Many of us have faced this issue at some point: the customer wishes to provide their own help content (for whatever reason) and we just upload the content so that it is accessible from within our applications. In the situation I'm facing, I have no problem whatsoever with the customer providing content. But what I want is a smooth, repeatable process since documents change over time.
In all likelihood, the content will be provided in Microsoft Word 2007, in Japanese. The content will be maintained by the customer: my only role is to get the content online and accessible from within our application. I'm trying to think of the best way of handling this:
1. Do I provide a template of permissible styles or do I provide my stylesheet from the Flare project? The latter contains many more styles than they would ever need to use.
2. Should they provide their content in Word? Would html be better?
3. Their original source document should probably be linked in my Flare project so that whenever the original document is updated, the most up-to-date content is generated in help.
4. Anything else?
I appreciate any comments, suggestions, best practices or feedback you can provide, or even hearing your own stories. Thanks.
I use Flare 8 and Lingo 5 on Windows XP.
Customer Providing Content - Best Practices
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sashaeskie
- Propeller Head
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 4:46 pm
Re: Customer Providing Content - Best Practices
I recommend that the customer both enjoy the ease of working in Word if they prefer, and assume the resulting responsibility for any errors. 
Your only duties would be to drop their updated files, as needed.
You should spend a little time with them, to determine a workable naming system that will be simple and intuitive. You know darn well there'll be more than one of these files, eventually, so it's best to set up a system based on date/time, feature, geography, whatever. Then set up a separate folder in your project, drop those beauties in there, and create links to them in a separate "index" topic pointing to that path; no muss, no fuss. They own their own stuff, and you're on the sidelines doing your own stuff.
Good luck,
Leon
Your only duties would be to drop their updated files, as needed.You should spend a little time with them, to determine a workable naming system that will be simple and intuitive. You know darn well there'll be more than one of these files, eventually, so it's best to set up a system based on date/time, feature, geography, whatever. Then set up a separate folder in your project, drop those beauties in there, and create links to them in a separate "index" topic pointing to that path; no muss, no fuss. They own their own stuff, and you're on the sidelines doing your own stuff.
Good luck,
Leon