realistic consulting

[jsmessick]

Hi Forum Users

My company is putting together a flare page to manage the policy and procedure documents that we have to make them available to users throughout the organization. We contacted a consultant through madcap and I really just wanted to check on here and see if the estimates being reported to me were realistic.

The time estimates we received were as follows:
Creation of the HTML 5 skin 20-30 hours
Creation of the style sheet 8-12 hours
Table style creation 2-3 hours

Import and clean up of word documents - these documents are approximatley 3-4 pages each, some have a table or two. I wanted to ask how necessary this actually is, according to my contact, it would be necessary to upload the word documents and make numerous changes to the code because there exists a lot of "junk" and it would make management in the future much easier. The estimate was 2-4 hours per 3-4 page document.

Training to maintain and update the site was estimated to be 30-40 hours. Is this also necessary for a basic understanding of the software and the ability to make updates in the future? We were thinking more around the lines of 3-4 hours so it was surprising.

I'm just trying to get an idea of how much of this is really a necessity and how much is more of a luxary but we could get by without it. Thanks for any input.

[Nita Beck]

First, full disclosure: I am a Flare consultant (sometimes through MadCap) but I have nothing to do with this particular bid.

Second, Word cleanup is ABSOLUTELY necessary. Doing pre-import cleanup ensures the best import possible. Also be aware that, despite the best preparation, there will also be post-import cleanup.

Third, training is ABSOLUTELY necessary in my opinion. The consultant's job is to walk out the door leaving his or her client FULLY PREPARED to maintain the project going forward. Bear in mind that the time needed for training is not just the time the consultant will spend with hands-on training of the client. In preparation for that hands-on training, the consultant will (or should, in my opinion) thoroughly document the project and the processes for maintaining it. As we all know, writing content takes time. And I would expect the training not to be about the basic usage of Flare; rather, I'd expect it to be training on how to maintain and extend your custom-designed Flare project(s).

[jsmessick]

First, full disclosure: I am a Flare consultant (sometimes through MadCap) but I have nothing to do with this particular bid.

Second, Word cleanup is ABSOLUTELY necessary. Doing pre-import cleanup ensures the best import possible. Also be aware that, despite the best preparation, there will also be post-import cleanup.

Third, training is ABSOLUTELY necessary in my opinion. The consultant's job is to walk out the door leaving his or her client FULLY PREPARED to maintain the project going forward. Bear in mind that the time needed for training is not just the time the consultant will spend with hands-on training of the client. In preparation for that hands-on training, the consultant will (or should, in my opinion) thoroughly document the project and the processes for maintaining it. As we all know, writing content takes time. And I would expect the training not to be about the basic usage of Flare; rather, I'd expect it to be training on how to maintain and extend your custom-designed Flare project(s).

Would you be able to explain why the word cleanup is so important? I have uploaded word documents before and had no problem viewing them through the output that flare produces. It just seems like a significant amount of time for such a small document, and something that MadCap should really address if its required whenever a word document is uploaded.

[Nita Beck]

We might not be talking about same thing. I'm talking about the source Word documents that will get imported into Flare and from which .htm topics will be generated.

In my experience, source Word documents are rarely ready to be imported without cleanup, sometime significant cleanup. I've seen source documents in which no headings whatsoever were used, much less any other styles. All formatting was local, i.e., inline formatting. Those types of Word documents need A LOT of work before they're ready for import.

I've also seen source Word documents that were wildly inconsistent, so that the styles used in one document were dissimilar to styles used in another document; those documents would need to be made consistent to support a clean, repeatable import process to Flare.

Even after import, there is usually some cleanup to be done in Flare. For instance, there may need to be cleanup of how lists were rendered.

The objective would be to get squeaky clean code in Flare, with consistently applied styles (and perhaps with mediums), as that will best support outputting to various targets.

There will also need to be work, post import, on any images that were generated. For example, I'll typically need to rename the generated images, as Flare will have simply numbered them. And say there was an image that appeared in many places in the same Word document; Flare will generate an image for each instance, and I'll want to whittle that down to just one image, so I'll have to relink the topics to point to just that one instance.

These are just off the top of my head... things that I regularly have to do when migrating Word content to Flare. Obviously, I have no idea of the state of your source Word documents, so I cannot speak to the estimated time you've been quoted to clean up each document.

[doc_guy]

I am also a Flare consultant, sometimes through MadCap, and I am *not* involved in this project either.

I agree with Nita. Word cleanup is not just about inline styles and headings being used consistently, but that is certainly part of it. The bigger issue, and this isn't a code issue, this is a writing issue, is how the Word documents are organized. This even affects sections inside a single Word document. Is the writing style consistent across all files? Does the same type of information occur after each similar type of heading? Is the quantity of information after like-headings similar? Are there inconsistencies in how image captions are created and used? What is the content model being followed, and is it followed consistently across the project.

If you just want the content imported to Flare, yeah, that's a task that doesn't take too long. If you want the resulting imported files in Flare to look and, more importantly, feel the same across all topics in the project, that can take some time, depending on the quality of the writing in the original Word files.

The hours to modify the skin and style sheets really depend on the quantity of changes you want from the ones Flare produces. Do you want dramatic changes? That will take more time. Do you like the default settings that come with Flare (you can see them pretty much in the Flare online knowledgebase)? Obviously that will take less time. Do you want your consultant to go through each file in your project to make sure styles are applied consistently and appropriately and that additional styles aren't needed? That takes time depending on the size of your project.

I'd ask your consultant for a clearer breakdown on what you're getting for those hours and how the consultant arrived at those numbers. When I do a Statement of Work, I typically outline the specific deliverables and how long they are going to take. In terms of training, a lot of that depends on how much you already know about the tool and how much you want your consultant to train you. For 40 hours, I'd expect basic Flare training, as well as custom training on how to maintain the customizations for your project.

As the client, you also should feel free to get additional bids on your project to ensure you are getting a good value. Part of what you should expect to see is that a more experienced consultant will charge more per hour, but should be able to do the project more quickly than a less-experienced consultant. It's also fair to ask your consultant to see examples of their previous work, with an estimate on how much time it took them, so you can make a more informed decision.

[SteveS]

I've got to echo the comments about cleaning up Word before anything else...

At the moment we have a project going where Word documents are uploaded into an XML conversion tool. We are having huge issues with formatting within Word that can't be seen when viewing the Word doc, but causes the conversion to choke. I believe its formatting thats been applied but the words that have been formatted have been deleted but the tags remain. This leads to an opening and closing tag with nothing inbetween.

The fix is to use the remove formatting command in Word over the whole offending text, and then reapply the formats (we need to keep and use the Word documents as well). When we do this the conversion tool no longer chokes.

What has the to do with your problem? Probably not much, but it does highlight the issues that can occur when importing. I remember when I used Dreamweaver (many moons ago) it had a 'cleanup Word HTML' command.

[wclass]

Import and clean up of word documents - ....
The estimate was 2-4 hours per 3-4 page document.

While I also echo the need for a clean up, this estimate seems a bit much - you could re-type the 3-4 pages in less than half an hour, leaving nothing to clean up!
Surely they'll write a set of macros that can then clean up a document in seconds - spending hours on documents over and over is a waste of time.

[SteveS]

Import and clean up of word documents - ....
The estimate was 2-4 hours per 3-4 page document.

While I also echo the need for a clean up, this estimate seems a bit much - you could re-type the 3-4 pages in less than half an hour, leaving nothing to clean up!
Surely they'll write a set of macros that can then clean up a document in seconds - spending hours on documents over and over is a waste of time.

You can even [ctrl]+ [a] in Word, then use the clear formatting button before sending it to Flare. Take about a minute...
Then apply styles from Flare. Shouldn't take long (depending on the length of the document and the complexity of the formatting).

[Nita Beck]

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that all one is concerned about when prepping a Word doc for import is formatting. That is only one of the issues to be addressed.

With all *sincere* respect to my esteemed forums compatriots, retyping content or copying and pasting from source documents is not an efficient process if the objective is to quickly create an entire Flare project for which topics will be created automatically and TOCs automatically populated, among other things. Yes, one can get clean code by doing it all "by hand," but one would have had to first invent the topics into which to copy that code.

When I am assisting a client to migrate from a Word-based production system to a Flare-based production system, I prep the Word documents not only regarding formatting, but also, as Paul has suggested, in terms of how I want the material to be split up into topics. I even do some work that will cause Flare to name the topics *exactly* as I want them, with prefixes and no spaces, such as "tsk_opening_files.htm," even if the first heading will read "Opening Files." I do all of that on the Word side.

I also want to be able to capture things such as Word index markers, which Flare will turn into keywords. If there are hyperlinks in the Word content, Flare will preserve those. If there are images, Flare will automatically create image files, which is especially significant if there are lots of images. I also want to look for opportunities to snippetize content and to use variables, and there are things that I can do in the Word files, prior to import, that can help me do that level of "Flare-izing" more efficiently post import.

I have not seen the source Word documents the OP has, so it would be unwise -- dare I say unprofessional -- for me to opine if 2-4 hours per document is too little, just right, or too much time. But I think that if we leave the OP with the impression that importing from Word is licketly-split simple and fast, it's not... not if what one is going after is a populated Flare project with correctly named topic files, with images, with page layouts, without inline formatting and Word style spawn. And that brings up another point, the page layouts. Who's to say if the OP's many Word documents all have uniform margin settings and the same orientation? Do we want to spawn multiple, varying page layouts in Flare, or are we going for one or two uniform page layouts? One of the tasks the consultant may have is to make the Word page layout in each document uniform to all the others, prior to import into Flare.

Just my two cents...

[SteveS]

...and I'm sorry if I gave the impression its a quick fix

I find one of the biggest hassles with working with Word documents is not what you can see, but what you can't. These 'artefacts' are what causes grief down the track.

Whenever I'm faced with making something from existing I always think using the old is a false economy. In many cases starting from scratch in the new authoring environment has many long term benefits. However, I'm often faced with trying to use something someone else has written and making the best of it. But, quite often its not my call. Too often we end up with the old stuff in a new environment and fail to seize an opportunity to reap the maximum benefit from a shift to something new.

At the end of the day it takes about 5 hours per page to do something properly, irrespective of whether its coming from somewhere else or created anew. There might be some savings if you are working with a lot of documents that are similar...