Documentation Center

About objects

Your content is stored in what we call objects. These objects can be organized, updated, combined and reused in order to efficiently build any type of content deliverable.

The basic objects an author uses are:
  • Topics
  • Maps
  • Images

A map is a list of links to topics and maps. It stores the order and the hierarchical relations of the objects it contains. It lets you move around large parts of structured content as one single block.

Tridion Docs stores all the objects in the Repository. When you create an object of any type, you add it in the Repository inside a folder. Each individual folder can contain only a single type of object: only topics, only maps, etc. as determined when the folder was created.

Objects store two types of information:
  • The content. This is what you create (text, images...) and what you want your reader to see when the content is published.
  • The metadata. This is information about the object. You can use this information to search, report, automate and much more. Metadata is named properties in the user interface.
Imagine, for example, that you created a "Welcome" topic. It is placed at the beginning of a publication to deliver welcoming information to your reader. That topic has two titles: The metadata title and the content title.
  • You can see the metadata title as a name for the object itself, that conveys the meaning of this topic across versions and changes. "Welcome" can do the trick. When you are in a situation where you need to change that name, it usually means you need to create a new topic.
  • The content title is the title the reader will see when it is published, and it may change with each version. For example, it can be "Welcome to My Product version 1.0.0". That title can change many times, but it will still be your "Welcome" topic.

Whenever Tridion Docs displays lists of objects, it shows the metadata titles. Do not confuse them with the actual content of the object. That content is accessible via previews, or when you open the object.