by Søren Weimann | Mar 1, 2021 | Blog
Writing in full documents is preferred by most authors who are not used to component-based content. And with the Sync Components feature in Dx4, this is now possible to do this in a component-based solution – without all the manual work of replicating the changes in components. You can simply use the updated full document to automate the updating of components.But what do you do when parts of the document are reused across multiple documents? Do you want to risk the updating of content messing with already approved content in other documents? Of course not!That is why the Sync Components feature comes with flexible synchronization that allows you to protect any topic in approved state from unwanted changes. Let’s go over how to approve reused components and ensure that they are not updated when syncing components from a Compound Document. We will start with three document models that have a few components that are reused across all documents, and some that are specific to each document. I’m doing set of small country specific manuals for an international bank. Let’s focus on the documents for Australia, Ireland and the USA. Components in a red frames are reused across all three documents. They are centrally authored and approved before the country specific versions will be authored. The two remaining components in each manual are country specific. Let’s start out making sure that single sourced components are correct. We will have them reviewed and approved. In DxNavigator I can approve an individual component by right-click it and selecting Approve Node. Once approved, the component icon will appear with a green checkmark in...
by Søren Weimann | Mar 2, 2020 | Blog
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...
