Power Up Your Field Agents: Mixing Word and DITA XML Topics to Customize Your Deliverable for the Customer

I’ve seen it first hand in several companies I have worked for: Field agents or other colleagues that work closely with individual customers come to me in the documentation department and ask me to make sure that their standard product documentation is always up to date. And then, they want to add a little bit of special information for each customer. “Oh, and by the way. In the field agent office, we have this standard guide that is only for us internal specialists. Can you make sure that is always up to date as well? Then I only have to go to the configuration database and fill in the form with the customer specific configuration information – by hand.” My reply to these guys has always been pretty simple, and the reaction has always been the same: I say, “Sure, we can do that, and that customer specific configuration information… you don’t need to fill it in by hand. The system can do that for you. All you need to do is write your part in DITA XML.” They reply, “That sounds great! But that DITA XML part… I don’t know. I know it’s really powerful, but I spent most of my day with customers, I don’t have the time to learn to write XML documentation.” A few times we get to the point of agreeing that they should learn to write DITA XML… when we’ve had some breathing room. But we never get around to actually making it happen. Customers always come first for these guys – and they should! Making the Field Agent NOT change So, what...