standards and Style Guide

Introduction

This document defines the official documentation standards and style guidelines for Varibill’s customer-facing documentation.

The guidelines and standards outlined here serve as the single source of truth for how all external (public) documentation is written, structured, styled, and presented across Varibill’s customer support and documentation platforms, including:

1. The Freshdesk Knowledge Base and Solution Pages
2. Online support and help articles
3. Customer-facing product guides and how-to documentation
4. Downloadable documentation (such as PDFs, where applicable in the future)

The goal of this guide is to ensure that all Varibill customer documentation is:

1. Consistent in structure, style, and visual presentation
2. Clear, accessible, and easy to navigate for customers
3. Professional and aligned with the Varibill brand
4. Scalable and maintainable as the product and documentation set grows

This guide defines both:

1. Content standards, including how customer documentation is written, structured, and organised.
2. Design and presentation standards, including how documentation looks and behaves in the Freshdesk portal and other customer-facing formats, including typography, layouts, components, callouts, screenshots, and media.

In addition, this guide establishes:

1. Standard customer-facing document types and when to use each
2. Rules for headings, lists, instructions, and UI references
3. Standards for screenshots, images, and video content
4. Accessibility, usability, and readability guidelines

Where possible, these standards will be implemented and enforced directly in the Freshdesk Knowledge Base through Varibill Portal theming, layout, navigation, and templates to ensure that guidelines are not only documented but also adhered to in practice.

All new customer-facing documentation, and all significant updates to existing documentation in the Freshdesk Solutions portal, must adhere to the standards defined in this guide.

Scope & Audience

Applies to all customer-facing documentation in Freshdesk

Includes: Solution Pages, help articles, guides, future PDFs

Excludes: Internal docs, developer documentation, Varibill | Swagger pages, etc.

Document Types

How-to guides

Concept / Overview articles

FAQ

Troubleshooting

Release notes / announcements

Writing Style & Language

Voice and tone

Instruction style

UI labels formatting

Terminology rules

Do’s & Don’ts

Content Structure Rules

Heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3)

Section structure

Paragraph length

Page flow rules

Lists, Steps & Procedures

Ordered vs unordered lists

Step numbering rules

Nested lists

One-action-per-step rules

Visual Design & Formatting Standards

Fonts

Sizes

Spacing

Alignment

Layout principles

Components & Callouts

Notes

Note:

Warnings

Warning:

Tips

Tips and tricks:

Info boxes

Code blocks

<script nonce="{{portal.nonce}}">
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
  const searchInput = document.querySelector('input[type="search"], input[placeholder*="Find"]');
  if (searchInput) {
    searchInput.placeholder = "Search documentation…";
  }
});
</script>

Tables

Screenshots, Images & Media

• When to use screenshots/images/video
• Size, cropping, borders, shading, process flow depiction
• Redaction rules (remove/obscure sensitive/private information)
• Naming and placement
• Video rules
• PDF rules

Accessibility & Usability

• Heading usage for navigation
• Alt text
• Link text rules

Freshdesk-Specific Rules and Platform Constraints

• What heading levels are used for the Table of Contents (TOC)
• Any structural rules driven by Freshdesk forced behavior
• Template usage
• What content authors must / must not do in Freshdesk

Governance & Maintenance

• Who owns the standards
• How changes are proposed
• Review process
• Versioning
• Rollout rules