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If you’re using Adobe® Technical Communication Suite for your documentation projects – or perhaps grinding away with the Microsoft Office® suite like I am – prepare to be impressed by the Arbortext Service Information System.
An hour was not enough time for our presenters, Richard Ernst and Anthony Villa, to showcase all the tools and functionalities of this system. In fact, two hours were not enough to do it justice! The information-rich presentation was punctuated by our members’ sighs of, “Oh that’s wonderful,” and “Oh, that would make things so much easier!”
Overview of the Arbortext Service Information System
Anthony Villa, President of Newbook, credits the success of Arbortext to the manner in which all the components are connected in a fully integrated system; the product and all its information is centralized in one place, so users avoid delays most commonly caused by the inability to locate up-to-date information.
“If it’s not connected back to the product data, you lose the connection to the product data itself,” Villa explains.
As technical communicators, we are all familiar with the frustrations of lost requirements and valuable time wasted by information hunting. As an all-in-one solution, Arbotext allows you to “go to the source” of the product itself. For example, if you need information fast, simply do a query and get a list of information – you can then decide what format you want the information in. It is all associated with the content, which drives efficiencies, like a feedback system.
Villa admits that the system is “not perfect,” but it connects people with the data, and the data with the products.
The Integrated Tools
We were fortunate to get a demonstration, from Training Coordinator Richard Ernst, of the five tools that comprise the system. Ernst went through the stages of a typical documentation project, to showcase the system and how it encompasses all the phases of documentation (authoring, illustrating, revising and updating, styling, collaborating and reviewing, publishing).
The Arbortext Editor allows you to create content, edit and collaborate globally. The interface allows you to integrate text and illustrations, DITA maps and concepts. In fact, the system is designed to work with DITA. You can insert mark-ups and view tags – it even has a handy quick tag menu to make authoring more efficient. You can copy and paste from anything, including the web, PDF, Word, etc. When creating DITA maps, you can either layout the structure of the document or assemble the topics into a structure (working up or working down).
Revision and change management is easy – everything uses an associative link, so when you change a topic or illustration in any document (or tool), all files containing the same topic or illustration can also be updated automatically (if you want them to).
When you close the application, it retains your preferences of how you like to work (e.g.: with tags visible) for the next time you open it. These are just a few of the features that make the Arbortext Editor more intelligent than the average editor.
The Arbortext IsoDraw is CAD neutral and standard for technical illustration. You can work in 2D or 3D, in perspective or go to plane view; you can even work with legacy drawings and draw on the existing perspective planes. IsoDraw supports any export file type (even ones you haven’t seen since 1996). Your 3D CAD models can be made to match the grid and repurposed for different audiences and documents. Animations can also be made from existing 3D CAD models and played within the Arbortext Editor (there were many OOOs and AHHs at this point in the demonstration).
Another feature to give your illustrations an artistic flair – IsoDraw maintains thick and thin pen strokes in legacy drawings, even as you edit them.
The Arbortext Styler allows you to define many different stylesheets to apply to your content. Using these dynamic stylesheets, you can ensure that the information published is consistent across all media types. If you choose, you can create a master stylesheet to apply to multiple channels or enable multiple delivery formats (web, print, PDF, Word, HTML Help). You can also apply style rules from DITA or other standards.
The Arbortext Publishing Engine can take the same content and publish it to multiple outputs such as the web, PDF, Word, DVD, CD-ROM, and HTML Help. Using the engine, you can choose from multiple document layouts such as two-column or single column, fold-out page formats, or automatic styling. Of course, front and back matter can be automatically generated, including tables of contents, list of figures, and indexes.
Arbortext also has a Content Manager, although it is not required in order to use the tools and get most of their benefit.
For more information on the Arbortext Service Information System (because you know that this single blog article barely scratches the surface of what this robust system can do), check out Newbook’s website.
