Making the Most of Authoring in Microsoft Word

By: Eric Wolf

Implementing powerful content management and re-use capabilities in a Microsoft Word environment

In today’s challenging economic times, we’re all being asked to do more with less.  Technical writing teams are under immense pressure to continue to raise productivity with flat or declining headcount.  In order to meet this increasing demand, technical writers can take advantage of content reuse to create new documentation more quickly, with improved quality, and keep this documentation consistent and up-to-date.

The ability to re-use content is typically associated with the adoption of a high-end authoring solution, such as Adobe FrameMaker, XMetaL, or Arbortext Editor.  Unfortunately, the same frugality which is driving staff consolidation and outsourcing often serves as a barrier to move to a high-end authoring solution.  The money and resources just aren’t available to do the detailed content analysis, tool selection, content migration, and training necessary to implement an advanced authoring solution.

In addition, even without money and resource constraints, many technical writing teams still cannot switch to a high-end authoring solution.  Many organizations mandate the use of Microsoft Word across all departments, and implementing another authoring solution just isn’t an option.

So where does this leave Microsoft Word users?  How can these authors take advantage of content reuse without making the move to a more advanced authoring solution?  The answer is SmartDocs, an add-on to Microsoft Word that integrates powerful content management and reuse capabilities into your existing Word authoring environment.  The features provided by SmartDocs include:

·         Reusable Variables:  Centralize the definition of commonly used text, such as product names, client names, client addresses, etc.  Once defined, these variables can easily be re-used within and across your organization's Word documents.  Reusable variables reduce your organization's dependence on search-and-replace to update content and make these updates quick and reliable.

·         Conditional Text:  Streamline your organization's documentation by authoring multiple variations of content in a single Word document.  Just like Adobe FrameMaker, conditional text in SmartDocs enables an author to easily show or hide portions of a document by associating relevant content with a specific target audience.  By updating the visibility of this conditional content, an organization can quickly and reliably generate multiple variations of output from a single Word document.

·         Reusable Snippets:  Re-use rich chunks of content – paragraphs, tables, charts, images, and more – within and across your organization's documentation.  Easily convert any Word content into a reusable snippet, then leverage these snippets to facilitate the creation of new Word documents.  Content is authored and approved once, and then re-used over-and-over again throughout your organization's documentation.

·         Document Snapshots:  Used in conjunction with reusable variables and conditional text, document snapshots allow you to easily save and restore the current configuration of your document.  A single Word document can easily be used to produce multiple outputs that each target a different audience.

·         Notifications and Automatic Updates:  Proactive notifications and automatic updates ensure your organization's Word documentation remains consistent and up-to-date.  As your authors re-use content, SmartDocs proactively notifies these authors when an updated version of this content becomes available.  SmartDocs assists the author in the assessment of how this change will impact their documentation, and if desired the author can choose to automatically accept the changes to this re-usable content into their documents.

SmartDocs integrates all of these features directly into your Microsoft Word application.  After installation, you will see additional menu, task pane, and ribbon features which look and act like a natural extension of your existing Word authoring environment.

In addition, SmartDocs leverages Microsoft SharePoint to centralize the storage of your organization’s re-usable content.  SharePoint provides a low-cost, version controlled repository with configurable metadata, security, search, and workflow capabilities.  For organizations that already utilize Microsoft servers, SharePoint is a free download and installation.  As an alternative, for organizations looking to minimize costs and outsource their SmartDocs infrastructure, you can take advantage of a hosted SmartDocs repository.  With this service, you pay a low monthly fee and ThirtySix Software will provide you with a secure externally hosted SmartDocs repository.  All SharePoint installation, configuration, management, and maintenance is handled by ThirtySix Software, and your content authors simply install SmartDocs and are ready to go.

With SmartDocs, you don’t need to switch to a high-end authoring solution in order to take advantage of content management and content reuse.  And unlike many of the advanced XML authoring solutions on the market today, SmartDocs delivers these capabilities at a fraction of the cost.  SmartDocs is low cost and has been designed to integrate with any existing document management tools and processes.  So no matter where you store your documents today – your local hard drive, a LAN file share, or a high-end platform like LiveLink or Documentum – you can rest assured that SmartDocs will be completely compatible.

Please visit our website at http://www.thirtysix.net or contact us if you’re interested in learning more about how SmartDocs can benefit your organization.  Customized demonstration sessions and free hands-on evaluation engagements are available.  We look forward to working with you, and remember:  don’t re-write content, re-use it!

Eric Wolf
ThirtySix Software
http://www.thirtysix.net
info@thirtysix.net
(317) 456-2364