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I also create online help for cloud apps. The banking app I'm working on now has 4 roles currently & will have more in the future. I use the DITA OT to create XHTML help, so I leverage the audience attribute at the ditamap level for topics that exclusively belong to just one or two roles, or at the paragraph level within topics when it's the case that all roles have access to a page in the app but see different content. I also created separate build scripts and ditavals for each role, so I can produce separate output for each role. One of the writers here created a javascript file which I populate with a case for each topic path, then I pass it to a developer who hooks each case in the js file to the appropriate page in the app. I have the help files hosted on our own docs server so I can update it at will. This is the 2nd project using this process and it's working well so far!
Mary Elise Dedicke, Advisory Technical Writer
Pitney Bowes Software
One Global View | Troy, NY 12180 USA
Office: 518.285.7646 | Fax: 518.285.7420 | www.pb.com
MaryElise -dot- Dedicke -at- pb -dot- com
Every connection is a new opportunity(tm)
-----Original Message-----
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:17 AM, John G <john -at- garisons -dot- com> wrote:
> Fellow Whirlrs,
>
> Our cloud-based suite of applications is merging into a single interface
> that will allow users to free themselves from multiple stand-alone
> applications and to begin to use the features available from all the apps
> based on the roles and permissions they have. Great concept, but the
> challenge for us to document this is how we manage the online help so that
> wherever a user is they get the help for wherever it is that they are.
> We use Adobe TechComm Suite 3.5 (FM10 and RH9) and are looking into the
> features they provide - conditional text, text insets - but wonder what
> someone who has done something similar might have to say about the approach
> they took and a retrospective look at their experience.
> Anyone done anything like this who would like to share a war story or three?
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