PRESENTED BY

Top Five Content Reuse Featuresin MadCap Flare

Paul Pehrson@docguy | www.docguy.training

Track 1: Newbie

About Me• (Ab)using Flare for 10

years• Full time technical writer

at Venafi• Part time Flare consultant

and trainer at DocGuy Training

Content Reuse? Single-Sourcing?• Single source content, used in multiple places in your

project– Images– Content chunks (snippets)– Variables

• Multi-channel publishing– Online vs. PDF– Different audiences

How does Flare help me single source?• Variables• Snippets• Conditions• Snippet Conditions• Nested TOCs• Target Conditions

Variables• Strings of unformatted text• Variable formats

– Plain text– Multi-select– Date/Time

Snippets• Chunks of formatted content• Small as a word• Large as an entire topic• Ways to use

– Single sourcing– Boilerplate content

Conditions• Customize content for

– Output Format– Deliverables

• Apply condition to:– Character, word, phrase, sentence (span conditions)– Paragraph, multi-paragraph, div (element conditions)– Topic, folder (Content Explorer)– TOC node– Glossary terms (Flare 12)

Snippet Conditions• Special type of snippet where condition applies at the

snippet level instead of the project level• Not audience- or deliverable-based• Topic destination-based• Apply condition at topic level (Flare 11 or 12)• Apply condition at snippet-level (Flare 12 only)• Special use of variables in snippets (Flare 12 only)

Nested TOCs• Insert TOCs in other TOCs to prevent duplication of

content• Especially useful for multiple writers in a project

Target Conditions and Variables• How to set condition and variable settings in the target

Best Practices• Tie conditions to a deliverable

– Admin guide vs. Standard Guide (only need 1 condition)– Admin guide vs. Installation Guide vs. Standard guide (maybe need 2 or

3 conditions)• Have strategy for creating and using conditions• Minimize number of condition tag sets, variable sets• Create separate variable and condition sets for snippet-level

conditions and variables• Create boiler-plate snippets for an easy starting point

Q&A

Thank You!

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www.docguy.training