As organizations grow, so does the need to guide their employees, customers and partners with ever more documentation. This may involve writers from different departments and with different skill sets - so how can companies ensure that all this content is factually correct and keeps all users on the same page?
DITA authoring tools solve this problem, while also ensuring that your omnichannel content enhances each reader’s experience. Read on to discover how this is possible.
How DITA Makes Technical Content Scalable
DITA, which stands for Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is a means of dividing content into building blocks that can be pieced together to create documentation in any number of ways. These blocks are predefined content structures like topics, concepts, references or tasks, that can be distributed throughout all kinds of technical documentation, such as product manuals and training materials.
This modular, flexible framework means that pre-written content blocks can be rapidly and logically assembled for content that is easy to classify and understand. The possibilities are endless, meaning there’s virtually no limit to the volume of content you can create and store with this system
DITA's Role in Content Management
It’s important to note that DITA authoring is not the same as DITA writing. Authoring implies the correct use of DITA functionality for content management, while DITA writing is about using the tools to craft an effective and meaningful end product. That end product is clear, concise content that resonates with the intended audience.
For content management, DITA provides a structured framework that ensures consistent practices. This is based on several features that facilitate the creation, administration and delivery of content. Let’s look at the most important of these:
Centralized Content repository
DITA content is typically stored in a Component Content Management System (CCMS), which organizes content into relevant categories and modules. A CCMS ensures that all content is governed by the same library of metadata tags, maintaining consistency as the volume of content and the number of authors grow. This centralization allows multiple users to efficiently search for and access the content they need, regardless of location or device.
Users from various departments can easily collaborate within the CCMS, which is also designed to integrate with other business applications, such as automated marketing tools or customer support systems. As a standalone solution, the CCMS provides an additional layer of security, granting the organization full control over who can access, edit, or publish content.
Version control
With multiple writers accessing the same document, users may assume there is a risk of edits being overwritten by their peers. DITA content management gets around this by tracking each user’s inputs and notifying writers of any conflicting changes. Version control functionality merges dual edits, but submits the changes to a review and approval process. This ensures that all stakeholders have a chance to provide feedback before the final version is published.
Structured Workflows
By tracking changes and automating the content approval process, version control forms the backbone of a structured workflow model within DITA. However, the system can integrate with other workflow tools, such as task management systems or content approval platforms, for even greater control of collaboration, scheduling and content quality.
Content analysis
DITA's structured format allows for in-depth content analysis by organizing information into distinct elements and attributes, making it easy to isolate and analyze key aspects like topic types, content reuse rates, metadata usage, and content performance.
DITA's XML-based format is inherently machine-readable, meaning the components of your content are suitable for Natural Language Processing. NLP speeds up analysis of semantics, syntax and interpretation, ensuring that your content delivers its message correctly.
This granular analysis can also form the basis of reports detailing insights that guide further decisions on content quality or areas for improvement. In this way, you can gauge the effectiveness of your content strategy and any measures taken to optimize the documentation.
How DITA authoring benefits technical writers
Based on the above definitions you might think each feature is a good selling point in itself. However, we can dig deeper and find subtle characteristics of DITA that make life easier for technical writers.
1. Content reuse: With modular topics stored and referenced in a central repository, each piece only needs to be written once. It’s a simple matter to retrieve and reuse a piece of content across multiple documents whenever it’s relevant. This frees up technical writers to concentrate on studying what types of content their organization lacks.
2. Consistency: Knowing that each piece of content can be easily reused, writers can spend more time polishing it in the first place. Once content has been confirmed as informative and error-free, it becomes a predefined structure that ensures consistency whenever it occurs in the company’s messaging. This strengthens the reputation and authority of the writer and the organization alike.
3. Multi-channel publishing: DITA content can be published to various formats, including print, web, and mobile. Not only that, but updates and corrections created in the CCMS will be applied simultaneously to any company materials and documentation featuring the affected topic, component or tag.
4. Content Filtering and Conditional Processing: While we stress the value of consistency, there can also be an element of flexibility in using DITA. The modular nature allows you to filter content or apply conditional processing based on specific criteria (e.g., audience, product version, or delivery context). This means you can create customized versions of your content without duplicating effort.
How Does All This Impact Scalability?
We’ve listed many features and characteristics that benefit the technical writing process, but without alluding directly to growth of the organization and its operations.
The aspect that stands out most is how DITA can save writers time while ensuring that new content is just as relevant and trustworthy as previously published material. And this naturally leads to speedier and more plentiful production.
Every organization aims to augment its product offering, either adding new features to existing products or adding to the range of items available, and increasing volumes of information are part and parcel of that growth trajectory.
The ability to instantly add or rearrange topics and information modules is key to creating, managing, and updating content at scale.
Ready to Scale Your Technical Content?
How is your content team managing with current demand for material? Do you envision increased volume of production in the near-term?
Heretto’s DITA-powered Component Content Management System (CCMS) helps you streamline writing, approval, publishing and reuse of technical content in a single solution. Contact us today for a demo.
