Need help to determine content entry workflow

[ewelch]

I am new to Flare. This is the workflow that I believe will work for my group.

We will use MS Word as our content development tool using our own MS Word template. Then import the MS Word doc into Flare, which is linked to the MS Word doc for changes. We have developed a CSS and skin for our Flare projects. We then can output to help and print...from the same project.

Does this sound right? Anyone out there, please describe to me how you develop your content workflow.

[RamonS]

I'd create the content in Flare entirely and then when needed export to Word. Flare is by far superior for content creation than Word and also has other advantages such as less crashes, the ability to work with documents larger than 150 pages, etc. I know that Word is the comfy corner and Flare is the big unknown, but evaluate if you can make the jump to using Flare exclusively. I think your team will be far better off.

[KevinDAmery]

While the "author in Word and bring it to Flare for help output" workflow it supported, from the posts we've responded to here it doesn't seem to be the easiest route to go. I would agree with RamonS that things go a lot smoother if you import your content once into Flare, fix up any issues that may have arisen in the import, then maintain your documents from there forward exclusively in Flare.

The Flare editor can take some time / effort to adapt to and has <ahem> a few quirks, but once you learn it you can be quite productive. Plus it doesn't wake up one day and decide it has a better idea how to number all your lists and chapters than you do....

[simone]

I'm coming from the same perspective as ewelch in that my team has been planning to maintain use of Word for our source documentation and import into Flare using the Easy Sync feature.

I would much prefer to follow the advice posted and do all future editing in Flare. However, our TW team relies on Word's markup capabilities for doing SME reviews of our work. For those of you making exclusive use of Flare to manage content, how do you deal with external reviews without the need to purchase Flare licenses for each of your reviewers?

[KevinDAmery]

What I've been doing is giving the reviewers a Word copy and having them use track changes to make their comments etc. Then I go through the returned word file, find the changes, and update the Flare file manually.

While on the face of it this may appear more time consuming than just integrating the SME's changes automatically, in the long run I think it works out better. SME's are experts at subjects, not at documentation, so their writing skills and formatting choices can be... ah, let's just say I'd like to run an editorial eye over them before I put them in my doc source

[kristil]

I agree that maintaining content exclusively in Flare is a great goal, with all of the advantages mentioned above. But if your Word docs are complex (many section breaks, lots of styles, a variety of footers, etc.) be aware that it is huge undertaking to get Word output that looks the way you're used to. My department is almost 8 months into our Flare implementation, and so far we still do lots of post-Flare processing on our Word outputs. It takes some practice to get used to word processing in Flare, of course, plus it's just plain clunkier than Word in that area. From what I've seen, Flare v.4 is supposed to help a lot with that. But that was the least of our impediments--formatting CSS for print, putting our manuals back together again after we'd broken them into a couple hundred of topics, fumbling with master pages in order to create footers for 30-50 sections, to name a few. We found that switching to single-sourcing in Flare changed almost every task that we did.

It helped us to plan our switch in phases. For example, if you are going to need this iteration of your print documentation very soon, you could import the Word docs in order to produce help files, then go ahead and publish those same Word docs, rather than trying to add the extra step of producing Word docs from Flare. Then maybe for the second iteration, allow yourself time for getting your content organized in the Flare project so that you can get it back out again to Word.

Good luck!!

[forfear]

...I would much prefer to follow the advice posted and do all future editing in Flare. However, our TW team relies on Word's markup capabilities for doing SME reviews of our work. For those of you making exclusive use of Flare to manage content, how do you deal with external reviews without the need to purchase Flare licenses for each of your reviewers?

I guess this is where X-Edit Contribute and X-Edit Reviewer (currently in Pre-release) is for?
one of it is free.
Lets you track markups.
Lets you import topics easily into your Flare authoring solution

[doc_guy]

Check out this page for information on MadCap's X-Edit family of products.

In this case, you would create your content in Flare (presumably Flare 4, because this isn't integrated in Flare 3) or in Blaze. Then you'd send the topic (using tools incorporated in Flare/Blaze) to your SME's e-mail address. They would be prompted to download a free copy of MadCap X-Edit Review. They can provide feedback on the document, and send it back to you. You can accept/reject the changes and send it out again if you want, or just continue working with the document.

If your SMEs are going to be providing content for your Flare/Blaze project, they can purchase a copy of X-Edit Contribute. This will allow them to create a topic and send it to you. You can then incorporate that topic into your Flare/Blaze project.

MadCap is also creating a light word processor tool for stand alone documents. This will apparently utilize the XML editor we all know (and love ), but will allow you to create content that doesn't require a Blaze or Flare project in order to work properly.

You can dowload a pre-release version of the X-Edit family from the X-Edit homepage.