SDI and Author-it

Managing content often begins with a large collection of existing legacy documentation.

This free webinar explores strategies for bringing existing content into Author-it. It includes:

• Comprehensive and targeted approaches for migration
• Creating a migration plan
• Setting up an end-to-end process
• Customizing Author-it import profiles
• Reworking content at the source or in Author-it?
• Estimating and scoping the migration effort

Many organizations need to manage content across many locations, from multiple offices in the same country or around the globe. Author-it provides a variety of options for distributed content creation, management, and publishing, for both small and large organizations.

This free webinar provides an overview of approaches for using Author-it to provide a unified content management environment for a distributed workforce.

The core of Author-it is the ability to reuse content for single sourcing. But sometimes content needs to vary for different contexts: for a particular audience, for a related product or service, or for a different software version.

This free webinar shows the full range of methods that you can use to create conditional structures in Author-it, with examples that illustrate how you can use different techniques to achieve customized output for different audiences or versions. Examples include the variant feature added in Author-it 5.1.

Author-it 5 provides a powerful platform for component content management, with a more intuitive user interface and new features to support reuse of content across different documents and deliverables.

This free webinar provides an overview of new features in Author-it 5, and explains the process for upgrading from Author-it V4 to Author-it 5.

What's involved in implementing Author-it? How long does it take?

We'll show you how to do it in one hour, from installing, configuring, and setting up permissions through importing, creating, sharing, and managing your content.

Of course it might take you a little longer - maybe even twice as long! But Author-it's ease of implementation is a major reason why it can save your organization tons of money in these challenging times.

Love the new interface but still trying to figure out how to use those new features?

Join us for a brief course that explains how to get the most out of the new features in Author-it 5, including the very latest release.

Most organizations have many different departments creating content, from user documentation to customer support to sales and marketing. Often they create similar content, but with different words, different levels of detail, and different messages.

This "silo" approach to creating content produces a plethora of information resources that are difficult to manage. It can also result in mixed messages and confusion for the reader, as well as errors that can be difficult to find and correct.

This free webinar shows how an organizational strategy of content reuse can reduce the cost of creating and maintaining content, increase collaboration among departments, and make information and branding more consistent throughout the organization. It also suggests approaches for estimating return on investment through content reuse and single sourcing.

Where to start?

With an application as rich in features as Author-it, it's important to have an evaluation plan.

This free webinar offers a structured approach for matching Author-it's capabilities to your requirements, and comparing how Author-it stacks up against other options you might consider. Among the topics we'll cover:

• The argument for content reuse and single sourcing
• Making the business case
• Defining your requirements
• Do you need XML?
• Conducting a pilot project with Author-it
• Basics of creating, managing, and publishing reusable content with Author-it

Author-it is designed to promote content reuse, and provides tools to help you reuse the same content in many different documents and output types (print, web, help, presentations, ...). But for organizations with large libraries of legacy content, getting beyond the obvious candidates for reuse can be a challenge.

This free webinar presents strategies for increasing reuse, including:

• Using variables, embedded topics, release states, and other standard Author-it capabilities to make content reusable
• Using Author-it Xtend to identify existing content that is identical or similar to a new or existing topic
• Reducing the variations and volume of content that needs to be translated.

This course is a good way to get started with Author-it, to get a refresher if you've been away from Author-it for a while, or to get new writers up to speed. We'll cover Single Sourcing concepts, provide an overview of Author-it, and show how to create, import, publish, and manage content using Author-it.

This course includes hands-on practice with Author-it. It is helpful to have a copy of Author-it running on the same machine where you're accessing the session (or one close by). You can use either a licensed copy or the evaluation version. The evaluation download is available upon request from your Author-it account manager or jhawkins(at)sdicorp.com.

The coverage includes:

• Overview
• Getting Started
• Basic Authoring and Publishing
• A Closer Look at the Authoring Environment
• Importing Legacy Content (overview)
• Advanced Authoring (overview)

All attendees receive a PDF training guide.

Enrollment is limited to 10 students.

This course is a good way to get started with Author-it, to get a refresher if you've been away from Author-it for a while, or to get new writers up to speed. We'll cover Single Sourcing concepts, provide an overview of Author-it, and show how to create, import, publish, and manage content using Author-it. We'll also provide an overview of administering and customizing Author-it, with a light once-over on more advanced Author-it techniques.

The course is offered in two parts, each 4 hours (typically two mornings or afternoons during the same week). The coverage includes:

Part I:

• Overview of Single Sourcing and Author-it
• Getting Started
• Basic Authoring and Publishing
• A Closer Look at the Authoring Environment
• Importing Existing Content

Part II:

• Author-it Objects
• Conditionality and Versioning
• Structured Authoring
• Author-it Administration (overview)
• Customizing Author-it (overview)

All attendees receive a PDF training guide. The training guide includes hands-on exercises with Author-it (for web-based training, exercises are performed outside class sessions). You can use either a licensed copy or the evaluation version of Author-it.

This course is for those who will administer Author-it. It provides a complete treatment of the Author-it Administrator module, as well as information about implementing Author-it, configuring the Author-it library, and managing external resources required by Author-it.

This course includes hands-on practice with Author-it. It is helpful to have a copy of Author-it running on the same machine where you're accessing the session (or one close by). You can use either a licensed copy or the evaluation version. The evaluation download is available upon request from your Author-it account manager or jhawkins(at)sdicorp.com.

The coverage includes:

• Overview
• Author-it Administration

All attendees receive a PDF training guide.

Enrollment is limited to 10 students.

Author-it provides default print publishing templates that you can use immediately; but most organizations need to produce print output that conforms to a "house style" for print media.

This course provides an overview of the publishing customization process in Author-it, explains how default Author-it templates are used to control print publishing, and walks you through the process of creating customized print publishing applications. Examples include a compact page design that use the entire page, a multi-column design, landscape pages, and more.

The course includes hands-on practice with Author-it. It is helpful to have a copy of Author-it running on the same machine where you're accessing the session (or one close by). You can use either a licensed copy or the evaluation version. The evaluation download is available upon request from your Author-it account manager or jhawkins(at)sdicorp.com.

All attendees will receive a PDF training guide and an Author-it library that contains sample print publishing applications.

Enrollment is limited to 10 students.

Author-it provides default publishing templates that you can use immediately to publish HTML and XHTML output (including browser-independent web-based help formats); but most organizations need to produce HTML pages that conform to a "house style" for web-based media.

This course provides an overview of the publishing customization process in Author-it, explains how default Author-it templates are used to control HTML and XHTML publishing, and shows how to create customized HTML publishing templates for Author-it. Examples include a simple customization that includes a banner frame, more complex designs that use produce a different screen layout and different page templates for different types of HTML pages, and the use of HTML variables for including dynamic content.

This course includes hands-on practice with Author-it. It is helpful to have a copy of Author-it running on the same machine where you're accessing the session (or one close by). You can use either a licensed copy or the evaluation version. The evaluation download is available upon request from your Author-it account manager or jhawkins(at)sdicorp.com.

All attendees receive a PDF training guide and an Author-it library that contains sample HTML publishing applications.

Enrollment is limited to 10 students.

The Author-it Localization Manager enables you to manage content for localization and translation. It packages translation content in an XML format that can be translated using translation memory applications, ensures that reused content is translated only once, and provides the ability to published translated content to all required media (print, HTML, help, and more).

This course provides an overview of the localization process. It also shows you how to configure your library for localization workflow, create and manage translation jobs, control the updating of changed content from your source library, and publish content to different languages and media.

This course includes hands-on practice with Author-it. It is helpful to have a copy of Author-it running on the same machine where you're accessing the session (or one close by). You can use either a licensed copy or the evaluation version. The evaluation download is available upon request from your Author-it account manager or jhawkins(at)sdicorp.com.

All attendees receive a PDF training guide and an Author-it training library that contains sample content.

Enrollment is limited to 10 students.