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> I've joined a company as an intern and will be
> working for about two months.
> The company wants me to prepare technical documents
> for marketing purposes
> for its products from scratch.
Sounds like a good opportunity.
> At this stage, I am preparing notes taken from my
> meetings with the
> technical and communications group. Besides
> preparing documentation, the
> company is interested in having a model devised for
> content management so
> that any person looking for information in the
> future has access to
> information easily and readily. I will be preparing
> diagrams using Visio and
> documents will be prepared in Microsoft Word. My
> concern is not the
> documentation, but the content management model.
No offense, but why is your employer asking you, an
intern, to decide on its content management solution?
These decisions are usually made by IT and/or
department heads, and can take months if not years to
be decided on, purchased, and implemented... Nothing
personal against you... it's just that asking an
intern to set all this up is kind of, well, unique.
> To start with, I might use Access or Excel to
> prepare a table with columns:
> path, filename, date content created, revision date,
> version, content owner,
> images used etc. Is this a right approach to begin
> with?
You're capturing the correct information but your
system will succeed only if everyone is good about
following it.
> As this might not be the right method, I raise some
> questions and will
> appreciate suggestions and help. My concerns are:
>
> 1) Are there any tools for content management?
Are there shells in the sea? There are about as many
CM utilities out there...
> 2) how should I approach content management?
Very carefully. Seriously.
> 3) Are there any formal methodologies in use for
> content management?
Yes. Many.
Exactly what is your company looking for?
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