Acrolinx - anyone?

[sdcinvan]

I am surprised (or should I be?) that no one is talking about the Acrolinx product. Now that there is 'finally' plugin integration, I thought this product would interest some Flare users.

Although skeptical (is it another Whitesmoke product?), I am also intrigued but... again skeptical because they don't list a price for the product. The product also seems quite a bit like an over-sized product, designed for large companies.

Has anyone used this tool?

[whunter]

I used it when I worked at a large company (2 billion). My impression is that it is priced and designed for those kinds of installations, but I don't know -- perhaps they have a smaller tool for smaller organizations.

[wclass]

Madcap had a webinar on this last night. I was signed up but because of the time differences to Australia have not watched it yet. I was waiting for that webinar to see just how it fits in with the rest of Flare.

See: http://www.madcapsoftware.com/resources ... aspx#flare

[DocuWil]

Madcap had a webinar on this last night. I was signed up but because of the time differences to Australia have not watched it yet. I was waiting for that webinar to see just how it fits in with the rest of Flare.

And that is the same for me.

[Msquared]

It did interest me a lot, and I watched the webinar. It was interesting, but when asked, the presenter did state (a bit evasively, I thought) that it is Enterprise software, with an enterprise price. He actually said that it isn't going to be a solution for a one or two-person authoring team as it's not a cheap Flare plug-in.

I thought that might be the case when I had a look at the Acrolinx website the other day. There is no pricing information at all, and you are heavily steered towards the "contact us for a demo" option.

So I guess that rules it out for both you and me, Shawn.

[DocuWil]

There is no pricing information at all, and you are heavily steered towards the "contact us for a demo" option.

Correct Marjorie,
And I did ask for the demo and I got a phone call from Acrolinx.
I explained that it looked interesting to have grammar and style testing and that I am a guy working alone in a small company.
I also told her that I got the impression that it was for free for Flare users. Haha, of course not, you need to buy the whole package and then the plug-in is free.
Anyway, she told me to find out and then call me back.
So, I am still waiting.

[sdcinvan]

Madcap had a webinar on this last night. I was signed up but because of the time differences to Australia have not watched it yet. I was waiting for that webinar to see just how it fits in with the rest of Flare.

See: http://www.madcapsoftware.com/resources ... aspx#flare

Thank you. I grabbed the recording and will watch it this evening.

[sdcinvan]

Thanks everyone.

So, my suspicions are confirmed, this is not a viable solution for a small organization. I am quite disappointed because MadCap made a huge deal of this partnership with Acrolinx... strange, because I suspect that only a very small percentage of us will be able to take advantage of the product.

It begs the question, what is an affective solution that offers features similar to Acrolinx?

To partially answer my question, I have tested a Google Docs plugin called ProWritingAid (see: http://prowritingaid.com/?afid=1384).

prowritingaid.jpg

It offers a whole lot of interesting features and is somewhat helpful in finding problems. The basic features are free to use but the advanced features require a relatively low monthly fee.

Some issues:
- It is SLOW to start!
Solution, keep your documents smaller than 10 pages
- The tool must analyze the entire document (cannot read a specified block of text)
- I don't think you can create a library of words, terms, etc. for the tool to ignore
(somewhat related: It strangely treats things like headers as grammatically incorrect because there is no punctuation)
- Of course, no integration with Flare. To use, you will have to publish your content and then copy/paste text into Google Docs.

Can anyone recommend any other similar tools?

[joy]

So, my suspicions are confirmed, this is not a viable solution for a small organization. I am quite disappointed because MadCap made a huge deal of this partnership with Acrolinx... strange, because I suspect that only a very small percentage of us will be able to take advantage of the product.

Thanks for posting your findings.

I agree with what others have said. I was very interested at first, until I attended the webinar. The presenter did seem very evasive when asked about the price. They might do much better if they were up-front about it, and you could sign up for a demo on their site instead of having to contact someone.

Really, the term "enterprise pricing" (whatever that might be) knocks out most of us who work with smaller teams. Acrolinx also seemed to be under the assumption that everyone in the company would want to use it. The only people who might want to use it in my company are those of us who are ultimately responsible for documentation.