[Framers] Advice on slimming down a guide; customized guides per customer??

Discussion:

Caroline Tabach

2018-10-08 12:22:43 UTC

Hi,

I have converted the very large Word user guide to FrameMaker. I am using
Unstructured Frame 2017

This is a guide for a product which has general information about how to
use the product at the beginning, and a few chapters with general
information at the end.

The product is made up of 100 "boxes" which belong to 5 families (I am
just calling them boxes for the sake of the example)

The FrameMaker book I made uses only chapters, not volumes, there is a
chapter for each box family, with information about each of the boxes in
that family.

Each customer only needs to user 4 or 5 "boxes", so we want to make user
guides that are smaller and more focused

I have made a book with everything in it, and now I want to show the SME
how we can use Frame to make smaller guides. I am wondering about the best
way to do this.

1. Make 5 books each with one box family in it, which will contain info
about all the boxes in that family as well as the general information. end
users will receive the guide with info about the box family, they will have
info about 15 boxes even if they only bought one

2. Redo the guide that I did and make the box families to be volumes, and
then each box is a chapter. .

This means it will be easy to add or remove boxes from the guide, this also
means it is possible to customize the guides per customers
The company are using heading numbering, so this means redoing all of the
heading of all the paragraph styles, which might get complicated

3. Another idea I had was to set the book up as described above, with a
chapter for each box family, but to have each box as a text inset, and be
able to create user guides per box. Highly customizing this, but means I
don't have to mess with the numbering, but maybe this will make life
complicated

What would you recommend?

Are there advantages and disadvantages of each method?

Thanks for your ideas
--
Caroline Tabach
Technical/Marcom Writer
e-mail: ***@gmail.com
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Robert Lauriston

2018-10-08 16:37:13 UTC

Permalink

My first thought would be to migrate to Flare or Paligo, which are
much better at that sort of reuse.

On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 5:24 AM Caroline Tabach

Post by Caroline Tabach
Hi,
I have converted the very large Word user guide to FrameMaker. I am using
Unstructured Frame 2017
This is a guide for a product which has general information about how to
use the product at the beginning, and a few chapters with general
information at the end.
The product is made up of 100 "boxes" which belong to 5 families (I am
just calling them boxes for the sake of the example)
The FrameMaker book I made uses only chapters, not volumes, there is a
chapter for each box family, with information about each of the boxes in
that family.
Each customer only needs to user 4 or 5 "boxes", so we want to make user
guides that are smaller and more focused
I have made a book with everything in it, and now I want to show the SME
how we can use Frame to make smaller guides. I am wondering about the best
way to do this.
1. Make 5 books each with one box family in it, which will contain info
about all the boxes in that family as well as the general information. end
users will receive the guide with info about the box family, they will have
info about 15 boxes even if they only bought one
2. Redo the guide that I did and make the box families to be volumes, and
then each box is a chapter. .
This means it will be easy to add or remove boxes from the guide, this also
means it is possible to customize the guides per customers
The company are using heading numbering, so this means redoing all of the
heading of all the paragraph styles, which might get complicated
3. Another idea I had was to set the book up as described above, with a
chapter for each box family, but to have each box as a text inset, and be
able to create user guides per box. Highly customizing this, but means I
don't have to mess with the numbering, but maybe this will make life
complicated
What would you recommend?
Are there advantages and disadvantages of each method?

Robert Lauriston

2018-10-10 15:15:41 UTC

Permalink

Flare is old-fashioned locally installed single-user Windows software,
like FrameMaker.

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 2:12 AM Caroline Tabach

We did look into that, but my understanding is that it is cloud based and therefore not appropriate for what we are doing.

Post by Robert Lauriston
My first thought would be to migrate to Flare or Paligo, which are
much better at that sort of reuse.
On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 5:24 AM Caroline Tabach

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--
Caroline Tabach
Technical/Marcom Writer

Etzel, Gary

2018-10-10 15:20:43 UTC

Permalink

Flare has a cloud-based component called MadCap Central that provides various, useful collaboration tools, but you don't have to buy/use that.

-----Original Message-----
From: Framers [mailto:framers-bounces+gary.etzel=***@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2018 11:16 AM
To: An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software. <***@lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: [Framers] Advice on slimming down a guide; customized guides per customer??

Flare is old-fashioned locally installed single-user Windows software, like FrameMaker.

We did look into that, but my understanding is that it is cloud based and therefore not appropriate for what we are doing.

Post by Robert Lauriston
My first thought would be to migrate to Flare or Paligo, which are
much better at that sort of reuse.

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Lin Sims

2018-10-10 11:33:50 UTC

Permalink

My apologies if this response is late; I've been on vacation.

Assuming I understand the situation you are describing, I think your best
choice is number 2. There are a number of good guides that describe how to
use FrameMaker's numbering blocks to set up some pretty complicated
numbering schemes without too much difficulty (I'd recommend the ones by
Lester Smalley and Dan Emory and I can probably dig those up for you if you
can't find them on the web), and once those are set up all you have to do
is regenerate the book when you go to publish, which you'd have to do
anyway for the Table of Contents.

You might also want to look into using Groups, which I believe will let you
use individual files (your boxes) as sections of a chapter (your families)
without having to mess too much with the numbering scheme. I haven't used
Groups, though, so I can't provide too much advice on that. The only caveat
here is that each box will start on a new page, because that's how
FrameMaker handles files collected into a book.

I do not think text insets is a good choice here, since you would have to
relink the text insets every time you create a book depending on what's
used for a particular customer and that could get both tedious and error
prone depending on how many customers you have.

Lin Sims

2018-10-10 16:19:15 UTC

Permalink

As a thought, you could use put all the "boxes" into a chapter (family) and
control its appearance with conditions by marking the text for that "box"
with a condition named for the customer. Then all you have to do when you
create a book for a customer is set the Show Conditions to that customer's
name and regenerate. That's actually probably the simplest solution, and
FrameMaker is capable of handling dozens of conditions.

Post by Lin Sims
My apologies if this response is late; I've been on vacation.
Assuming I understand the situation you are describing, I think your best
choice is number 2. There are a number of good guides that describe how to
use FrameMaker's numbering blocks to set up some pretty complicated
numbering schemes without too much difficulty (I'd recommend the ones by
Lester Smalley and Dan Emory and I can probably dig those up for you if you
can't find them on the web), and once those are set up all you have to do
is regenerate the book when you go to publish, which you'd have to do
anyway for the Table of Contents.
You might also want to look into using Groups, which I believe will let
you use individual files (your boxes) as sections of a chapter (your
families) without having to mess too much with the numbering scheme. I
haven't used Groups, though, so I can't provide too much advice on that.
The only caveat here is that each box will start on a new page, because
that's how FrameMaker handles files collected into a book.
I do not think text insets is a good choice here, since you would have to
relink the text insets every time you create a book depending on what's
used for a particular customer and that could get both tedious and error
prone depending on how many customers you have.

--
Lin Sims

Caroline Tabach

2018-10-10 18:14:38 UTC

Permalink

That sounds good.

Caroline Tabach

Post by Lin Sims
As a thought, you could use put all the "boxes" into a chapter (family) and
control its appearance with conditions by marking the text for that "box"
with a condition named for the customer. Then all you have to do when you
create a book for a customer is set the Show Conditions to that customer's
name and regenerate. That's actually probably the simplest solution, and
FrameMaker is capable of handling dozens of conditions.

Post by Lin Sims
use FrameMaker's numbering blocks to set up some pretty complicated
numbering schemes without too much difficulty (I'd recommend the ones by
Lester Smalley and Dan Emory and I can probably dig those up for you if

you

Post by Lin Sims
can't find them on the web), and once those are set up all you have to do
is regenerate the book when you go to publish, which you'd have to do
anyway for the Table of Contents.
You might also want to look into using Groups, which I believe will let
you use individual files (your boxes) as sections of a chapter (your
families) without having to mess too much with the numbering scheme. I
haven't used Groups, though, so I can't provide too much advice on that.
The only caveat here is that each box will start on a new page, because
that's how FrameMaker handles files collected into a book.
I do not think text insets is a good choice here, since you would have to
relink the text insets every time you create a book depending on what's
used for a particular customer and that could get both tedious and error
prone depending on how many customers you have.
On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 8:24 AM Caroline Tabach <

Post by Caroline Tabach
Hi,
I have converted the very large Word user guide to FrameMaker. I am

using