© Ugur Akinci

Here are a few really cool Author-it features that caught my eye during a recent webinar demonstration by the company founder and CEO Paul Trotter.

Searching for Content

Author-it is a powerful structured-authoring editor that allows you to use the same chunk of content many times over.

So searching for reusable content is a very crucial functionality that needs to be performed well to be useful and practical. Boy, does Author-it do it well!

Check out the screenshot below and you’ll see what I mean:

The search options that Author-it offers are truly world-class.

Moreover, Author-it also highlights those files in the database that contains your search term.

Suggesting Content Relevance

Author-it also suggests the relevance of the search results by using fuzzy-logic probabilities. Content that looks similar to the selected text/paragraph are highlighted with colors corresponding to that level of probability (see below):

Highlighting similar content with Xtend

Author-it suggests reuse ideas by finding similar expressions in different files, listed even by their availability in different languages (see below).

Reuse content with Author-it Xtend

This is one mother-of-all XML editors that will certainly provide a competitive edge to those documentation departments that produce volumes of deliverables from modular and reusable components. No question about that.

As a professional technical writer I really like Author-it’s sophisticated features and I wish I could afford a permanent license to use it for my daily documentation work.

Reprinted by permission

© Ugur Akinci

I’m not a regular Author-it user but, having sat through a webinar presented by the company Founder and CEO Paul Trotter, I have to say that I’m impressed by Author-it’s new SaaS (Software As A Service) cloud platform.

Author-it is an integrated single-sourcing and structured-authoring editor. It’s integrated in the sense that you do not need to buy additional software to, for example, generate a help file from your source files, or create a PDF document or post your content to a web site. With FrameMaker or MS Word, for example, you need another application like WebWorks or RoboHelp to generate help files from your FM source files. In that sense, neither is as integrated as Author-it.

Author-it Cloud is an online service you subscribe to and pay a license subscription fee per person per month. There is nothing to buy and install.

According to a majority of the webinar participants (64%), the one outstanding benefit of the cloud platform is its anytime-anywhere availability. I totally concur with that. No more the rush back to the office to finish that critical assignment just before a deadline. You can hookup to the Author-it Cloud from anywhere you like and finish your work from wherever you may be. Author-it guarantees 99.9% up-time availability but “externalities” and “environmental factors” like a slow Internet connection etc. are not included in that guarantee.

Trotter’s presentation was pretty fast. The screens flew by at every click without any hang time. If that’s an indication of an average user’s experience, the cloud will rule — if, that is, you can afford it. At this writing the “professional” category of subscription costs $200 a month per user (starting January 9, 2012) and the “enterprise” level subscription costs $300 per user per month (Spring 2012).

The main AI portal presents a switchboard of available modules

On the left navigation bar, there are links to configuration options like Users, User Groups, etc.

Basically, you need to have a User Name and a Password to enter the portal through an Internet connection. In addition, as a user you need to be on the list of ACTIVE USERS. If you are labeled as an INACTIVE user by the admin, you cannot access the system.

There are two main types of Author-it subscribers: 1) Users (Writers), and 2) Reviewers. A reviewer becomes activated automatically by taking part in a review and again becomes inactive automatically by completing the review.

BENEFITS

Before going any further, let’s mention the BENEFITS of a SaaS Cloud platform:

• Lower upfront setup and hardware costs and lower TOC (Total Ownership Cost) in the long-run.
• Faster ramp-up time and implementation.
• Anytime-anywhere access. If you’ve got an Internet connection, you’ve got Author-it.
• Strong disaster recovery. If everything crashes in the middle of writing that million-dollar document set, you can use regular onsite (daily) and offsite (weekly) backups.
• Greater vendor accountability. When things go wrong, you know whom to call and blame. “You’ve got one throat to choke,” as Trotter put it succinctly.
• Easier hardware and software update and support since all updates are made automatically by Author-it. Nothing to download, or buy and install.

FEATURES

Paul Trotter listed the main FEATURES of the Author-it SaaS Cloud platform as follows:

• Performance is the main concern over the Internet. SaaS performance is said to be even better than the performance of onsite-maintained platforms due to superior system architecture, dynamic load sharing, HW optimization, etc. which are all taken care of behind scenes by Author-it. A well-maintained back-end assures a high front-end performance.
• Monitoring. Author-it says their systems are monitored 24-7 and alarms issued promptly at any mishap. The clients can monitor the status of their systems 24-7 through their portal.
• Scalability. You can start small and expand as you go along. Scalability is assured as a matter of fact.
• Disaster Recovery. As we mentioned earlier, all files are backed up both onsite (daily) and offsite (weekly).
• Availability. Author-it guarantees 99.9% availability in writing, by contract. “Or else, we pay you,” is how Trotter put it. External factors beyond Author-it’s control like the unavailability of Internet etc. are of course not included in that guarantee. Enough redundancy is built into the network through multiple network connections to prevent downtime. The “hot swap” feature provides real-time swapping from one server to another to assure project continuity without any interruptions.
• Data Security is provided by third-party vendors through a SAS 70 Data Center. Both the network access and backups are all encrypted. Author-it does not use “shared databases.” All clients have their own databases thus no one has any access to any other DBs.

The Million Dollar Question

Of course, the “burning question” when it comes to ANY cloud application is this:

“How secure is the cloud compared to its on-site equivalent?”

The question is a real one since in a cloud situation you are turning over all your database to the vendor. Your database, with all its proprietary and confidential content, will be sitting on the vendor’s servers. So you have every right to be concerned about the level of security that the vendor provides.

48% of the webinar participants said they thought the security risks between the two alternatives was just about the same. Only 29% thought cloud was less secure. So apparently this is not as big an issue as some observers think it is.

I personally cannot say that my questions about cloud security have been answered yet to my satisfaction. But I recognize this: just because something is on-site and sitting on a server next room does NOT mean that it’s secure. You can lose your data even if you keep it on a machine right next to you.

And secondly: this is exactly like how most of us probably felt when the microwave ovens were first introduced. Any new technology brings with itself an initial resistance, a sense of uncertainty which is usually expressed as a “security question.” But I guess with every passing day, as we get used to the pros and cons of the cloud and as more companies prove their worth with the way they conduct their business, we’ll warm up better to the idea, especially when we start reaping its benefits.

So at this point I’m looking at the “security question” as something that will become moot in the long run.

To view a recording of the webinar discussed in this Blog, click here.

Reprinted by permission

This has been a very busy week for the technical content world.

Author-it 5.5 is released

As you know by now, we released the latest version of Author-it 5.5 to great excitement in the industry. Once again, we’ve redefined the possible in the content authoring and managing world. For more details about what this release includes, click here and then sign up for the free webinar that shows you how the Author-it Reviewer works.

June 1st at 2pm Pacific. As always, if the time or date don’t work for you, sign up anyway to get a link to the recording the next day.

This hour long webinar is a don’t-miss event. We strongly recommend inviting your boss as well. S/he’s going to want to see this. Author-it Reviewer is changing collaborative work forever.

Author-it Learning Center

If you’ve been interested in learning Author-it, we have an option you’re going to love: free, on-demand training.

The Author-it Learning Center includes videos to help you understand the basics of Author-it. You learn what objects are, how to import and author content, and how to customize your outputs.

It’s all online, ready for you to view when you’re ready to learn. Each session is under 15 minutes, making is easy to find the time to learn something new.

Even if you know Author-it, it’s a great way to refresh your skills or review something you may have forgotten. What a great way to get the information you need and move on with your day.

The STC Summit Conference

And finally, this week was the STC Summit Conference. We want to thank the many many people who came by the Author-it booth to find out how our products can make life easier.

150 people wore Author-it tee shirts for the special Apple iPad give away. We talked until we had no voice, gave out chocolate Kiwi Fish, and awarded the iPad to Andrea Wenger.

A great time was had by all, as you can see in the picture below.

We’re really excited to announce the release of Author-it 5.5! Our guys (gender-neutral term here) have put in a lot of work to make Author-it even better for you and your content development workflow.

The top 2 things I’m excited about: Author-it Reviewer, and variants with a definable “fall back” path.

In this release we tackled and solved two of the most challenging problems in technical communication – conducting content reviews, and managing versioning and branching.

Author-it Reviewer

Author-it Reviewer is an exciting new web-based product that revolutionizes your content review and approval processes. Author-it Reviewer reduces the time for a traditional review process by up to 70% and transform it into a live, collaborative and interactive environment.

Using the latest web and social media technology, multiple editors and reviewers can work simultaneously in real-time, significantly improving productivity, accuracy, and auditing.

Additionally, graphs help you see at-a-glance the state of the reviews in your projects and what needs to be followed up with.

Other new features include

• Web Help enhancements for mid-topic jumps
• Support for publishing to Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0
• Multi-select importing of translation jobs in Author-it Localization Manager
• History improvements in Author-it and Author-it Live, including adding save point comments
• Acrolinx IQ 2.0+ support
• Author-it plug-in architecture extended to support event-based plug-ins
• Author-it Live user interface available in Japanese, German, and French

To see the new improvements

You can see some of the new features if you’re at the STC conference this week.Sstop by the booth and see what’s happening.

This is a short post, as I’m getting ready to visit with a client next week and need to wrap up projects before I do that. It’s been a rather frantic week.

But if you’re in Spokane, Washington and want to have evening drinks, send contact me and we’ll make a date.

Good news 1

Two new books are coming out about Author-it! I have specific information about the first book now and will share more about the second book in a week or two.

Learning Author-it by Char James-Tanny from XML Press is available this month. Char is a long time user of Author-it, Author-it consultant, and an all around smart person so this book should be very helpful as a reference to learning and using Author-it. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but we’re all very excited about this book.

Good news 2

This week, Paul Trotter gave a free webinar about his vision of the future of content development. We had nearly 300 people sign up, despite the day being Easter Monday holiday for much of the world. We knew the day might not be the best, but with Paul’s travel schedule, it was the only day we could get his attention for an hour.

If you missed this interesting webinar, click here to view the recording.

Lastly

I really hope to see you at the STC Summit in 2 weeks or so. We’ll have New Zealand chocolate fish to give out Monday and Tuesday, as well as interesting and informative activities in the booth.

Don’t forget the special Facebook giveaway – go to our Facebook page (Author-it) and “Like” the page to be entered into a special drawing. We have something very Kiwi to give away to the winner. You don’t have to be at the STC Summit to win.

Regardless of where you are in the world, we at Author-it would like to wish you a Happy Easter weekend.

For people in New Zealand and most of Europe, you have a 3 or 4 day holiday. It sounds like a great time to spend with your family, napping, or what ever makes you happy.

In the US, we don’t get any extra time off from work for Easter, but, as my Kiwi cohort mentioned yesterday, we do get Thanksgiving in November as a long holiday. For my cohort, the similarities are both long holidays are late Fall, early Winter for the local residents.

Something fun

As something fun, if you are attending the STC Summit in May, go to our Author-it Facebook page and Like us before May 17.  We’ll do a drawing in the booth at the Summit from the names who Like us and give something away.

Winner will be announced at the booth, on twitter, and Facebook. You don’t need to be present at the booth to win but if you are, you can take the prize with you right then.

Don’t forget the exciting webinar Monday the 25th

Don’t forget the exciting webinar next week: Content Development: Future Trends, Future Solutions Webinar, presented by Paul Trotter, Founder and CEO of Author-it Software Corporation. We have a lot of people signed up but we’ve got a little more room.

We will be recording this webinar. If you can’t attend because the date or time don’t work for you, sign up anyway. An email with a link to the recording will be sent to everyone the next day.

Whether it’s Spring or Fall where you are, enjoy the weekend and we’ll see you next week!

There’s a lot going on at Author-it in the near future. We have webinars and are attending conferences. These events provide you an opportunity to learn, ask questions, and meet people.

Product webinars

We have several webinars coming up, some product-specific and some tools-independant.

If you’d like to see what’s coming in Author-it 5.5, we have several webinars available for you over the next several weeks. We also have a webinar in May about importing your legacy content into Author-it.

To sign up for any of these webinars, click here. Remember, we record these webinars and make them available the day after so if the scheduled date or time don’t work for you, sign up anyway and you’ll automatically get a link to the recording the next day.

General webinars

We’re also hosting several tools-independant webinars. If you want to learn more about Component Content Management, we’re offering a webinar on that topic April 28th, 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern.

Paul Trotter is sharing his vision for content development April 25 at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern. This is also a good webinar if you’re boss doesn’t quite understand what content development is about and why it’s important in this century.

And May 11 at 1pm Pac, 4pm Eastern, we have the Content Trends Survey Results webinar where we look at the data from the survey and what it means to content development professionals.

To sign up for these webinars, click here. We also record these, so again, sign up even if the time and date don’t work for you to automatically get the recording the next day.

Conferences

Author-it is attending the STC Summit May15-18 in Sacramento CA. We’ll have a booth and several of our staff will be there (including me), ready to meet you and talk about how our products can help your organization. Additionally, Kirsty Taylor is presenting tips and tricks in Author-it Localization Manager at the Summit. This is a good way to see how a real user works in Localization Manager.

If you’re not at the STC Summit in Sacramento, then maybe you’ll be at the STC India Summit May 7-8 in Bangalore, India. This exciting event includes Saurabh Kudesia talking about Planning, Managing and Implementing Content Variations using Author-it.

We’ll see you soon!

For most companies, the content they create is critical to the running of the business. Consider for a moment:

• Policies and procedures – state how the business is to be run, who does what and how. In industries with oversight, such as finance or medical, the business also must show auditors how the company has been running since the last audit. Failure to show this content can result in heavy fines or other bad things.
• Internal product documents – describe how products should work, the thought processes, the solutions, and so on for developing the products sold. Without these documents, a business has no idea how it builds what it builds. It also don’t know why decisions were made to do X rather than Y.
• External product documents – explain how to use the products to the people who purchase the products. If the external documents are not helpful, the business (at best) incurs an unreasonable support cost or (at worst) has a high return rate. Both impact available capital in the business. If the business functions in a regulated industry, it must keep the history of the external documents to show potential auditors how the product was described to work or potentially face large fines.
• Customer support documents – help internal support teams and external customers find a solution to their problems. For expensive internal support teams, quickly finding and understanding how to help a customer gets the customer off the phone and able to move forward. External customers who find a solution on the support site and never call is the ideal, as it costs the company less than pennies per customer.
• Training materials – few staff arrive knowing how the company works, what safety information they need to know, or how the products work. Training is how a company shares it’s tribal knowledge with the new tribe members. Many companies save a great deal of money on their insurance by making sure all new employees are trained in the required safety protocols. If the business needs to train customers on how the products work, the training center is a profit center.
• Marketing collateral – positions the products to the appropriate sales market. Few companies have a product so needed that no advertising is needed to sell the product. Failure to attract customers to the products negatively impacts the business.

Content as a business asset

The groupings above just touch on the broad types of content a business needs to manage. Even a small mom-and-pop store has some of the types of content listed above. For large international companies, the sheer amount of content assets, just as with hardware assets, for example, can be overwhelming.

Best of Breed companies know their business content is an asset that needs to be managed, just like the other assets in the company. Most companies track the computers and cell phones they use, for example. Annually, all the equipment is inventoried to make sure they have what they think they have.

Many companies never think about the business content as a business asset. The content that’s critical to the business is in Word or Powerpoint files or who knows, saved everywhere: on people’s local computers, somewhere on the network, maybe on a Sharepoint site. No one has any idea how much content they have, much less where it all is or what the most recent version might be.

If you ever wondered what Author-it products do, this is what we do. Our products help you manage your business content as the business asset it is.

In other news

We have a new line-up of free webinars coming your way in April and May. We’re really pleased with the offerings and hope you are too.

High on the list of must attends are 2 in particular:

Content Development: Future Trends, Future Solutions
Paul Trotter, CEO of Author-it Software Corporation shares his vision of the future in this hour long event. You’ll leave knowing what trends are and what you need to prepare for now.
April 25 at 4pm Eastern time.  To sign up for this tools-neutral webinar, click here.

What’s New in Author-it 5.5
Additionally, we have several webinars scheduled to show you what’s coming in Author-it 5.5. To see the times and dates, click here.

I’ve spent 4 days combing the results, compiling the statistics, analyzing the data and I’m finally done! Now other eyes can check the analysis and the numbers.

Watch our twitter account (@authorit) or our Facebook page for announcements of a webinar where we’ll go over the results in detail. We’ll probably be presenting this webinar near the end of April.

New media stuff

If you follow us on Twitter or on Facebook, we’re trying something new. We’ve combed sources we think are related to our industry and are posting links to stories and other items we think you’ll find of value. The response so far has been good. People are clicking through to the items.

This is something new we’re trying so if you have thoughts about the items we’re posting or think our Twitter posts should be different than our Facebook posts, please comment here. We want to provide value for following us and the right information where you expect it. We can only know if we’re reaching our goal if you tell us what you expect.

Additionally, if you have a blog, or know of a blog, that posts industry-specific (not vendor-specific) content, we’d like to know about it. Feel free to let us know in the comments below.

WritersUA

See you at WritersUA this weekend! I’m so excited about the Author-it Morning.

After a webinar the other day, I would up chatting in email with a fellow about useful books. So I thought I’d post a list of books I think should be on your bookshelf.

Listed in no particular order:

• Illustrating Computer Documentation: The Art of Presenting Information Graphically on Paper and Online by William Horton

Altho this book was published in 1991, it’s still very relevent today. He covers how to present information visually, especially important for us non-visual learners.

• DITA 101, 2nd edition. by Ann Rockley

Even if you’re not moving to DITA, this book is valuable because it makes you think about how to structure your information to be useful to your readers.

• Information Development: Managing Your Documentation Projects, Portfolio, and People by Joann T. Hackos

I cannot recommend this book enough. She clearly discusses why content is a business asset and how to manage it.

• Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament

Do you have any to add to the list? What have I missed?