Documentation Center

Collaborative feedback

Technical authors and Subject Matter Experts (SME) can use the commenting or editing capabilities of SDL Knowledge Center and Content Manager to enhance the review cycle of technical documentation.

Overview

The Commenting framework provides a controlled, team-based channel for SMEs who want to submit feedback to technical authors—the author controls the final approval of the accuracy and completeness of the topic.

The Editing framework empowers SME reviewers who want to make changes to a resource directly—the SME controls the final approval of the accuracy and completeness of the topic or map.

Commenting

A controlled review channel built around comments enables team discussions about reviews and changes to technical documentation. It can enable a more efficient cycle throughout the entire review process by reducing the number of review formats to one—XML DITA. Creating a sanctioned review channel eliminates un-managed review channels (email, printed paper, images) in which feedback may be lost, misunderstood, or incorrect.

Inline comments are linked from the comment itself to the original text. That is, the original text in replies is captured along with the comment. You can add comments to a published topic viewed in Content Delivery or stored in the Content Manager repository, while proceeding to Collaborative Review.

Editing

Content Editor, in combination with Content Delivery and Content Manager, empowers engineering teams to contribute to the technical documentation review cycle by editing topics or maps directly.

DITA publications (in the DITA XML standard) are published from Content Manager. Within an open publication, topics and maps are viewed in Content Delivery for Collaborative Review and can be edited in Content Editor. The latter insulates the SME from the underlying tag structure (elements and attributes) of a DITA topic so he or she can focus on content and not markup. The SME can always tweak markup in code view, if needed. The edited topic or map is checked back into Content Manager and republished back to Content Delivery so the SME is always viewing the latest information. This process is dynamic and seamless.