Best way to send out content for SMEs to review?

Oxygen general issues.
tomjohnson1492
Posts: 132
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 1:55 am

Best way to send out content for SMEs to review?

Post by tomjohnson1492 »

When creating DITA content with Oxygen, what's the best way to send out content for SMEs to review? PDFs that they annotate? Some kind of lite license with Oxygen so they can add <draft-comment> elements in the content? Some nifty web tool that somehow enables the ability for users to annotate content? I'd love to hear the best strategies for reviewing content. Thanks,

Tom
george
Site Admin
Posts: 2095
Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2003 2:58 pm

Re: Best way to send out content for SMEs to review?

Post by george »

Hi Tom,

Our SDK provides support for creating simple applications for reviewing that can be in one of the following forms:
  • a simple Java desktop application
  • a Java application that can be distributed though Java Web Start
  • a web application containing the Author Component as an Applet
  • a web application using the new oXygen WebApp
Some CMSes already provide an integrated solution for reviewing using the 2nd option or the 3rd option from the above list - they offer a ready to use solution that leverages the direct XML reviewing functionality of oXygen when comments and changes are recorded directly in the DITA source and you can then very easily accept/reject or act on annotations.

Because the oXygen Author Component and the oXygen WebApp are part of the SDK they will not work out of the box, you will need to build that exact application that you want, but there is not too much work when starting from an existing sample to a simple application.

We are also working on providing some sample integrations for the WebApp with Google Drive so a not too far-away possibility will be to upload your files on Google Drive and then be able to send a link to reviewers to enable them to access that content in the oXygen WebApp editing/reviewing interface.

Right now you can also publish the DITA content as feedback-enabled WebHelp (one of the standard oXygen transformations) and then you can publish that and people can comment in the feedback form. You will receive email notifications on each comment. This is useful on the public content - our user guide uses the feedback-enabled WebHelp at:
http://oxygenxml.com/doc/ug-editor/#top ... ction.html

We will think also of some other forms to easily enable the review process directly on the XML sources, especially using the new oXygen WebApp. As I mentioned, we are working right now on integrating with Google Drive and probably we will follow with DropBox and maybe also with some other online repository.

Best Regards,
George
George Cristian Bina
tomjohnson1492
Posts: 132
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 1:55 am

Re: Best way to send out content for SMEs to review?

Post by tomjohnson1492 »

I think the feedback-enabled webhelp version will work great. I wasn't too familiar with that output and just followed the instructions to configure it locally on my machine to test it out. I'm impressed that you were able to incorporate this functionality and think it will work well for gathering SME feedback. Thanks!
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