Link your Way to Successful Content Management with MadCap Flare

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LINK YOUR WAY TO SUCCESSFUL CONTENT MANAGEMENTMaking the most out of the Global Project Link Feature in Madcap Flare

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• Introductions• Overview• What is Global Project Linking• Demonstration• Questions?

AGENDA

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• Information Architect with Blackbaud, Inc.• 15 years experience• Varied responsibilities- Creating and maintaining 1000s of pages of user-end documentation- Technical-project lead investigating new tools, best practices, and workflows

for a 22-member documentation team- Led team’s move three years ago to MadCap Flare

• Past presentations:- Adobe FrameMaker to Madcap Flare at the 2011 WritersUA Conference- Agile-based development process at the 2010 WritersUA Conference- Structured authoring, trends in Technical Communication, and indexing at

various local and international STC conferences

• Part-time instructor at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH- Teach the Technical Writing course included in the school’s Professional

Writing program

ABOUT ME

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• Global Project Link functionality available in MadCap Flare- How it can be used to maximize content reuse- While also helping you to manage large libraries of content- How to link projects- How to manage what content is included in each linked workflow- Sticking points/issues

WHAT WE WILL COVER

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- We’ve been at over three years now- This is why we selected Flare as our tool- We’ve had great successes- We’ve had headaches (version 8)- We’ve seen it all…..

WHY DO YOU CARE WHAT I THINK?

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L E T ’S GE T S TART E D

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• Import content and project files contained in another Flare project (parent project)

• Allows you to maintain information in one location but reuse it in other projects (child projects)

• Process allows you to select which files you want to include and exclude

• Bottom line:- Build output pulling in content from several different locations- Granular control

WHAT IS GLOBAL LINKING?

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• When you create a global link in a child project, you can:- Automatically re-import before generating output- Remove “stale” files (deleted, renamed, moved)- Specify what type of files you want to include- Specify what type of files you want to exclude- Select specific files to include- Add additional filters based on condition tags

WHAT IS GLOBAL LINKING?

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• For example:- Include all topic (htm) and image files- Exclude all template files: CSS, condition tags, masterpage

• Best to include template files in a separate “Template” import - Include all content tagged with “Online” condition tag- Exclude all content tagged with “Print” condition tag

WHAT IS GLOBAL LINKING?

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L E T ’S GO TO T HE DE MO

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• It is complicated• If you hurry, you will make mistakes• Not for everyone• Imports can hang/break• Error message that stop the process and tell you NOTHING

DRAWBACKS

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• MadCap’s Global Project Linking Guide• Feel free to contact me with any questions/observations/tips:

[email protected]

RESOURCES