Project management and team authoring best practices and tips for MadCap Flare.

1. How to Not Let Team Authoring Drive You Crazy
Scott DeLoach – scott@clickstart.net
ClickStart – www.clickstart.net
Managing a team, especially under tight deadlines and budgets, can be extremely difficult and
challenging. In this session, we will share best practices for working as a team. We'll discuss using source
control, SharePoint, snippets, variables, and project linking. We will also provide tips for organizing, naming,
and managing files and projects.
“Global” projects
Design files
Unused styles
“Clutter”
Access restrictions
Project linking
Multiple masters
Removed links
External resources/ SharePoint
Ground rules
Syncing
Managing mappings
Contributions
Contributor (best option)
Word and FrameMaker
Editing and re-importing
Storing files
Using templates
Training contributors
Project organization
Outlining
Creating folders and topics
Moving multiple files
Organizing “Not used” content
File naming conventions
Prefixes
Capitalization
Spaces
Length
Modifying for WebHelp and HTML5 (Target > Advanced tab)

2. Source control
Binding (Project > Project Properties, Source Control tab)
Team member importing (File > New Project > Import Project)
Open source options – SVN and GIT
Web-based options – www.svnhostingcomparison.com and www.cloudforge.com
Variables and snippets
Setting default variable definitions
Overriding variable definitions (Target > Variables tab)
Creating block and character-level snippets
Enabling auto suggestion (File > Options > Auto Suggestion)
Sharing between projects
Project management – file tags
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Author
Reviewer
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Status
Critical path
Project management – reports
Tracking
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File tags
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Statistics
Coordinating
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Topics not in any TOC
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Topics not linked
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Unused content files
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Unused context IDs
Annotations and track changes
Adding annotations (Review > Insert Annotation)
Creating project-wide annotations
Turning track changes on/off (Review > Track Changes)
Creating an annotations and/or track changes report
Reviews
Content reviews – Contributor
Design reviews – targets
Community authoring/reviews – Pulse
About the presenter
Scott DeLoach is the Founder of ClickStart, where he provides training and
consulting for MadCap Flare, Adobe Captivate, embedded user assistance (UA),
CSS, HTML5, and Word. He has been developing browser-based UA since 1997, and
he has received four STC “Best in Show” awards for his work.
Scott is a certified Flare instructor, and he manages the MAD for Flare certification
program. Scott is the author of MadCap software’s training guides, MadCap Flare
Developer's Guide, CSS to the Point, HTML5 to the Point, and Word 2013 to the Point.
You can reach Scott at www.clickstart.net or by email at scott@clickstart.net.