FM + CMS + SMEs w/o $$$?

Fri Jan 27 12:39:32 PST 2012

Richard,

Thanks very much for your detailed input.  I am the sole writer for our
outfit, with 15 developers in the UK and some management types in the UK and
Michigan.  I think moving to structured FM may be the better method for us
for a variety of reasons, but I will look into the feasibility of having
SMEs do edits in FM.  Definitely food for thought.

Regards,

Jack

From: rinch at Inficon.com [mailto:rinch at Inficon.com] 
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 8:36 AM
To: jackdeland at comcast.net
Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: FM + CMS + SMEs w/o $$$?

Jack, 

My SME's work directly in unstructured FrameMaker 9. We all work on the same
set of files in a shared directory on our corporate internet. I have a
well-defined set of templates, along with a well-defined set of Corporate
Branding Standards and Grammar Standards. I work closely with the SMEs. I
help the SMEs set up the project, train the SMEs in how to use the
FrameMaker templates, edit their work to standards, and guide the process
from start through final approvals to publishing. My deliverable is always
PDF ready to print on standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper. The PDF is posted on our
internet page and/or shipped with product on a Manuals CD.  INFICON is
ISO9001:2008 Registered. I am audited regularly. 

There are 250 people at my location. We have 15 copies of FrameMaker that
rotate through many different SMEs, depending on project activity. My
Information Systems (IS) department manages the FrameMaker licenses and
installations, IS set up the shared directory, and IS backs up the shared
directory nightly. We've been doing this for many years. Regular SMEs have
become very proficient with FrameMaker. New SMEs adapt to FrameMaker very
quickly. We all have Win7 MSOffice Professional. The SMEs use MSWord for
many of their project documentation activities. However, they prefer using
FM for manuals and other customer-facing documents. 

I don't use a CMS. All project related files are kept in a shared directory.
I use Bruce Foster's Archive plugin to keep everything neat and tidy (and to
archive the files to a secure directory when the project is published.) In
the past couple of years I have looked closely at structured authoring, XML,
DITA with a CMS. To me, this approach is expensive while providing little
added value and is therefore difficult to justify. I agree that just a CMS
may be helpful. But, even just a decent CMS alone is hard to justify given
its cost. Our current methodology works so well for us that I need to see
real value-added improvement to justify the cost of changing. I've not seen
them, yet. 

My SMEs use FrameMaker 9, a digital camera (to JPG), and a screen capture
program (FullShot or Snagit to PNG). It used to be that I was the only one
to have Photoshop and Illustrator to edit the JPG and PNG files. But, many
of the SMEs have obtained these programs because they watched what I could
do with them, and they want to use them for their other projects as well
(e.g., Engineering Proposals). 

Don't be afraid of having your SMEs use FrameMaker for authoring. As long as
you have well-defined templates backed up by corporate standards, you'll
find that your SMEs will not have any issues with working in FrameMaker. 

Thanks!
Richard

______________________________

Richard Inch
Technical Documentation Manager
Intelligent Sensor Solutions
INFICON
Two Technology Place
East Syracuse, NY 13057-9714
phone: +315.434.2507
fax: +315.437.3803
e-mail: richard.inch at inficon.com
 <http://www.inficon.com/> http://www.inficon.com
_______________________________

NOTICE: - This message including any attachments is intended only for the
use of the designated recipient(s) named above and may contain confidential
information protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are
hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or the taking of
any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly
prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify
the sender immediately by e-mail and delete the original message including
any attachments. 

From:        jackdeland at comcast.net 
To:        framers at lists.frameusers.com 
Date:        01/26/2012 03:56 PM 
Subject:        FM + CMS + SMEs w/o $$$? 
Sent by:        framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com 

  _____  

All,

I have been tasked with finding a way to allow SME input directly into our
publishing workflow. That is, the developers and managers would be able to
edit text and add graphics to our source files. I want to keep FrameMaker as
the publishing engine.  I'm thinking a CMS would be in order, but the
company is aghast at the thought of spending more than 10K a year on "word
processing".  I basically need functionality something like Author-it that
ties into Frame.  I could do single-sourcing with RH (we have TCS3.5).  I'm
thinking we would have 3 developers at a time who might be using the system,
plus me.  That's a budget of $2500 or less per year per user.

Can anyone point me toward some current resources here?  

Thanks,

Jack DeLand_______________________________________________

You are currently subscribed to framers as rinch at inficon.com.

Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
or visit
<http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/rinch%40inficon.com>
http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/rinch%40inficon.com

Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit
 <http://www.frameusers.com/> http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources
and info.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers-frameusers.com/attachments/20120127/2cc50bc0/attachment.htm>