Content Re-Use and SmartDocs

by Fei Min Lorente, President

Front Runner Training from Toronto sponsored an Education Evening on December 1 at the University of Waterloo. They featured speakers Pamela Kostur from Parallax Communications in Toronto, and Bryan Lynn from ThirtySix Software in Indianapolis.

Pamela’s presentation focused on why it’s worth the effort and investment to write information once and use it many times in different places. She used examples from real-life products where their printed information didn’t match their website. Then she explained how to analyze your media to find areas that could benefit from content re-use. She provided pointers on how to save yourself both time and money, all while providing a higher degree of accuracy for your customers. One of these pointers addressed how to find the right software tool to help you manage your re-usable content, which is where Bryan picked up.

Bryan began by explaining what to look for when shopping for content re-use software. He was quite frank that his software, SmartDocs, isn’t for everyone. However, he pointed out that one of the main advantages of this software is that it works with MS Word® documents, and we all know how ubiquitous that is. Additionally, SmartDocs stores re-usable content using out-of the box features of MS SharePoint® , and also provides you with the ability to control and manage the shared information.

The main features that SmartDocs provides to help you re-use content are:

• conditional text: display or hide parts of a Word document by enabling or disabling an attribute
• reusable variables: use a placeholder in your document and change its value, thus changing what is displayed
• reusable snippets: save a piece of text or graphics in a commonly accessible location and have it appear in one or more documents

Bryan wound up by giving a live demonstration of his product, which is in its second release.

The evening finished off with Front Runner Training providing a few laptops and free instruction on the use of SmartDocs.

If you are sorry that you missed this Education Evening, you have the chance to catch it again! The Toronto chapter of the STC is hosting Parallax Communications, ThirtySix software, and Front Runner Training on February 26. For more information, see “Improve Content Through Reuse” on this page: http://www2.stctoronto.org/get-involved/next-event/management-day.