Author-it Xtend

Author-it Xtend makes it easy find and reuse content in the library, resulting in an improvement in quality and consistency throughout a company's documentation. By incorporating triggered suggestions and taking reuse granularity to paragraph level, Author-it Xtend dramatically increases the ability to reuse content.

The suggestive reuse popup enables intelligent reuse of content. Along with the suggested fragments, additional information is displayed to identify where the fragment is in the review cycle and the number of times it has been reused. If Author-it Localization Manager is used the fragment indicates the target libraries the topic has been sent to. A context preview is also provided so you can view the topics where the fragment has been used.

Barriers to Reusing Content

A key issue with reusing content within documentation is that it requires users to plan, and then actively seek out the content. This means that most users will never realize, or even approach, the potential level of reuse possible with their documentation.

Below are some of the barriers that have traditionally made reusing content difficult:

• Users don't know that content already exists in the library.
• Users either can't find the content, or don't know how to find it.
• Content takes too long to find, so users feel it is quicker to recreate content rather than search for it.
• Existing content is used in a particular context - this can be an issue when wanting to reuse a single paragraph or sentence from an existing topic.

Why use Author-it Xtend?

By taking the granularity of authoring memory to paragraph level, potential reuse of content is dramatically increased. The primary goal, and requirement of Author-it Xtend is to make reuse of content automatic and systematic, increasing the volume of reuse and further reducing down-stream costs.

Key benefits include:

• The level of authoring memory granularity has been taken to paragraph level, the result is that overall context does not hinder the ability to reuse a single paragraph from a topic.
• A suggestive reuse popup that displays existing fragments similar to text being typed, enabling the user to type keywords or a portion of the paragraph then select and insert the full fragment.
• A reduction in review time and costs by reusing previously reviewed content. Users make intelligent choices about content reuse by seeing how many times a fragment has been reused, and the release states that have been applied to the fragment.
• An improvement in quality and consistency of documentation throughout the department or company.

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