Best Practices and Chatbots

Saltzman's Four Main Steps in Creating an Effective Chatbot Interface

1. Set the correct affordance and build a response map
2. Create a character for the chatbot
3. Monitor the responses and interactions of the chatbot with user
4. Provide good content for the chatbot to deliver

Tekom Tcworld and iiRDS

iiRDS: The Mechanics

LavaCon and the Near-future of Content

DITA: A Foundation for Creating Better Content?

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

SENIOR DITA CONTENT STRATEGIST MARKET RESEARCHER AT IXIASOFT CHAIR OF OASIS DITA ADOPTION COMMITTEE

Key Speakers

Carlos Evia Examining the Shift in Content Design to Multi-Channel Publishing (and Cats)

A Brief Recap

Technical Writers Are More Often Editors of Content

Eva Brumberger on How Technical Writers Are More Often “Multimodal Editors” of Content

Technical Communication Leaders of Tomorrow

Megan Smith and “Pinterest Fails,” and their Implications for Technical Writing

Hannah Wei and Jenny Yao on Gamifying ToS Content

The Role of DITA in Current Technical Communications

Sector Growth of DITA Over the Past Five Years

Stan Doherty Speaking at SIGDOC 

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

SENIOR DITA CONTENT STRATEGIST MARKET RESEARCHER AT IXIASOFT CHAIR OF OASIS DITA ADOPTION COMMITTEE

Figure 1: Top Dozen Countries where DITA XML Users Reside (Based on LinkedIn Data)

DITA Grows Worldwide, Proportionally More Outside of North America

Figure 2: Worldwide Distribution of DITA XML Users (Based on LinkedIn Data)

Implications

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

SENIOR DITA CONTENT STRATEGIST MARKET RESEARCHER AT IXIASOFT CHAIR OF OASIS DITA ADOPTION COMMITTEE

Leaflet | European Commission, DG CONNECT, Unit A3, Credit: EC-GISCO, © EuroGeographics for the administrative boundaries

Users and Machines

DITA: The Standard Used by Global Leaders

DITA: The Standard Which Brings Down the Proprietary Walls

Why, might you ask?

Customization

Author

Nolwenn Kerzreho IXIASOFT European Technical Account Manager

Challenges of Semiconductor Documentation

• Your SMEs may spend too much time finding the latest content, or focusing on formatting content instead of creating clear documentation
• The content is uncontrolled and replicated in many places, calling for numerous manual and error-prone replacements
• Users cannot easily find the content they are searching for online
• Costs for desktop publishing tools and translations skyrocket

With DITA CMS in place, semiconductors are able to:

• Produce on-time delivery of documentation—even with short product cycles
• Deliver tailored content and easy-to-find documents that are consistent and accurate
• Translate content for a global marketplace, while keeping translation costs low
• Increase brand consistency and management
• Take more requests with the same or less resources

Author

Nolwenn Kerzreho IXIASOFT European Technical Account Manager

Features of Lightweight DITA

• Mixed content is not allowed. All text must be in a <p> element. For example, <li>This is a list item</li> is not allowed. It must be <li><p>This is a list item</p></li>. This restriction ensures a uniform, predictable structure across content, simplifies reuse, and makes it much easier to develop stylesheets and tools to process the content.
• There are no CALS table elements (<table>, <row>, <entry>, etc.).
• There is no prolog metadata (everything is in <data>).
• There are no related links.
• Only the highlighting domain is available, and only a subset of it (<b>, <i>, <u>, <sup>, <sub>).
• Only topic is available; there is no concept, reference, task, glossentry, etc.
• Only map is available; there is no bookmap.
• Maps do not have a <title> element. The title, if one is necessary, can go in <navtitle> within <topicmeta>.
• Only <topicmeta> and <topicref> are available; there is no <topichead> or <topicgroup>.
• Out of the box, the full set of filtering attributes are not available. Only @props is available. Individual filtering attributes can be added as necessary.
• Overall, attributes are managed as functional groups which can more easily be enabled or removed.
• Specialization is much simpler.

Compatibility between LwDITA content and standard DITA content

Where can I get Lightweight DITA?

Using Lightweight DITA in the DITA CMS

• Create the basic LwDITA map structure outside of the DITA CMS and import it.
• Create the map in the DITA CMS as a standard ditamap, then edit it to change its structure and doctype.

A note on Markdown in the DITA CMS

LwDITA at the IXIASOFT User Conference

If you’re interested: elements and attributes allowed in Lightweight DITA

• topic^{1 (+ id)}
• title¹
• shortdesc¹
• prolog¹
• body¹
• section^{1 2 3}

List elements

• ul^{1 2 3}
• ol^{1 2 3}
• li^{1 2 3}
• dl^{1 2 3}
• dlentry^{1 2 3}
• dt^{1 2 3}
• dd^{1 2 3}

Text elements

• p^{1 2 3}
• pre^{1 2 3 (+ xml:space)}

Table elements

• simpletable^{1 2 3}
• sthead^{1 2 3}
• strow^{1 2 3}
• stentry^{1 2}

Image elements

• fig^{1 4 (+ outputclass)}
• image^{1 5 (+ href, height, width)}
• alt^{1 5}

Media elements

• audio^{2 3}
• video^{2 3}
• param ^{(name, value)}
• desc¹
• poster ^{(name, value)}
• source ^{(name, value)}
• track ^{(name, value)}
• fallback¹
• controls ^(name)

Other elements

• data^{5 (+ name, value)}
• xref^{1 5 7}
• ph^{1 5}

Map elements

• map^{1 (+ id)}
• topicmeta
• topicref^{2 3 6 7 8 (+ locktitle)}
• navtitle¹

Attribute groups

LEIGH WHITE

DITA SPECIALIST AT IXIASOFT

SME Authoring and Technical Writers

• Multi-channel publishing
• Content reuse = content consistency
• Lower localization costs
• Bite-sized content easier for users to digest

Technical Documentation Writing: Next Steps

• Create a map
• Create a topic
• Edit a map (only important elements displayed for SMEs when editing a map)
• Move an object

IXIASOFT CCMS Features Your SMEs Will Love

• My Assignments
• Working with Topics
• Collaborative Review

In Summary

SYDNEY JONES

HEAD OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AT IXIASOFT

LYNN SLEIMAN-HAIDAR

Defining Bad Review

The Consequences of Bad Review

Why does bad review happen?

• Collaborators struggle with the format, interface, or tools we provide.
• Documentation is undervalued, collaborators don’t have enough time to do the review, and review is seen as a low-value task.
• Reviewers give the wrong kind of input, or focus on old or out-of-scope content.
• Collaborators are not accountable for poor or missing review/content, because the cost of error fixing is not understood, and root cause analysis is difficult if you are working with monolithic PDFs without systematic tracking of who did what.

• Lack of confidence about language skills
• Lack of time, and sometimes an inability to plan review time due to last-minute communication around upcoming reviews
• Struggling to find the right scope for review

How can organizations improve collaboration and alleviate bad review?

• Providing low-barrier tools
• Focusing limited resources on key content (rather than asking them to find new content in a PDF, or review a sub-set of content, or accidentally asking them to re-review content they or someone else has already reviewed)
• Supporting reviewers and thinking about their experience (using templates, providing coaching, doing one-on-one support, discussing what is NOT required)

• Tracking what was reviewed, by who, when
• Analyzing doc bugs for root cause and asking the tough questions
• Providing bad review as a cause for bugs and making this transparent to senior management (for example, listing the bug cause as “missing review, poor review, incomplete review”)

Solutions

Summary: Overcoming the Barriers for Good Review

SYDNEY JONES

HEAD OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AT IXIASOFT

SHARON FIGUEIRA

PRE-SALES ENGINEER FOR NORTH AMERICA AT IXIASOFT

Benefits of a CCMS

• Reusability: Content reuse within a CCMS saves time during the writing, editing, and publishing phase, and significantly reduces translation costs.
• Traceability: A CCMS enables you to track content in detail. You can see who did what, when, and where.
• Single Sourcing: With a CCMS you can push content to multiple channels, including print, mobile, web, chatbots, embedded help, and more.
• Enhanced Team Collaboration: Improve workflow for your content development team, especially those working remotely.

2. Document Management System (DMS)

Benefits of a DMS

• Eco-Friendly: Organize content digitally and save paper while you do it!
• Security: A DMS offers many levels of security to ensure confidential content stays in the right hands.
• The Mobile Advantage: With a document management system, you can access and edit documents remotely.

3. Enterprise Content Management System (ECM)

Benefits of ECM

• Flexible: An ECM lets you capture any file type from any location, and have it processed and stored automatically.
• Increases Efficiency: Now that documentation is taken care of, you can be more productive in your day-to-day.
• Reduced Storage Costs: An ECM saves money by storing only necessary files and deleting the rest.

4. Web Content Management System (WCMS)

Benefits of a WCMS

• Personalization: A WCMS lets users customize a webpage with personalized design and content.
• Automation: A WCMS saves time and improves workflow management by publishing content automatically.
• Scalable: A scalable system like a WCMS allows companies to grow exponentially without worrying about surpassing their website limits.

5. Digital Asset Management System (DAM)

Benefits of a DAM

• Centralized Repository: Content is safe and secure in one place.
• Effective Brand Management: A DAM allows you to manage a branded web portal for users to access important files.
• Digital Publishing: With a DAM, you can push digital content to third-party distribution services, social media channels, and more.

SYDNEY JONES

HEAD OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AT IXIASOFT

A Closer Look at the DITA Standard

1. A set of document templates: or rather, templated building blocks used to create your document. In DITA, these include generic structures and types such as procedure, concept, error recovery, and reference. The writers select a topic type before starting authoring.
2. Reuse mechanisms: also known as the technical possibilities of reusing an entire topic, like a task section, fragments of text or images. The writers pick reusable content to integrate into the final document.
3. Conditional publishing: the possibility of tagging contents with specific values and applying filters to the publication so that from a single set you can create more targeted manuals. The writers can select and apply filtering conditions on the content.
4. Mechanisms of specialization and generalization: this possibility, unique to the DITA standard, is important but a bit more technical. We will talk about it later in the article. This is out of scope for the writer.

Topic Templates: What is the objective of this topic?

• mandatory information (a title) and optional information (an image or a table)
• nested information, like in a numbered list (if you start a list, you need at least one item) or a list of steps
• a fixed sequence for the information, for example the prerequisites must be placed before the post-requisites, safety warnings must be placed before the instruction

Possibility of Reuse, Simple and Complex

Reusing Topics

Content Fragment Reuse

Using Filters for Conditional Publishing

DITA Is neither a Language nor a Tool—It's an Open Standard

Is XML Difficult to Use?

Elements and Attributes

Don't Want to Look at Code?

To Form or not to Form

Specialization and Generalization

NOLWENN KERZREHO

EUROPEAN TECHNICAL ACCOUNT MANAGER AT IXIASOFT

SYDNEY JONES

HEAD OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AT IXIASOFT

An Intro to DITA

What does Darwin have to do with it?

Who uses DITA?

What are the benefits of using DITA?

1. Increased Productivity

• • Distribute work so writers can work in parallel, thanks to topic-driven architecture
  • Enable better collaboration among content reviewers and developers for faster delivery
  • Provide for easy topic reuse without further manipulation
  • Clear separation of layout and content so writers can focus on content
  • Easy updates on branding (colours, new logo, etc…)

2. Easy Content Reuse

• • Reuse topics across multiple projects
  • Enhance content consistency across technical information sets
  • Automatically generate overviews and summaries from structured content

3. Customized Output across Multiple Channels

• • Single sourcing: push content to multiple channels, including web, print, chatbots, mobile, embedded helps, and more.
  • Re-assemble topics with ease to produce customized output
  • Target information according to user context and type

SYDNEY JONES

HEAD OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS AT IXIASOFT

Topic Types Are Guides to Writing

Stop Worrying about How Your Content Looks

The Tools Are Mature

You Are in Good Company

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

SENIOR DITA CONTENT STRATEGIST AT IXIASOFT

Why Do a Content Inventory and Audit?

• A clean-up before converting your content from one format to another (for example, before a conversion to DITA)
• A clean-up before moving your content into a CCMS
• A clean-up to reduce the costs of localization

What Do You Evaluate in the Content Audit?

• Is it Relevant? Does it add value for the user?
• Is it Accurate? Is the information factually correct?
• Is it Complete? Is all the necessary information present?
• Is it Conformant? Does it adhere to authoring, style, structure, and terminology standards?
• Is it Unique? Is it a duplicate or near-duplicate of another item in the inventory?

Developing a Project Plan

The Importance of Recurring Content Audits

A Must-Have Resource - Content Inventories and Audits: A Handbook, by Paula Ladenburg Land

LEIGH WHITE

SYDNEY JONES

1. Set more accurate project estimates

• Good from a project management standpoint

2. Justify need for more resources (tools/people)

• Production metrics make it much easier to make effective arguments to upper-management as to future resource needs, based on previous performance

3. Understand quality of production

• Combined with any quality measurements you may be using, production metrics give you a chance to quantitatively measure how consistent your quality measurements are

4. An opportunity to measure value

• How often do people download or reference your content? Do they do so before making a purchase? Feedback on your published content is important.

5. DITA metrics can be used to guide managers, information architects, and writers on how to improve content

• The “atomic” nature of DITA content lends itself well to measurement, and can provide guidance on how content can be improved

Comparing Reuse Across Maps:

• One possible method: compare two or more maps and see what they have in terms of child elements, such as the topics and images
• IXIASOFT CCMS has a feature that automates this process: select two maps you want to compare, right-click and select Compare With > Export Children Intersection
• This outputs a file that shows all matching and non-matching objects in those two maps

What does "export children" do?

• Titles and IDs of topics, images, and conrefs contained within the original source map, as well as those that exist in the secondary maps that are not contained within the original source map
• Topic type or object type identified
• Authoring revision of a topic/object from the source map and its equivalent in the target map (where it exists)
• An indicator that there is a match for the topic or object

Comparing Reuse Metrics for IXIASOFT Docs (2015-2016)

The Results

Are images skewing reuse rates?

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

Ericsson Reuse Expectations

• Large potential for reuse in the information content for Ericsson products
• Continuous deliveries for many products requires efficient ways of working
• Higher quality in the content
• Save both time and money

• Measures the reuse potential in output/publication content in a defined content publication

• Source compared to outputs
• References-based reuse KPI in CCMS
• Measure what reuse they have in comparing source content to delivered content
• Measure what reuse they have directly in the content in the development tool
• Reuse KPI in the IXIASOFT CCMS

Conclusions

• Available in IXIASOFT CCMS directly to Ericsson users
• Measures on the content in the system (always the latest content)
• Large organizations can use the same method and have similar measurements that are comparable
• Does not consider conditionalized content

Output: Reuse Report

• The reuse report is exported and saved as a tab-delimited file (.tsv). Can be opened in Excel.

Report Contains:

• Reuse % Overall for all objects referenced by selected bookmaps
• Reuse % of Topics for all topics referenced by selected bookmaps
• Reuse % of Images for all images referenced by selected bookmaps
• Reuse % of Conref for all referable content referenced by selected bookmaps
• Name of selected bookmaps (not for selected versions)
• Full path to DRM version file (Product/Version)

Key Takeaways

• Know what you are measuring and why
• Realize that it may take a few years before you have reliable information
• Measuring reuse in the short term can be helpful in determining the usefulness of training
• Always analyze the reuse results carefully and understand what impacts the measurements before changing anything
• Find a balance between how to reuse in your content and maintainability

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

SARI EKLUND

To Effectively Reuse Content You First Need to Find It

GitHub Does not Inherently Understand XML

GitHub + an XML Editor Has no Workflow

A Lack of Associated Metadata

What is GitHub good for from a documentation perspective?

KEITH SCHENGILI-ROBERTS

The creation of information for use shall be assigned to competent persons (*)

(*) ISO 82079 -article 10.1

What are these task-related competencies?

Want to learn more about IEEE-ISO 82 079?

Get the Webinar

Marie-Louise Flacke

What are the characteristics of Information 4.0?

• Molecular. Small, molecular content replaces large documents. These are small, self-contained units of information that are clear, straightforward and focused on user intent. Molecular content should also be modular to enable their combination and recombination in different ways.
• Dynamic. Continuously updated according to the needs of the user and the specific context they find themselves within.
• Offered. Information is delivered to users as an offer, so they can select what piece of information they need, when they need it.
• Ubiquitous, online, searchable and findable. It must be available everywhere, to anybody, at anytime. A user should not have to seek for the information, it should always be there, available when needed.
• Profiled automatically. Individually personalized information applying to the specific person using a product at a single point of time.
• Spontaneous. Information must respond to contextual needs, meaning it is tailored uniquely for individuals who find themselves in a given context.

Molecular Information and DITA

What are the challenges with Information 4.0?

1. It requires technical writers to predict what users will need in the future with limited information. This directly ties to the requirement for personalization as users now lack time to browse through lengthy documents. Instead, they are expecting to be presented with contextual, valuable, and up-to-date information. New ways of dynamically tackling “big data” and merging that with information derived from smart sensors in real-time is beginning to respond to this demand. In fact, context sensing is a considerable challenge when we are aiming to do so for millions of users simultaneously, all while eliminating any that may be present in the data, ensuring that information provided to users is truly tailored to who they are.
2. Another is how to best manage molecular content. This is a call-to-action for component content management system developers (or maybe we should say, molecular content management systems).
3. Finally, with contexts that are constantly changing and evolving, information needs to be updated constantly, so there is an additional complexity in determining what content should be delivered to the user and when.

Ray Gallon

Amandine Mondélice

What is it?

What's it good for?

Why I Love it

Bonus

Links

2. Opening Multiple Maps

What is it?

What's it good for?

Why I Love It

Link

3. More Screen Space

What is it?

What's it good for?

Why I Love It

Bonus

Double Bonus

4. Exporting to TSV

What is it?

What's it good for?

Why I Love It

Bonus

Links to documentation

1. Search results view operations
2. https://www.ixiasoft.com/documentation/IXIASOFT_CCMS/5.2/User_Guides_Advanced_User_DRM/per1389986057783.html
3. Export dependencies as TSV
4. https://www.ixiasoft.com/documentation/IXIASOFT_CCMS/5.2/User_Guides_Advanced_User_DRM/per1389986055010.html

5. Export map as TSV
6. https://www.ixiasoft.com/documentation/IXIASOFT_CCMS/5.2/User_Guides_Advanced_User_DRM/per1389986053805.html

5. Map Comparison

What is it?

What's it good for?

Why I Love It

Link to Documentation

1. Export children intersection
2. https://www.ixiasoft.com/documentation/IXIASOFT_CCMS/5.2/User_Guides_Advanced_User_DRM/per1389986054625.html

Art Ringis

The Importance of the Customer Journey

What does technical content have to do with customer experience?

SEO and DITA-based Technical Documentation

1. I want-to-know moments (pre-purchase mode, research phase, ex) someone interested in buying a new set of headphones might be interested in the product’s key features)
2. I want-to-go moments (looking for local business on a map, might be reading reviews about a nearby restaurant)
3. I want-to-do moments (installing a car battery…learning a new hobby—how to knit)
4. I want-to-buy moments (primed and ready to buy…final stage before purchasing)

1. Use shortdesc because Google uses it in search results* and it provides info to users as to whether or not it contains the information they need
2. Have a naming convention for your DITA output that is descriptive:  Understanding_the_Fliputron_feature_on_the_Vebulon_5.html
3. Use descriptive <title>s that are no longer than 75 characters long
4. Relationship tables = internal links which increase content relevancy
5. And last, but far from least: content that targets what users are looking for!

• a 5% increase in retention is 25% increase in profit
• it is also known that 80% revenue comes from 20% customers
• it is also 6x more expensive to attract customer than to keep one
• time of ROI to acquire a customer is 3,5 years - but average customer stays 2 years

1. Digesting existing material which it incorporates directly within itself, or
2. Referring to appropriate material a user wants via metadata

Keith Schengili-Roberts

Amandine Mondélice

DITA Experience and Technical Writing 

• Advisory Technical Writer
• Associate Technical Writer
• Content Writer
• Contract Technical Writer
• Engineering Writer
• Lead Technical Writer
• Manager, Technical Writer
• Principal Technical Writer
• Project Engineer, Technical writer
• Senior Programmer Writer
• Senior Technical Writer
• Staff Technical Writer
• Technical Writer II
• Technical Writer III
• Technical Writer IV
• Technical Writing Consultant
• Technical Writing Intern
• Technical Writing Manager

Non-Technical Writers Using DITA 

• Analyst II Technical Documentation
• Ant Build Specialist
• Applications Engineer
• Associate Technical Content Developer
• Business Analyst and Technical Author
• Chief Information Architect, UX Analyst
• Consulting Content Strategist
• Content Architect
• Content Developer
• Content Management Specialist
• Content Strategist
• Customer Documentation Specialist
• Director of Documentation
• Director of Information Experience
• Director of Knowledge & Training
• Director, Documentation & User Assistance
• Director, Product Documentation
• Director, Technical Publications and Training
• DITA Architect
• DITA Content Strategist
• DITA Information Architect
• DITA Migration Specialist
• DITA Toolsmith
• Documentation Architect
• Documentation Manager
• Engineer III - Information Development Technologist
• Head of the Search and Technologies Documentation Team
• Information Architect
• Information Developer
• Information Experience Manager
• Knowledge Architect
• Lead Information Developer
• Localization Program Manager
• Manager Technical Communications
• Manager, Technical Communication
• Manager, XML CMS and L10n Systems
• Principal Content Experience Developer
• Principal Information Developer
• Product Architect
• Project Manager and Documentation Engineer
• Senior Content Developer
• Senior Content Strategist
• Senior Documentation Tools Developer
• Senior Information Developer
• Senior Software Engineer
• Staff Information Architect
• Team Leader Technical Documentation
• Technical Communications Specialist
• Technical Leader, Technical Communications
• Technical Publications Manager
• Tools Developer
• User Assistance Development Architect
• UX Designer
• XML/DITA Coordinator

What can be concluded?

Keith Schengili-Roberts

How can structured content answer your business needs?

Measuring the Impact of Structured Content 

• Proof of concept – can it work?
• Pilot – will it work?
• Production – does it work?

Don Bridges

Amandine Mondélice

Why Use Structured Content?

• Greatly reduced localization costs
• More consistent product information
• Improved SEO as prospective customers discover better targeted content
• Internal efficiencies as writers reuse content more effectively

Why Go with a Structured Content Standard?

• Interoperability between systems
• No vendor lock-in; off-the-shelf tools
• Ability to easily exchange content in a common format between vendors
• Access to a wide range of dynamic delivery software
• A wider community for support and use case advice

So Where Does DITA Fit in? 

Keith Schengili-Roberts

1. Reminder for SMEs 

2. Easy Re-assignment

3. Joining the Discussion

4. Generating Output from a Closed Collaborative Review 

Reviews Made Easy

Art Ringis

How will you use the form?

• Will the form include a Submit button (or something similar) that submits the form to a server?
• Will a user complete the form, save the PDF, and attach it to an e-mail for manual processing?

What PDF renderers can you use?

• Apache FOP: It is currently not possible to create PDF forms using Apache FOP.
• XEP: It appears that XEP does not include any native extensions for creating PDF forms, although it is possible to integrate XEP with VisualXSL. (http://www.renderx.com/files/VisualXSLUserDocumentation.pdf).
• Antenna House: Currently, Antenna House seems to have the best native support for PDF forms, so the examples in this article use Antenna House extensions.

Example of a PDF Form in XSL-FO

Creating the Form in DITA

Text Field

Combo Box

Radio Buttons

Check Box

Editing the <section> Template

Editing the <p> Template

Text Field

Combo Box

Check Box

Editing the <ul> Template

• as a combo box if the <ul> is a child of a <p> with @outputclass="form.combo"
• as a radio button if the <ul> is a child of a <p> with @outputclass="form.radio"
• as a regular <ul> otherwise

Editing the <li> Template

• as a combo field option if the <li> is a descendant of a <p> with @outputclass="form.combo"
• as a radio button if the <li> is a descendant of a <ul> with @outputclass="form.radio"
• as a regular <li> otherwise

The Final Product

A Note About @otherprops and @props

Conclusion

The History of Technical Writing

Why Are SMEs Increasingly Called Upon to Contribute Content?

What Challenges Are SMEs Encountered With When Writing Technical Documentation 

1. Content needs to be reusable

2. Content needs to be translation ready

3. Content has to fit the brand messaging

The Benefits of Working With a Living Style Guide

• Defining a tone and what emotion you want to evoke (trust, security, happiness)
• DOs and DON’Ts (grammar rules, spelling, sentence length)
• Define rules for content reusability

• Define words to use and words not to use
• Define a unique meaning for every technical name

This Is Why Congree Exists

Amandine Mondélice

Conference Themes for All of Us

A Nice Mix of Presentations from IXIASOFT and Our Partners

Leigh White

• Titles must be uppercase
• Short descriptions should not exceed 50 characters
• Lists should contain more than one item
• <codeblock> elements must have an @outputclass attribute value

Schematron

• assert
• report
• rule
• pattern
• schema

<sch:rule context="ul">

   <sch:assert test="count(li)>1">

   A list must have more than one item</sch:assert>

</sch:rule>

<sch:rule context="title">

   <sch:report test="b">

   Bold is not allowed in the title element</sch:report>

</sch:rule>

• Avoid a word in a certain element
• Limit the number of characters
• Avoid duplicate content

<sch:pattern is-a="limitElement">

   <sch:param name="element" value="p"/>

   <sch:param name="limit" value="maximum"/>

   <sch:param name="size" value="100"/>

   <sch:param name="unit" value="words"/>

   <sch:param name="message" value="p should contain a maximum of 100 words"/>

</sch:pattern>

Implementing Schematron Rules

<?xml-model href="rules.sch" type="application.xml"

       schematypesns="http://purl.oclc.org/dsdl/schematron"?>

Schematron Quick Fixes

Leigh White

• no matter where the content lives
• regardless of the format
• in an increasingly shorter amount of time

Let's Visit the Flipside. What Should You Do?

What's the Difference Between These Two Examples?

1. Planning
2. Taxonomy
3. Other metadata (Bear in mind that taxonomy and metadata are not separate things. Taxonomy is one kind of metadata but there are many other kinds as well.)

Planning

• First, sit down with your team and discuss the kind of experience you want your customers to have.
• Next, design the layout on wireframes (or good old-fashioned paper).
• (Don’t worry too much about the technology behind it yet)
• Work from the customer experience backwards
• When you’ve designed the experience, you can start figuring out how to create it.

• Searching for shoes: you start with style (sandals, heels, athletic), then narrow to a color, then narrow to a size
• Searching for dog food: you start with a brand, then narrow to a dietary formula, then narrow by ingredients
• Searching for software user assistance: you start with a product, then narrow to a release, then narrow by feature

Taxonomy

• is a hierarchical list of terms representing semantic subjects or categories (like a filing strategy)
• describes product domain and subtopics
• is organized from most general to most specific

• If you’ve planned the customer experience, you have a good idea of how many levels you need and what they are.
• Sketch these levels out “on paper” as well.
• Some organizations already have a corporate taxonomy. This may or may not work for you but check it out anyway. Marketing taxonomies and documentation taxonomies are different; however, it’s worth checking out both.

• PoolParty
• Synaptica
• Protege

Weighted Search Suggestions

• Authentication
  • What is the user allowed to see?
• Preferences
  • If the user indicates they only want to see content for version 6.5, then even relevant results for version 7.1 are hidden.
• Previous actions
  • What content has the user viewed previously? What are their patterns?

Other Metadata

• What belongs in content?
  • Keywords
  • Descriptive titles with uniform terminology
  • Short descriptions
  • Alt text
• What does not?
  • Anything you can capture with taxonomy. For example, if you can apply a taxonomy term to indicate the product(s) a topic applies to, you should not use the product attribute or keywords to record this information.

Recommendations and Related Links

• Have taxonomy drive your list of related links. Relate content based on parent/child relationship in taxonomy. This, of course, is dynamic. It requires no maintenance.
• Authentication-driven content is another method. In essence, this involves surfacing links that are related to this topic based on the role of the user logged in using corporate authentication methods (e.g. SSO).
• Preference-driven content is a third option. This involves content based on preferences users opt in to or select.
• The best of all worlds is to have dynamic recommendations. These change based on the current user’s actions, regardless of their log in status or preferences.

Taxonomy in Action

To Recap

Sydney Jones

Megan Gilhooly

Leigh White

The First Iteration of CCMS Link

2 New Technological Partnerships

The Airing of 9 Successful IXIAtalks Webinars

The Release of IXIASOFT CCMS 5.2, and Milestone Product: IXIASOFT CCMS 6.0

New IXIASOFT CCMS Add-on

Sincerely,

Team CCMS

Sydney Jones

• lesson plans and agendas
• programs
• summary
• lessons
• ...

• web delivery
• SCORM packages to ingest in learning management systems (LMSs)
• presentation delivery
• printed grids
• printed agendas
• electronic evaluation forms
• …and more!

What Is the Learning and Training DITA Specialization?

IXIASOFT CCMS Customer Case

• content ownership
• workflow synchronization,
• costs and staffing

Topic Types for Learning and Training

Map Types for Learning and Training

Learning and Training Metadata

• separation of content and styling,
• standardized structure,
• modularity and localization cost-effectiveness,
• effective content reuse
• easy collaboration and review workflows,
• automated publishing.

Nolwenn Kerzreho