Introduction
A CCMS (Component Content Management System) is essential for organizations with complex technical documentation requirements. CCMSs improve operational efficiency for organizations by streamlining the process for creation, management, and distribution of technical documentation. CCMSs manage content in granular components using XML. A CCMS that supports DITA XML, the gold standard for structured authoring, enables mass content reuse, collaborative authoring, and efficient review/approval workflows. Content can be branched for product variants, merged to incorporate feature documentation into trunk, localized with ease and efficiency, and published to multiple media including support and documentation portals. By accelerating content development, improving quality, and facilitating rapid, just in time delivery, a CCMS provides an essential competitive advantage for organizations with complex technical documentation.
What is the difference between a CCMS and a CMS?
A CCMS is a cousin to a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is software that allows users to create and manage website content with minimal technical knowledge. A CMS typically manages HTML content, PDFs, graphics, videos and other web content, as well as CSS files for styling, widgets to add various functionality, and so on.
A CCMS is software that enables users to author complex content in granular chunks – components – allowing content to be combined, reused, filtered, versioned, branched, localized, and published to multiple media with ease. A CCMS typically manages content in XML, allowing for greater precision and power in applying semantic tags and metadata, which in turn enables more advanced and sophisticated content management, querying, transformation and publication operations. CCMSs have been designed to support many XML schemas including the standards DocBook, S1000D, and DITA, as well as proprietary schemas.
What is a component?
A CCMS manages content in components. But what are they? Components are granular units of content that form the building blocks of a document.
In conventional desktop authoring and publishing, large documents such as owner manuals or policies and procedures documentation comprise a preface, a table of contents, perhaps parts, chapters, sections, subsections and so on. Each section may include content such as paragraphs, lists, figures, and tables. The document’s format is captured using styles. The formatting allows the reader to understand the document’s intended structure. Such documents are often authored as a single file in a desktop authoring application such as Microsoft Word, or perhaps as one file per chapter.
Authoring in XML is not based on styles but on the structure of the document. With structured authoring, content is wrapped in tags. XML schemas allow us to define the tags and enforce rules for what tags are allowed where. The tags are containers which can include more tags and content nodes. Authoring in structure allows us to create modular, self contained units of content. These units are components.
For example, if your schema and document make use of chapters, your chapter will begin with a <chapter> tag and will end with a </chapter> tag. Content node elements within your chapter are wrapped in tags for paragraphs (often defined as <p> tags), tables, list items, and so on. With tags, the structure can be read and understood by software such as XML authoring tools, CCMSs, and publishing engines. The chapter and all of its children are machine readable components which can be used in any document you choose. (Note that HTML is a simple XML schema.)
In the DITA XML standard, which is optimized for authoring in components, the basic component is a topic. Topics can describe Concepts (conceptual background information), References (often tabular information used to provide specifications), Tasks (step-by-step instructions for accomplishing something, such as installing or configuring software), or Troubleshooting (also step-by-step instructions, for resolving a problem). Each topic is authored as a separate file. To create a document, a top-level file called a map assembles all the topics in the document. Well-written topics function as stand-alone units of information which can be included in multiple maps for different publications as required.
How a CCMS helps manage components
While it is possible to author structured content without a CCMS, the benefits of structured authoring can only be fully realized with one. A CCMS is expressly built to leverage components and structured authoring to solve business problems for organizations, large and small.
A DITA CCMS manages components at the topic level, providing version control and tracking the links between components. Change management is far easier than at the document level. In addition, the CCMS tracks and indexes configurable, highly granular metadata, then enables powerful search and filtering of content in order to find the right component.
With these capabilities, reuse on a grand scale becomes possible. Topics can be reused between maps and filtered using metadata to produce many document variants. Content can be componentized for reuse at more granular levels than the topic as well. CCMSs can be configured with libraries of trademarks, product names, corporate brands, glossary terms, warnings and cautions, boilerplate for error definitions etc. These can be stored in warehouse topics and reused globally throughout the organization. This ensures consistency in branding and terminology while making global changes quick and painless.
A good CCMS allows you to branch and merge content. Each component on a branch has a lineage which ties it to the source so that when merged, changes are detected and can be resolved, similar to Git. Similarly, you can send content packages out to a Localization Service Provider for localization and bring localized content back in. The next time content is localized, only the changed components are sent.
Collaboration on a massive scale to rapidly produce excellent technical documentation is key. Workflows can be configured for content creators, editors, and SMEs. Structured authoring means that authors can focus solely on the content, not its formatting. The XML schema provides the structure of their documentation, and authors have at their fingertips the templates, reuse libraries, and metadata-based search to assemble components and write the pieces they need. In addition, modern CCMSs enable SMEs to review, comment, and contribute content in a shared web browser interface.
Who should use a CCMS?
A CCMS and DITA XML authoring form an ideal solution for any organization that produces technical documentation. This includes:
- Companies with a need for collaborative authoring and review. If you have a technical documentation team and subject matter expert contributors or reviewers, you should have a CCMS.
- Companies in highly regulated industries. Due to its power in reporting, metadata, versioning and multichannel publishing capabilities, a CCMS is key for highly regulated companies and industries such as medical devices manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, or airlines.
- Any organization that needs to localize their technical documentation. With a CCMS and DITA XML authoring, the efficiencies and cost savings from using structure to localize content, only translating changed content, and automating multilingual publishing are huge. This alone frequently provides enough Return on Investment to justify the introduction of a CCMS.
- Companies that need to produce document variants. By leveraging capabilities such as metadata filtering, single sourcing of topics, the ability to insert variables for things like product names, content branching, and mass publishing, a DITA CCMS provides mass efficiencies to accelerate content release cycles while eliminating costly errors and improving technical documentation quality.
- For companies that need to publish to an online technical documentation customer portal, a CCMS and DITA XML are critical. The ability to automate outputs, single source content, manage approval workflows, and rapidly push just in time updates to the delivery portal in multiple languages creates indispensable business advantages.
What problems does CCMS software solve?
Problems with development of technical documentation can introduce crippling inefficiencies and errors into an organization. A CCMS solves a myriad of problems for organizations, providing efficiencies that improve quality and accuracy, save time, and accelerate your time to market.
Due to the many single sourcing features built into a DITA CCMS and the DITA standard, you can single source content for many publications at once. For example, a telecommunications Original Equipment Manufacturer may have 30 variants of their Operating System that support different subsets of their command library, requiring 30 variants of the Command Reference Guide. With a DITA CCMS and the correct metadata configuration, it is possible to generate all variants from a single set of source files and deliver the right information to customers every time.
If, like many larger organizations, you are delivering your documentation in multiple languages, CCMSs allow content components to be sent out to localization service providers. The localization workflow can be automated to integrate with the LSP. Because the CCMS tracks components and relationships between content in the source and localized languages, only components that are changed since the last localization cycle need be sent to localization again, with huge efficiencies. Localization can be accomplished faster, more cheaply, and better. Moreover, automated publishing means that the documents can be easily generated in PDF or HTML with corporate branding and styles in every language, every time.
If you are building two products with closely related but different features, you can branch your content and write documentation for version B on a branch. Then when version A incorporates features from version B, you can merge the relevant topics, paragraphs, etc (or all changes) back into version A. Or, once a product is released, content can be branched such that only maintenance changes will be made and the new release will be written on the main branch – trunk.
A CCMS is essential to organizations with large authoring teams. Authoring teams and SMEs can work collaboratively on the documents. Component authoring means that specific authors can own components and work concurrently to write different pieces of the document, or can review content together. You can ensure that all documentation follows corporate standards for structure and organization, as all templates must follow the schema. In addition, automated publishing ensures that output, whether PDF or web-based, always conforms to corporate branding standards and style guidelines.
Introduction to the Bluestream CCMS
Bluestream’s XDocs DITA CCMS is a fully featured, modern CCMS that implements the DITA standard, enabling technical documentation teams to manage all aspects of their content lifecycle. XDocs supports any DITA schema including the draft DITA 2.0 standard and can be configured with any version of the DITA Open Toolkit for publishing. In addition to DITA XDocs DITA CCMS is configurable to support any kind of XML schema.
The XDocs DITA CCMS excels in metadata management and document release management. XDocs supports a range of standards such as BPMN 2.0 for workflows, SKOS for terminology and thesaurus management, and various plug-in technology for third party software integrations.
With a power user interface integrated with the best-in-breed desktop Oxygen XML Author as well as an intuitive, web-based editing interface for reviewers and content contributors, XDocs offers a superb blend of power and ease of use.
XDocs is the only CCMS on the market that supports parts references for the manufacturing sector. XDocs ingest Bills of Materials (BOMs) and makes part information referenceable in the documentation. Furthermore the ability to ingest parts allows for both manual and automated production of Illustrated Parts Catalogs (IPCs) in PDF and online formats.
XDocs DITA CCMS also offers a tightly integrated Documentation Delivery Portal that can support any type of document or content. This provides a better overall user experience when interacting with documentation and reduces the burden on an organization’s Product Support team.
Summary
A CCMS (Component Content Management System) is vital for organizations requiring intricate technical documentation management. Unlike a CMS (Content Management System), which handles web content, a CCMS focuses on granular content components managed in XML, with DITA XML being the prevalent standard. Components are the fundamental units of content, allowing for modular, reusable structured authoring. A CCMS facilitates content creation, reuse, versioning, branching, localization, and multichannel publishing. It enhances collaboration, streamlines workflows, and ensures consistency in branding and terminology. A CCMS is ideal for companies producing technical documentation, especially companies in regulated industries or those requiring localization and document variants.
Bluestream’s XDocs DITA CCMS stands out with its robust metadata and document release management, support for various standards, and unique features such as parts referencing for the manufacturing sector and a Documentation Delivery Portal for enhanced user experience and support.
