Overview
This project was pursued in my Digital Literacies graduate course. I was tasked to work with a team to create a single source solution for Zen4, an enterprise-class server created by a small company, named (for the purpose of the class) Tech Company. All content was to follow Jorsek’s Technical Content Development Guide, DITA:
- Concept: An overview or an explanation of a subject, process, or system.
- Task: A procedure to help users complete a task or a specific goal.
- Reference: A resource to help users answer questions.
Tech Company has provided a System Hardware and Configuration guide for this project.
Context
- Team: 4 graduate Tech Comm students
- Duration: 3 weeks
- Time of production: Fall 2023
- Software used: MadCap Flare, Excel
Task
This project focused on creating a single-source solution for a small portion of the two guides provided by Tech Company:
- Chapter 1 of both the software and hardware guide
- Appendix A of the software guide
- Appendix B of the hardware guide
The single source solution should allow Tech Company to:
- Update content once across all related products and publications
- Make content searchable online
- Produce print for those customers who want it
- Create consistency across the different content creators/approvers who own different parts of the related products
- Personalize print content for different customers and product versions when possible
Approach
Our team followed the Team Content Model, which consists of:
- Content Inventory
- Content Audit
- Information Grouping
- Taxonomy Development
- Metadata Creation
Content Inventory:
Using Microsoft Excel, our team took inventory and named all topic files.
Content Audit
Our team sorted the content inventory into the base DITA information types: Task, Reference, and Concept.
Information Grouping
Our team looked over the assigned material and decided as a team if we had to change the grouping of information presented in the guides.
Taxonomy Development
Using MadCap Flare, we looked through each topic file and identified key words that should be tagged.
Metadata Creating
Using MadCap Flare, we looked through each topic file and identified other terms that would be considered as metadata.
During this process, out team also created templates to standardize current and future content for Zen4.
Below is a screenshot of the Excel sheet used, along with the taxonomy and metadata:
Once project was completed, our team wrote a cover letter detailing and explaining our work and changes.
Outcome
All objectives were reached and a professional cover letter was written to detail our work.
