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

234

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