author-it case study
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Author-it Case Study
A successful software company with a suite of products that needs accompanying user documentation
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Computing Directions Australia• Over 20 years in business
• Flagship product is Synergetic Management System for Schools
• Software covers all functions required by a private educational institution
• 100+ customers, thousands of users
• New software includes:– Synweb– Web portal
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Evolving suite of software productsSynergetic client-server
Synergetic web application (Synweb)
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Evolving suite of software products
Synergetic web portal
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Author-it
• We use Author-it to maintain the documentation
• Author-it is a NZ software product
• Authoring and content management
• Single-source publishing to multiple outputs
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How Author-it is used
• Develop and maintain content• Publish content to different formats:
– PDF– Online help– Context-sensitive help
• Use the features of Author-it to improve the usability of the documentation
• Re-use existing content to create documentation for new products
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Develop and maintain content
• Author-it Enterprise Edition
• SQL Server database for the library
• 16,300+ objects
• Smaller projects can use a JET database
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Author-it – a database of objects
Books65
Topics2700
File objects5062
Styles90
Total 16,371
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Books and topics – organised content!• A book collects
together relevant topics
• The structure is used to generate the table of contents
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Styles – enforced rigour!• Every
paragraph must have a style!
• Character styles are useful too!
• Standard styles are available
• New styles can be defined
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File objects – graphics with attitude!• Every aspect of
a file object can be controlled
• Templates are used to inherit generic properties
• File objects can be embedded or linked
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Templates – inheritance brings speed• Templates are
special objects• Can save a lot of
time• You can easily
apply a different template to change the behaviour of one or more objects
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How Author-it is used
• Develop and maintain content• Publish content to different formats:
– PDF– Online help– Context-sensitive help
• Use the features of Author-it to improve the usability of the documentation
• Re-use existing content to create documentation for new products
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Publish output to a range of outputs• Output to:
– MS Word– HTML Help– HTML Pages
• Other outputs
• Leverage the investment in existing content
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Synergetic – context-sensitive help
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Synweb – online help
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Microsoft Word output – converted to PDFs
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How Author-it is used
• Develop and maintain content• Publish content to different formats:
– PDF– Online help– Context-sensitive help
• Use the features of Author-it to improve the usability of the documentation
• Re-use existing content to create documentation for new products
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Books65
Topics2700
File objects5062
Styles90
Total 16,371
Author-it – more objects…
File objects5062
Styles90
Media objects24
Total 16,371
Hypertext links2751
Index entries5609
Indexes34
Overall books 2
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Hypertext link – online example
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Linking to a URL – online example
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• Expanding hotspots are useful for reducing clutter online
Drop down hotspot – online output
• Expanding topic has all the features of a regular topic
• User sees what they want to see
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Useful navigation features
• Table of contents– Automatically generated from the book
structure
• Full text search facility– Automatic in all online output
• Index– Created from index entries you enter
• Glossary - optional• Table of figures - optional
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Full text search and index
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Table of contents
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Media objects• Define the formatting of
published output• For example:
– paper size and margins for printed output
– Colours and layout in HTML pages output
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How Author-it is used
• Develop and maintain content• Publish content to different formats:
– PDF– Online help– Context-sensitive help
• Use the features of Author-it to improve the usability of the documentation
• Re-use existing content to create documentation for new products
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Books65
Topics2700
File objects5062
Styles90
Total 16,371
Author-it – more objects…
File objects5062
Styles90
Media objects24
Total 16,371
Embedded topics
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Topics2466
Hypertext links2751
Index entries5609
Indexes34
Overall books 2
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Embedded topics – Re-using content!• Synergetic and
Synweb topics use common, embedded topics (grey)
• The embedded topic can be easily edited
• A change in the embedded topic is reflected in the other topics
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Re-using content – online examples
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Summary
• Initially Author-it enabled us to:– comprehensively document the Synergetic client-
server system– publish to Word, PDF, HTML Help and context-
sensitive help– easily update screen captures as features changed.
• As CDA have grown Author-it has enabled us to:– re-use content to create documentation for new
products (web-based product, stand-alone product)– output to HTML pages (latest version on CDA website).
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Thank you
• Contact us to discuss your unique requirements without cost or obligation:– Phone (03) 8544 1400– Email info@knowledgedoc.com.au
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