Content Management And Single Sourcing: Foundations And Current Practices

Content Management and Single Sourcing Foundations and Current Practices Patrick Haggerty Josh Richards Susan Schnelbach

Overview .

Overview . • Three departments within OIT o Application Support o Helpline (1Help) o Training, Professional Development, and Consultation Services

Overview . • Much larger project o Duplication o Communication and management o Document life cycle o Ownership o Varied purpose and tone

Overview . • Overall goals include: o Reduce duplication o Increase discovery and adaptability o Implement a publishing process that coordinates efforts o Establish a formal review process

Overview . • Background and practices: o Content Management o Single Sourcing o Current Practices

Content Management .

Content Management . • Primarily a practice: o Asset Management o Presentation Management o Publishing

Content Management . • Asset Management: o Asset = piece of content o Data, Information, Knowledge, Content o Metadata o Context o Structure

Content Management . • Presentation Management: o Format o Templates o Default o Flexible = modular o Flexible = multimedia

Content Management . • Publication: o Reconstruct information o Only outward facing action

Content Management . • Practice must be supported and enacted: o Repository o People o Digital content management system

Content Management . • A single context that directs and critiques o Groundwork for infrastructure choices and workflows o Built of foundational principles and project goals o Single Sourcing a foundational principle

Single Sourcing .

Single Sourcing . • A method of writing content so that it can be reused in multiple documents or media without being modified or rewritten Groundwork for infrastructure choices and workflows • Generally used to created written documents, Web content, and/or online help files • Allows Web content to be dynamically served

Single Sourcing . • Single sourcing is usually implemented along with a form of structured authoring o Structured authoring is an organized, disciplined, template-driven approach to writing o Structured authoring is somewhat inflexible

Single Sourcing . • Documents are broken down into topics • The topics are divided into information types (concepts, tasks, references) • The level to which content is broken down is its granularity; the more granular the content, the more it can be reused without modification

Single Sourcing . • Concepts are general information topics that allow multiple explanatory paragraphs • Concepts are the most commonly used topic type • An example of a concept would be the section that explains what a specific feature is and what it does

Single Sourcing . • Tasks are specific step-by-step lists explaining how to accomplish a task • Only brief explanatory test is allowed in a task and a task must include steps • An example of a task is a step-bystep guiding explaining how to save a file or configure a device

Single Sourcing . • References are written in the form of a glossary • Only a word or phrase and its definition is used

Single Sourcing . • Single sourcing may also be done without structured authoring • Topics still need to be created carefully, remembering that they will be used in multiple documents for multiple audiences • Single sourcing can be done at the document level using any word processor to create content, or it can be done using a content database

Single Sourcing . • Files must be rigidly created and organized • How the content is created is less important than how it is stored and retrieved

Current Practices .

Current Practices . • • • • • •

Overview of Case Studies Hire an Expert Plan Ahead Research Your Tools Formatting Your Content Training Your Writers/Authors