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Product Content Maturity Model Series. Product Content Evolution The Structured Phase. Agenda. Introductions Product Content Maturity Model Overview The Autodesk Story SDL Trisoft. Our Presenters. Andrew J. Thomas Director, Product Marketing SDL. Marie Salet Principal CMS Engineer
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Product Content Maturity Model Series Product Content Evolution The Structured Phase
Agenda • Introductions • Product Content Maturity Model Overview • The Autodesk Story • SDL Trisoft
Our Presenters Andrew J. Thomas Director, Product Marketing SDL Marie Salet Principal CMS Engineer Autodesk
The Engaged Vision • Deliver Product Content on demand • Content created and filtered for Customer Profiles • Interactive and dynamic, while still versioned and controlled • Incremental Updates • Analytics beyond page hits to capture “content utility” • Enable social interactions between community and authors • Crowd Authoring through easy WYSIWYG interface • Branding and terminology maintained, regardless of who creates the content • Content re-used consistently at every creation point
Product Content Marketing Engineering Product Content Training & Learning Partners Field ServicePersonnel Support
Phase 2: Structured • Company Overview • Investment in structure has begun and older unstructured content is being migrated into DITA • New writing tools are being deployed and content creators are focused on learning new creation methods • Best Practices • Choose team evangelists that can help others with learning curve issues • Deploy a component content management system during migration to increase operational efficiency • Develop a content re-use/sharing methodology • Allow new roles to emerge – information architect, shared content lead • Next Steps • Finish conversion of legacy documents • Reach out to other departments involved in product content to determine what content can be re-used across
Content locked in context Information can’t easily appear in multiple context and can’t be tailored readily to audience High costs of formatting Content gets out of synch and is difficult to refresh Customers can’t find what they need XML Topic Methodology Content can be reshuffled for deliverable Same content can live in multiple outputs Content can be delivered easily as web pages to consume Metadata and conditions can allow content to be tailored on the fly Content can be easily refreshed Benefits of DITA Traditional Book Methodology Topic Based / DITA Methodology
Contracting Product Life Cycles English Release International Release PRD Shelf Life Traditional Research & Development Author Review Publish Localization Market Life Research & Development Modular writing Global Revenue & Market Capture Life Author Review Publish Localize Key:
The Autodesk Story: The Road to DITA Marie Salet Principal CMS Engineer
The Road To DITA • About Autodesk • Deciding to Move • Unstructured to Structured • Structured to DITA • Lessons
Autodesk Autodesk is a world leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software. The broadest and deepest product portfolio in the design world 10 million+ users in over 800,000 companies 3,500 development partners 1.2 million students trained on our products every year 6,800 Employees in 95 Locations Founded 1982 Fiscal year 2011 revenue US$1.95 billion
Product Documentation at Autodesk • Our products are complex and require extensive documentation • Autodesk documentation regularly wins awards • Product documentation localized into up to 19 languages • High volume of source content (12 million words) • Technical writing groups decentralized • Localization is a (mostly) centralized organization
Documentation Localization • Decentralized Tech Pubs departments created documentation in many formats: • RoboHELP • HTML, created in Dreamweaver, HomeSite, NotePad • Unstructured FrameMaker converted to HTML using WebWorks • Proprietary tools • Localization challenges included: • Managing manual handoffs between writers and translators • Investing heavily in Tech Pubs engineering to handle diverse formats, technical challenges • Spending substantial $$ for desktop publishing
Localization Proposes Buying a TMS/CMSGOAL: Reduce localization costs and improve efficiency • Winter 2003: Start of pilot project • Spring 2004: Pilot project completed • Fall 2004: First major product releases in WorldServer • Spring 2005: First WS cycle completed for all major products
Migrating Content to Structured • Migrating unstructured content to XML was not a trivial effort • Automated scripts and programs were developed to migrate content, but… • Extensive manual cleanup was required after content was in XML. Writers needed to do much of cleanup because they were the ones who knew the content.
Developed the CPM Data Model • Developed the CPM (Common Pubs Model), a corporate-standard XML model for technical publications in 2002/03 • Supports specialization of a base element set, and makes use of the class attribute value to define specialization inheritance • CPM specialization is "additive" rather than "restrictive", however, which is more flexible but precludes content sharing via "generalization" • Can share content authored using the "base" model amongst specializations however, as is done for the I&L books • Single-sourcing managed via XML attributes (e.g. product-exclude, product-include, units, mediaExclusions)
Getting Support…and Facing Resistance • Authoring Tech Pubs teams could not agree on a single data model (DTD) • Teams had to invest time and money to convert unstructured docs to XML format • Authoring teams had to learn structured authoring and drastically change way of working
Success • We can output HTML or PDF from any of our source with the click of a button or on a scheduled basis • Documentation localization costs go down on projects year over year • Throughput has increased dramatically • Translation memories are managed centrally and are very high quality • Localization workflow is highly automated
Help and PDF Automation XSLT XSL-FO PDF HTML XMLrepository
Challenge Create an environment that provided better performance and stability for our authors. Provide better authoring tools which will enable them to focus on content development rather than fighting with the tools. Resulting in faster time to market.
Separate CMS and TMS • WorldServer is a TMS not a true CMS • Versioning • Link Management • Assembly
Custom DTD or DITA Supporting a custom DTD • Authoring tools • Rendering • CMS DITA • Industry Standard • Out of the Box Tools
Trisoft • Component Content Management System • Versioning • Workflows
XMetal • Integrated with Trisoft • DITA
Customizations Importer Set Metadata Publishing Environment World Server/Trisoft integration Autodesk Branding
Support and Training • SharePoint blogs • Yammer • Train the trainers
Lessons Learned • Get an Executive sponsor • Manage change • Don’t do everything at once • Ensure a front to back strategy (including localization) • Set expectations • Communicate!
The CMS Ecosystem Web-Based Help (WBH) or HTML Help Autodesk User Assistance Content Content CMS SDL Trisoft *Any* Autodesk Content Translation CMS SDL Worldserver+ TMs LS Translation Ecosystem Machine Translation (LS-trained or LS-supported) Community Content Translators’ Review & Post-editing
Structured Product Content Suite Global Customer Engagement Intelligent Product Content Dynamic Delivery Reviewers / SMEs / Casual Contributors Structured Content Infrastructure Component Content Management DITA Content Quality Checking
Most companies adopting component content management (CCM) • Content Management Focus to Handle XML “Component Content Management” • Vision of single CMS for every business maturing to specialized systems • Web CMS , Source Control, Component Content all driving specializations • CMS’s that are not developed to specialize with DITA can’t meet requirements • Companies with standard CMS’s are adopting CCM to handle DITA (Dell, VMware, Nokia, + others)
Publication Object Electronic output format • Publication Object=> output • Master Document (e.g. DITA Maps)=> assemblage/ structure • Components(e.g. Topics, illustrations...)=> content Layout template Baseline Context Variable definition
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