When: 8 August, 2010, 9am-6pm
Where: i.145.Hotel, Infantry Road, Near Coffee Board

Author-it, STC India and Triumph Software Services invite you to attend a special 1-day workshop this month. This is a practical workshop, aimed at technical writers that will teach you the skills required to start using the Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform competently.

Registrations limited to 100 seats only.
For registration details, please visit our Events page on our website. http://author-it.com/vdutrh

Instructions: Please have your laptop with you, installed with an evaluation version of Author-it. Click the Free Trial button at www.author-it.com.

Greetings,

I’ve been playing around with our new release, Author-it Assist and I’m really impressed with what it can do. Author-it Assist is designed to be used in several situations, one is to provide performance support at the time of need. However you may find value in using this in your training environment as a support mechanism or for retrofitting more generic contextual help to your application. For system implementations there’s also a great value add in being able to link organizations knowledge repository into their suite of applications so that the contextual support shows ‘how we use this’ not just ‘how this works’.

Here’s a quick screen grab of the contextual assistance I’ve added to SAP – the great thing is that this is all drag and drop, so no developers need to be involved to add contextual ID links.

I’ve also created field support for specific buttons and forms. These are similar to a delayed popup on hover and give quick tips or cautions to the user.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here.

Posted by Richard Ashurst

Author-it Software Corporation – Business Development Manager

Greetings,

I’ve been playing around with our new release – Author-it Assist and thought I should create a quick update on what it does for organizational learning & knowledge management. This stuff is great for companies with knowledge workers focusing on a need to improve productivity but also for training (either ongoing or rolling out new systems) as it reduces down the amount of formal training required, increases time to competency and supports a new, very effective informal learning strategy. If you produce any customizations, implement any system or develop an integration, this is a value add that will pay for itself.

Here’s a brief overview I created using Microsoft Dynamics as the platform. If you’re scratching your head about Assist you might want to start here: http://www.author-it.com/index.php?page=assist

Now Dynamics has user assistance but this only explains ‘how it works’ not ‘how we use it’. For example, what are our procedures for logging a critical support call for platinum level customers? Some organizations aim to implement an initiative whereby a users support query is resolved in less than three clicks. How will we support this? Enter Author-it Assist. By using Author-it Assist to retrofit support material you can add predicament based support links to your systems (basically any web or windows application) and link them directly to a single Knowledge Centre simply by dragging and dropping (ie. SharePoint, Intranet, LMS or Web Help etc).

Here’s the link in the web based version of Author-it Assist.

These are the links to your customized content. This content could be anything that you can link to via a URL – training and performance support you would probably want to link to simulations and videos whilst reference material would be text based. This could / should be published from Author-it or any other tool, ie. material that already exists but is underutilized.

Here’s my support page. It loads in our Web Help with the ToC configured to be collapsed on load.

Secondly, Assist provides ‘field support’ this is noted by a little green underline on the search icon:

When I hover over it I can trigger the field support for this:

So if you’re struggling to support a system built by someone else, trying to link relevant material into your suite of applications or developing customizations or integrations and you want to add some value with exceptional support material – check out Author-it Assist!

Questions or comments? Post them here.

Richard Ashurst

Author-it Software Corporation – Business Development Manager

“You know the problem with enterprise software,” he said, “It never works out the way they (the vendor) promised!” “It’s because no one knows how to use the software properly.”

He was a principal at an East Coast Private Equity firm and we were at the SIIA “All About the Cloud” Conference in San Francisco a couple of months ago.  He was obviously very experienced and was trying to be benevolently provocative but truth be told, I couldn’t have agreed more. I have long held the view that some enterprise software implementations fail; not because of any fundamental issue with the software but rather, because enterprises fail to adopt the solution. Here, I define adoption as gaining the benefits that you thought you would get when you decided to purchase.

So why does this happen? Why do enterprises fail to adopt a solution that they paid for and spent months evaluating to ensure that it met their needs? There are many reasons but at the risk of oversimplification; if I could change one thing, it would be to convince you to invest more time in planning and training for software implementations. Yes I know that’s two .

So what can we do about this in terms of Author-it implementations?

I think we understand the challenge. You’re busy. Often too busy to give an implementation project the effort it needs. Also in many cases, our clients are more familiar working with desktop tools. Most have never implemented an enterprise standard solution before.

Recognizing this, our Global Services team have created a “Discovery & Analysis” (D&A) service that we offer at the very beginning of an implementation project. Yes this costs money and at times I think it raises the question, “why are we paying to find out how to implement this?” The answer lies in the fact that every company is different. Every company has their own workflow, legacy content, project resources, project deadlines, and objectives from the implementation. By performing a D&A we are able to effectively scope/plan the project with our clients, assist them to ensure that all of the necessary bases are covered, and objectives achieved.

Years training in martial arts has taught me a bunch of lessons, some of them more than a little painful . One key lesson is; repetition of skill execution creates expertise. I heard it said once that if you spend 10,000 hours doing anything you will become world class in that activity. Now this is far from the requirement to effectively use Author-it; you can be up and running after a few days of training however, I think the point is clear. Following implementation and initial training, it is very important that you build on your base skills and start to create real expertise in the use of Author-it. Now not everyone needs to be a guru but I think at least a sub-set of users do need an advanced skill level. The rest should have a good understanding of the product to realize its benefits. So, how do we best achieve this goal? I don’t think the answer is necessarily more classroom training per see. You need access to on-going training and a program to support this. Enter the Author-it Certified Practitioner and Consultant program.

The program will set a series of levels for both Practitioners (users) and Consultants (those with implementation/training expertise). The levels will be achieved by acquiring expertise through training and/or experience and then completing online examinations to achieve “certified” status. We’re still finalizing the details and structure of the program and we expect to have it live later in the year.

Our team is very positive about the potential of this program to lift the standard of Author-it skills across our client base. We expect better skills to flow onto higher levels of adoption of Author-it. Adoption means real benefits, ROI and even higher levels of product satisfaction. It’s also a great way to up-skill and gain additional employment qualifications.

Comments or questions? Love to hear them.

Cheers
Steve

Author-it and their team of authorized resellers will be holding a number of Author-it days throughout Europe in June.

Take this opportunity to speak with Author-it experts and see the latest products from Author-it. Product demonstrations will include;

• Enterprise Authoring Platform
• Dynamic Assistance Platform (Author-it Aspect and Author-it Assist)
• Sneak preview of new products due for release later in the year

Founder and CEO, Paul Trotter and Steve Davis, President will be guest speakers at the events.

For full agenda details visit our Events page

Comet Communications Single Source Forum
June 14, 2010 | 09:00 – 18:00

Author-it Day – Munich, Germany
June 15, 2010 | 09:30-13:00
FREE Event

Author-it Day – De Bilt, Netherlands
June 18, 2010 | 09:00 – 13:30
FREE Event

Author-it Day – Paris, France
June 21, 2010 | 8:30 – 11:30
FREE Event

Author-it Day – London, United Kingdom
June 24, 2010 | 12:30 – 17:00
FREE Event

Follow us for the latest:
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Join us for the following free live webinars;

Free Live Webinar | Getting Started with Author-it.
15 June 5pm IST.

Want to learn more about Author-it? See why over 3500 clients in 50 countries are using Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform.
Register at: http://author-it.com/b9xaqe

Free Live Webinar | Reuse strategies with Author-it
23 June, 12:30pm BST.

Author-it Enterprise Authoring Platform users have achieved up to 81% reuse of their content. Compare this to the industry average of only 41% reuse (Aberdeen Group research).
Register at: http://author-it.com/zf5x1d

Free Live Webinar | Importing and migration with Author-it
29 June, 12:30pm BST.

Author-it’s import functionality makes it easy to migrate a wide range of file types and transfer documents written outside Author-it into a content library. Migrate Print, HTML, Help, RTF, FrameMaker, RoboHelp, XML, and DITA.
Register at: http://author-it.com/sbecmd

Amanda Caley, Director of Content Chameleon reviews Author-it 5.2 and provides a 12-step guide to assist experienced Author-it users in performing a first-pass evaluation of the new structured authoring feature.

Here is a copy of the article that has been published in the Communicator Summer 2009 issue.

Posted by Michael Lai, Marketing Executive, Author-it Software Corporation

One of the most striking issues facing our clients is how to extend Author-it’s collaboration further across their organisation.

The ubiquity of Word, PDF and email means these tools are a familiar, and therefore de facto, method to share and check content everywhere, but they offer poor methods for groups to collaborate.  I know Word and PDF both have review and collaboration features and I’ve seen some brave efforts to actually make these functions work.

After all, the thinking goes, if Word and Adobe Reader are on every desktop it’s easy to distribute a file and allow 50 people to comment directly in the document.

But this doesn’t scale – it’s a simple as that.  No matter how sophisticated your SharePoint system, or the forceful personality of your project manager, amalgamating and approving the comments from more than a few people is an arduous and error-prone task for the people responsible for managing the review process.  There’s either the comments from 50 people in one document (not pretty), or 50 documents with comments from one person.

So how to solve the problem? How to continue using a document distribution method that everyone is comfortable with, but keep the granular control and consistency that Author-it provides.  All without making the review process more difficult or timeconsuming.

We decided the best way to achieve these goals was to start where people are familiar (Word and PDF) and use this document as an entry point to Author-it.  That is, automatically create links to the relevant Author-it content directly within the Word or PDF file.

When a reviewer wants make changes or suggestions to any part of the document they simply click the link next to that section.  This opens the relevant Topic in Author-it for the reviewer to begin making changes immediately.

Because the review is now taking place directly in the original content source, all of the standard Author-it content controls, workflow, reuse, and release functionality applies.

The Word or PDF file no longer become the platform for collaboration, a task neither perform well.  Instead the Word and PDF file remain what they should be, a distribution and publication format, now with added benefit of linking directly to the original (controlled) source with proper collaboration.

As per I’ve created a short video http://www.author-it.com/videos/collaboration/Collaboration%20Plus_demo.swf to outline workflow and a few business cases.  Please check and let me know what you think.  This functionality will be freely available to all Author-it users but requires some scripting skill to configure for your own domain and database details.

(Just a summary for people unfamiliar with Author-it – software licencing is concurrent.  This means the Windows software can be installed on any number of PCs (the web version, obviously, doesn’t need installing on any user’s computer).  The software is smart enough to know who you are and configure functionality appropriately.  That is, no separate ‘review’ or ‘lite’ copies are required – if you are a reviewer the ‘advanced Author-it functions’ are automatically switched once you have logged in.)

Posted by Matt Armstrong, Sales Director, Asia Pacific, Author-it Software Corporation

A really effective way of managing your review comments in Author-it is to create a number of standard review topics, using your usual ‘review’ style. These standard review topics should containing the questions that you are always asking of your reviewers and notes to yourself or other authors in your team. For example:

Please can you provide more information.
Is this correct?
Insert a screenshot here.

So that you can easily search for these topics the titles should have a prefix, for example RT: or if you work with a team of authors then you may want to prefix with your initials. For example:

AC: Please can you provide more information.
JH: Please can you provide more information.

When required these review topics can be inserted as an embedded topic.
Posted By Amanda Caley, Director, Content Chameleon, Author-it Certified Consultant

This post is a more ‘fleshed-out’ version of my response to a question posed by Gordon Maclean (http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/), but the question is common: “Now that I know I want to, how do I move from an unstructured environment to a structured environment?”.  The Author-it team attend many conferences both in speaking capacities and as vendors.  We get the chance to talk to people from a huge range of organizations, from the battle-scarred people on the cutting edge to those who have only just started thinking about how structured content will benefit them.
The benefits of well structured content can be quantified very easily, especially when this discipline is applied to the broader organisation.  In almost all cases one of the biggest hurdles is working out how long (and how much) to get from where you are to where you want to be. Once the enthusiasm of DITA or custom schema dies down and people realize how much effort will be involved in migrating or re-writing existing content in order to comply, at the same time as meeting their day to day work requirements, the task has become huge and the true cost almost unknown.  Every hour that a team don’t spend writing (meetings, problem solving, struggling with a new tool, can’t publish the content, etc), every hour a developer spends updating a schema/specialisation/XSLT, every day a project slips, all add to the true cost of the project.  When management add this up the cost of tools is often minor in comparison.
According to our clients this has been the biggest gap – managing and evolving non-compliant Topics when the technology requires compliance to deliver an output – eg. the XSLT or DITA Toolkit chokes because your content isn’t yet fully compliant.  We talk to a lot of organizations migrating from Frame/RoboHelp/Flare (and even Word) and regardless of technology the big hurdle is the need to continue meeting deadlines while migrating from unstructured content to structured content.  For some it’s easier to draw a line under the current content assets and start from scratch.  This is a decision that effectively writes off all of the accumulated value of existing content – knowing this value, and the associated cost of migration, and deciding it’s cheaper to start again.
Not everyone can make that decision and so clients look for migration strategies that allow segmenting of content, evolution, and tools that support them during evolution.
In the 5.2 release of Author-it we’ve added template-based structured authoring where, once content is imported (or written), you can apply a DITA or other structure over the Topic and see exactly where you do and do not structurally comply.  Once your Framemaker or RoboHelp document is imported you immediately see which Topics are compliant and which are not, but you can still publish your document.  You can continue to meet deadlines and always have complete visibility of which Topics in which projects need to be updated to meet your structure standards.
The Author-it Structures are templates that can be applied to groups of Topics.  If you change the template, all Objects inherit the new structure rules (or show you they now fail to comply).  Workflow controls mean Topics *must* comply at certain Release States (‘Draft’ can be non-compliant but ‘Released’ must be compliant), and Publishing Profiles remove all non-compliant topics during publishing if you plan to use the DITA Toolkit or similar XSLT processor.
You can check out my short video on structured authoring

Posted By: Matt Armstrong,Sales Director Asia Pacific, Author-it Software Corporation