MadCap Software Forums

The applications I am working with are similar to the following:

PP- mobile and web (similar but not exact interface), PR and CS all have "similar" user prompts that I will need to explain.

PP (mobile and web) are most similar but interface differs in some wording and order of fields on the display.

I'm trying to figure out the most efficient way to single source the common prompts. Currently there is only one writer, but there will be another added shortly.

My thought is to create a separate project which contains all common prompts as snippets and then import the template project into each interface's project. There will also be CSS and skin templates that will apply to all projects.

Is this the best way to go?

Given your description, my inclination would be have just one project.

I'd probably organize my Content Explorer into four main folders: ProductA, ProductB, ProductC (sorry, I'm being generic instead of using your product names), and Shared. (BTW, within each of those folders, I'd have folders for Images, Resources, and Topics.) I'd condition the ProductA folder with a ProductAOnly condition, etc. The Shared folder would not be conditioned.

I'd have separate TOCs and targets for each product. (And I'd make sure to use the "Exclude content not directly or indirectly linked to target" option.) It goes without saying that a product's target would include its "only" condition and exclude the other products' "only" conditions.

Re the shared snippets, I can envision that I'd need to condition content within a given snippet, as there might be a variant paragraph for ProductA, a variant paragraph for ProductB, etc. In a ProductA-only topic that uses that snippet, I'd set the topic's "snippet condition" to ProductAOnly so I wouldn't even see the other variants. In a ProductB-only topic that uses that same snippet, I'd set the topic's "snippet condition" to ProductBOnly, and so forth.

Sorry I'm being very brief... HTH anyway.

Hi Nita,

Thanks so much for the reply. Do you see any issues with multiple authors using a single project file? Or for multiple authors would it be better to structure the docs as separate projects?

Pam

Hmmm, I thought I had replied to this earlier today but I must not have submitted it.

In my opinion (which is based on experience), I think that any Flare project that is to be authored by a team absolutely should be put into source control. That way, the co-authors can work on the project without disturbing each other and, if needed, changes can be rolled back and conflicts in files edited simultaneously by different authors can be resolved / merged.

Nita Beck wrote:Hmmm, I thought I had replied to this earlier today but I must not have submitted it.

In my opinion (which is based on experience), I think that any Flare project that is to be authored by a team absolutely should be put into source control. That way, the co-authors can work on the project without disturbing each other and, if needed, changes can be rolled back and conflicts in files edited simultaneously by different authors can be resolved / merged.

As much as I dislike source control I have to agree with Nita on this one, if you have multiple authors you NEED source control.