Content Management Techniques

Content management is a collaborative process that enables companies to break down silos between departments, to find and reuse content easily, and to structure interdepartmental communications. The best way to start with a strong content management strategy is to set up your authoring process before you even begin creating content.

A good content management strategy is also a key factor in content reuse. This section provides a set of best practice options for managing your content in Author-it.

Author-it provides several ways to manage and reuse your content:

Release states enable you to decide who can perform specific actions on particular objects. These permissions enable you to keep each role in the authoring process separate, and holds each team member accountable for their required actions.
Edit history enables you to manage versions of the content as it develops. You can use this method to track changes in an object or revert it to a previous version, as needed.
Search pane in both Author and Contribute enables you to easily and efficiently search for existing content in your production library. You can also use Quick Search to navigate through the library.
Folder structure: An intuitive folder structure is an important way to keep track of all of your content.
Variants provide a flexible method of creating and maintaining different adaptations of a single object. Use variants when you need to maintain multiple variations of a document based on different criteria. You define the criteria that suits your content. For example, variants can use criteria based on location (country or state), product (product A or product B), platform, and so on. Unlike versions, you can have multiple variants active at any one time. Variants also enable reusing your content.
Variables as metadata: You can use variables as part of your metadata, which makes it much easier to locate objects that meet certain criteria.