Contents
How do you best support technical writers from conception to delivery in an automated environment for building and publishing documentation from structured or even unstructured sources? Conventions and metadata provide guardrails assisting writers in their daily work, even when untimely challenges emerge on the last mile before release.
In this case study from a software company with hundreds of products in multiple languages, you will observe how an adaptable, decentralized metadata framework acts as a backbone, from directing the very first version of a new documentation set over any public releases up until the point, when a product reaches the end of maintenance and its related documentation is put to rest in the archive.
Takeaways
From the properties of your publishing system, being a (C)CMS or custom, and an analysis of the requirements concerning automated processing, see how a resulting metadata set can govern the complete documentation lifecycle.
Prior knowledge
A general technical interest and desire to see "under the hood" is helpful, but not necessary for understanding the concepts.