How to Not Let Team Authoring Drive You Crazy Scott DeLoach – scott@clickstart.net ClickStart – www.clickstart.net

Managing a team, especially under tight deadlines and budgets, can be extremely difficult and

challenging. In this session, we will share best practices for working as a team. We'll discuss using source

control, SharePoint, snippets, variables, and project linking. We will also provide tips for organizing, naming,

and managing files and projects.

“Global” projects

Design files

Unused styles

“Clutter”

Access restrictions

Project linking

Multiple masters

Removed links

External resources/ SharePoint

Ground rules

Syncing

Managing mappings

Contributions

Contributor (best option)

Word and FrameMaker

Editing and re-importing

Storing files

Using templates

Training contributors

Project organization

Outlining

Creating folders and topics

Moving multiple files

Organizing “Not used” content

File naming conventions

Prefixes

Capitalization

Spaces

Length

Modifying for WebHelp and HTML5 (Target > Advanced tab)

Source control

Binding (Project > Project Properties, Source Control tab)

Team member importing (File > New Project > Import Project)

Open source options – SVN and GIT

Web-based options – www.svnhostingcomparison.com and www.cloudforge.com

Variables and snippets

Setting default variable definitions

Overriding variable definitions (Target > Variables tab)

Creating block and character-level snippets

Enabling auto suggestion (File > Options > Auto Suggestion)

Sharing between projects

Project management – file tags

Author

Reviewer

Status

Critical path

Project management – reports

Tracking

File tags

Statistics

Coordinating

Topics not in any TOC

Topics not linked

Unused content files

Unused context IDs

Annotations and track changes

Adding annotations (Review > Insert Annotation)

Creating project-wide annotations

Turning track changes on/off (Review > Track Changes)

Creating an annotations and/or track changes report

Reviews

Content reviews – Contributor

Design reviews – targets

Community authoring/reviews – Pulse

About the presenter

Scott DeLoach is the Founder of ClickStart, where he provides training and

consulting for MadCap Flare, Adobe Captivate, embedded user assistance (UA),

CSS, HTML5, and Word. He has been developing browser-based UA since 1997, and

he has received four STC “Best in Show” awards for his work.

Scott is a certified Flare instructor, and he manages the MAD for Flare certification

program. Scott is the author of MadCap software’s training guides, MadCap Flare

Developer's Guide, CSS to the Point, HTML5 to the Point, and Word 2013 to the Point.

You can reach Scott at www.clickstart.net or by email at scott@clickstart.net.