Easing authoring

Author-it has announced Version 5.0, which is said to be the first content management system to include interactive authoring memory, Author-it Xtend.

The company claims Author-it Xtend provides a faster, more efficient method to reuse and share content and knowledge within an organization. Using intelligent "fuzzy logic" matching, this new feature makes all of the approved knowledge/content contained in a company's database available to content creators, eliminating the need to perform a time-consuming manual search.

Author-it explains that once a user begins typing, matching or similar content is located and returned instantly--even if the user is unaware that the content exists. Suggestions can be revealed in as few as three words and in a fraction of a second. Users can choose to instantly insert any of the suggestions, see what documents those suggestions currently appear in, or continue typing to refine the suggestions. Options controlling the behavior of the suggestions make it as unobtrusive--or as conspicuous--as the user chooses. Further, content can be restricted based on the company's security restrictions.

The reuse of content not only saves a company time and money in content production and localization (translation), it ensures that consistent messages are conveyed in both a company's external and internal communications. This method of locating matching content proves far more efficient than the current method, which requires users to perform their own search. In fact, research has shown that the inability or unwillingness to search for matching content is the primary reason users do not reuse content.