Technical Writers

Structured Content Management for Technical Writers and DITA Experts

Organizations in regulated industries benefit substantially from developing and managing their content in structured environments – but they are not alone.

Information constructed and utilized in a structured way is not limited to one purpose, technology or output. It’s content that is structurally rich and semantically aware, making it discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable.

Dx4 from DitaExchange is a structured content authoring and management solution that enables organizations to create information in topics or pieces that can be authored and approved individually, then pulled into documents, studies and other materials easily through content maps. By creating information in this manner, topics are written and approved only once, but automatically updated everywhere and every time a new document is published.

Structured content authoring and management solutions allow organizations to author pieces of material called topics that can be individually authored and approved so that they can be used over and over again throughout the organization. Through structured solutions, content creators can free their content so that it is discoverable and reusable without the lengthy review and approval process that typically accompanies content development.

Traditional CMS solutions, while effective for handling complete manuscripts of information, are too rigid to truly manage the information that many organizations generate. Locked inside of documents, the information may be discoverable, but it cannot be re-used efficiently without cutting and pasting which is error-prone. Further, changes made to one area of a document will not flow through to other materials that utilize the same information leading to inconsistencies in messaging.