multiple guides in one project?

[Greg]

Would love to know from the group what you think are the pros and cons of putting multiple guides inside one project versus separating them?

TIA.

Greg

[ChoccieMuffin]

It depends.

If there is a lot of common content between the guides it makes sense to have them in a single project, so you don't have to mess around with global project linking.

[awells12]

My team has all of our company's material in one project. There is not a lot of common content other than formatting, but I think it's easier to just have everything in one place so you're not jumping back and forth.

A good rule of thumb is: if you would ever need to make the same changes in multiple projects, it probably makes more sense to have one project.

[ChoccieMuffin]

...

A good rule of thumb is: if you would ever need to make the same changes in multiple projects, it probably makes more sense to have one project.

Not necessarily. That might actually be a good call to use global project linking, where you keep your general stuff that's used everywhere in a single project and then import that project into all your others.

[Nita Beck]

I agree with Choccie's "not necessarily."

Generally speaking, I tend to have a global project that holds "corporate-level" assets (e.g., style sheets, page layouts, master pages, some content such as legal material) and then one project for each product (and sometimes one project might support multiple closely related projects). Each product project might produce a whole host of outputs: PDF guides, Help system, knowledge base, release notes, brochures.

[Greg]

My team has all of our company's material in one project. There is not a lot of common content other than formatting, but I think it's easier to just have everything in one place so you're not jumping back and forth.

A good rule of thumb is: if you would ever need to make the same changes in multiple projects, it probably makes more sense to have one project.

Do you have any issues with too much info in one project? Does it ever slow down because there are too many files in one project?

[ChoccieMuffin]

Personally I'd avoid sticking everything into one mega project - it smacks too much of having too many eggs in one basket. If that one project gets corrupted, or you do something silly (if you're anything like me that can be a distinct possibility!) and then save, you could mess up documentation for every product, not just the one you're currently working on. Also can make it difficult to use things like search and replace to look for phrases to do with a particular product from within Flare.

[JenShumate]

I think it really depends on how much overlap there is between the different guides. If there isn't any overlap, and you have completely unique targets, I would use multiple Flare projects.

I have one large Flare project that supports 7 unique software applications. However, these applications are modular applications that all share a common UI. So Application A has modules 1, 2, and 3. Application B has modules 1, 3, 4, etc. I have several times considered breaking it out into multiple Flare projects. However, there's a ton of overlap - and a ton of not-overlapping - so there's no clear line for what would constitute my "core" modules and what's unique to a single application (hardly anything is unique to a single application). So that may be something else you need to consider - can you clearly define the core components shared between your targets, and can you clearly define where one target ends and another begins?

As far as cons for a single project:

• Longer build times - When I use the batch target to build all 7 outputs, my build time is about 45 minutes
• You're more screwed if something gets corrupted. But if you are using source control, that wouldn't really be too much of an issue, since you could just re-download the project, rollback the last change, whatever.
• There's a potential for a conditions nightmare. In my Flare project, there are 13,000 applied conditions. It's not that it is unmanageable - because it's not - but I have to be extremely careful how, where, and what conditions are applied.
• I've seen a few extraneous images creep into the output for a target where those images don't belong. This isn't really a problem, so much as an annoyance because I like to run a tight ship.