Product Content EvolutionThe Structured Phase

Product Content Maturity Model Series

Agenda

IntroductionsProduct Content Maturity Model OverviewThe Autodesk StorySDL Trisoft

Our Presenters

Andrew J. Thomas

Director, Product Marketing

SDL

Marie Salet

Principal CMS Engineer

Autodesk

Product Content Maturity Model Overview

Current Pressures

• 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

The Engaged Vision

Product Content

PRODUCTCONTENT

MARKETING

SUPPORT

ENGINEERING

FIELD SERVICEPERSONNEL

TRAINING& LEARNINGPARTNERS

Product Content Maturity Model

Structured

ContentModel

Beginning to structure Content for Product Categorizations

ProcessStructured ContentEfficiency gains in content develop and localization

ToolsXML AuthoringComponent Content Management

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

Traditional Book MethodologyTopic Based / DITA Methodology

Benefits of DITA

Contracting Product Life Cycles

Research & Development

Market Life

PRDInternational

ReleaseEnglish Release Shelf Life

Trad

ition

al

Research & Development

Global Revenue & Market Capture Life

Mod

ular

writ

ing

LocalizationAuthor Review Publish

Author Review Publish Localize

Key:

© 2009 Autodesk

The Autodesk Story: The Road to DITA

Marie SaletPrincipal CMS Engineer

© 2009 Autodesk

The Road To DITA

About Autodesk Deciding to Move Unstructured to Structured Structured to DITA Lessons

© 2009 Autodesk

AutodeskAutodesk is a world leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software.

The broadest and deepest product portfolio in the design world10 million+ users in over 800,000 companies

3,500 development partners1.2 million students trained on our products every year

6,800 Employees in 95 Locations Founded 1982

Fiscal year 2011 revenue US$1.95 billion

© 2009 Autodesk

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

© 2009 Autodesk

Show and Tell

© 2009 Autodesk

Even for the web

© 2009 Autodesk

Once upon a time, a long long time ago…

© 2009 Autodesk

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

© 2009 Autodesk

Getting Our Feet Wet

© 2009 Autodesk

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

© 2009 Autodesk

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.

© 2009 Autodesk

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)

© 2009 Autodesk

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

© 2009 Autodesk

Success

© 2009 Autodesk

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

© 2009 Autodesk

Help and PDF Automation

XML repositor

y

XSLT XSL-FO

HTML PDF

© 2009 Autodesk

Never Satisfied

© 2009 Autodesk

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.

© 2009 Autodesk

Separate CMS and TMS

WorldServer is a TMS not a true CMS Versioning Link Management Assembly

© 2009 Autodesk

Custom DTD or DITA

Supporting a custom DTD Authoring tools Rendering CMS

DITA Industry Standard Out of the Box Tools

© 2009 Autodesk

Déjà vu

© 2009 Autodesk

Trisoft

Component Content Management System Versioning Workflows

© 2009 Autodesk

XMetal

Integrated with Trisoft DITA

© 2009 Autodesk

Customizations

Importer Set Metadata Publishing Environment World Server/Trisoft integration Autodesk Branding

© 2009 Autodesk

Support and Training

SharePoint blogs Yammer Train the trainers

© 2009 Autodesk

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!

© 2009 Autodesk

The Eco System

© 2009 Autodesk

Machine Translation

(LS-trained or LS-supported)

Translation CMSSDL

Worldserver+ TMs

Translators’ Review & Post-

editing

Content CMSSDL Trisoft

*Any* Autodesk Content

LS T

rans

latio

n Ec

osys

temCommunity

Content

Web-Based Help (WBH)

or HTML Help

Autodesk User Assistance Content

The CMS Ecosystem

© 2009 Autodesk

Marie.Salet@autodesk.com

SDL Trisoft

Stru

ctur

ed C

onte

nt In

frast

ruct

ure

Structured Product Content Suite

Content Quality Checking

Intelligent Product Content Dynamic Delivery

Reviewers / SMEs / Casual Contributors

DITA

Component Content Management

Global Customer Engagement

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)

Increase Productivity

The Problem of DITA Management

DITA Plus Translation

Differences of CMS and Component Content Management

Non DITA Solution

Specialized DITA CCM

Business Impact

Versioning Yes Out of the box Tracks backups

Link management in DITA No Out of the box Reduces manual tasks 30% and increases reuse 30-50%

Variable management in DITA No Out of the box Increases reuse and reduces

manual tasks and scripting

Publication Management Scripted by technical resource Out of the box

Manages releases, allows fallback and quick updates.

Tracks history. Makes updates and mistakes 50% easier

Condition management Scripted by technical resource

Out of the box Increases reuse / reduces costs. Today managed in scripting

Translation reuse No Out of the boxReduces translation costs

Speeds time to global markets. Increases quality

Reuse management NoOut of the box Reduces costs of content and

translation

Publication Object

Publication Object=> output

Master Document (e.g. DITA Maps)=> assemblage/ structure

Components(e.g. Topics, illustrations...)=> content

Electronic output format

BaselineContextVariable definition

Layout template

t

Baselines

Thirdedition

Secondedition

Firstedition

V1

V2

EN

DE

EN

Target languages (eg FR)

Released

Released

ReviewedReleased

DETo be translated

updated block

non modified block

Pre-Translation of non modified blocksIn Context of the module!

Pre-Translation

Trisoft Physical Architecture

Major SDL Trisoft Differentiators

Release Management / Publication Object and Baseline Increased productivity and ease of use (no link to version!!!) Business Benefit: More manageability for releases and reuse

Universal Topics / Conditions Increased component reuse Business Benefit: Higher Levels of Reuse

Multilingual Content Management / Translation Integration Increased savings (higher ROI) Reduced Translation Costs and Overhead

End to End Structured Content Solution Already integrated components for authoring, contribution, print, smart

intelligent docs Long Term ROI on Extending the Solution

CMS Watch Report: Strengths of Trisoft

What Analysts Are Saying …

“Extraordinarily good DITA support, including specializations and managing concurrent versions of documents”

“Provides support for highly-granular, complex customer content variations through enhanced condition support”

“Very good multilingual content support”

“Authors can work with content offline”

“Offers some translation matching, potentially saving money in localization scenarios”

Some of Our Customers

Questions?

Thank You for Joining Us

Coming Attractions:DITA Webinar

Dec 15: DITA Emerging Trends and Best Practices: Practical Solutions for 2012 and Beyond

Guest speaker JoAnn Hackos of Comtech ServicesRegistration at www.sdl.com/en/xml/events

SDL Innovate 2012March 2012Santa Clara, CAwww.sdl.com/innovate