Microsoft MSN Mobile

Microsoft’s MSN Mobile team provided software to a variety of telecommunications partners so they could offer services such as email and messaging for their customers. Accordingly, the Partner Relations Team was charged with supporting their partners with documentation of frontend and backend systems.

The fulfillment of these tasks were my responsibility as the contract technical writer on the Partner Relations Team.

The first step was gathering preliminary information in order to create a project plan. After I had properly scoped the project, I was able to begin to gather additional information from the Program Manager and Software Engineers.

To write the frontend docs, I acquired multiple mobile devices and checked the descriptive docs against all the interface elements and all procedural docs against all the mobile phone functionality.

Finally, to write the backend docs, I carefully described the API of a Software Porting Kit, focusing on XML content contained in SOAP messages, including requests, responses, headers, and the message body. Ultimately, the document contained an overview of the underpinnings of a Microsoft core protocol: its protocol data unit, bindings, and transport methods.

All the final documents were distributed to Microsoft’s telecommunications partners for their successful implementation of mobile phone software. I am sure they were instrumental in ensuring seamless communications between MSN and partner backend systems.