Save the date: September 20, 2012

Registration is now open for the 6th annual RSuite User Conference that takes place in Philadelphia, PA at the Hub Cira Centre.

RSuite CMS is a content management system used by the world's leading publishers to manage content, assets, and metadata throughout its entire life cycle.

You are invited to join hundreds of publishing professionals and hear the latest case studies of how publishers are using RSuite CMS as part of a strategic content management initiative.

Yesterday afternoon, June 26, a select group of publishing professionals gathered at the Dolby 88 Screening Room in New York City to preview the next iteration of RSuite CMS.

The software was prescreened to a packed audience of publishing professionals and a global online audience joined via a live streaming broadcast.

Christopher Hill, vice president of product management at RSI Content Solutions, highlighted key features of the 4.0 release and detailed how these changes are based on feedback received from  users over the years.

 

The flexible user interface offers a new user experience that is better organized with contextual menus that detail what choices a user has based on the current state.

 

All the fundamental content management capabilities remain that ensure publishers' and media organizations' content and assets are preserved to ensure long-term survival in one central and secure location. But a large and obvious improvement in RSuite 4.0 is the digital asset management (DAM) functionality that offers better visibility of digital assets that will aid content discovery and reuse.

 

 

 

 

The software screening was the first time an audience of C-level publishing professionals viewed the new user interface, which is spearheaded by Bryan Elliott, user interface architect at RSI Content Solutions. Attendees were invited to speak with members of the RSuite development team and CTO, Lisa Bos, following the software demonstration during a 2-hour networking reception.

 

 

 

 

 

The post-screening reception was packed with publishing and media executives. The main regret was that our global audience who watched the demonstration via a live stream online could not imbibe in the libations and food.

Barry Bealer, CEO and co-founder at RSI Content Solutions, welcomed all and served as master of ceremonies for the event. Before the software demonstration commenced, he rolled out the changes of the impending release with a video highlighting the work he has directed over the past 12 years as well as the changes witnessed in the publishing, software, and media industries.

Enjoy:

If you were at the event and have any feedback for how we can improve, we welcome your suggestions!

When implementing RSuite CMS, our content architects and engineers help publishers ensure that the transformation from Word to XML is seamless and easy. The following best practices were developed that can be used in any publishing workflow to ensure content is consistently styled.

The following guidelines are based on a Word-to-XML conversion process using DITA For Publishers, which transforms embedded Word XML to true XML by taking advantage of style-to-tag mapping. All publishers can benefit from this approach, even if an early-XML workflow is not yet on the radar (though it SHOULD be!). What you get out of using real templated Word documents is consistency. Whether it's to generate XML or deliver to an offshore production service, consistent styles make downstream processing easier and allow for automation.

Best Practices for MS Word Authoring by Harvey Greenberg and Paul Eisenberg

Context

• MS Word 2003 and above use docx as default format.
• A docx file is actually a zip – you can rename foo.docx to foo.zip, unzip it, and see what’s there.
• Word to XML conversion process using DITA4Publishers transforms the embedded Word XML to “real” XML using style-to-tag mapping.
• Content that does not have a style accounted for in the mapping is ignored.
• Only styles are processed, not format overrides.
• This applies to character styles as well as paragraph styles.

Templates in MS Word

• Whereas “template” often means a starting document, in MS Word a template is a dotx file.
• All documents are attached to a template – the default is normal.dotx.
• Templates may be stored in the user-defined template location (Word | Options | Advanced | File Locations), or in a workgroup location (generally a shared network drive).
• Best practice is to use a template specific for the project.

Viewing, Applying, and Creating Styles

• Best way to view styles throughout the document is using Draft view with style pane; this needs to be set in Word | Options | Advanced.
• CNTL + SHIFT + S will pop up style dialog appropriate to cursor position; both para and character styles will show up.
• To create new styles, process is:
• Create or open document to which your template is attached.
• Make and test changes, being careful to always select option that applies changes to all documents based on the template, as opposed to current document
• Exit Word.
• Reopen Word, create new document based on your template, and see if changes took.

Some Tips and Tricks

• Templates may contain boilerplate text as well as styles; you can provide starting title, standard sections, etc, for authors to change.
• You can assign keyboard shortcuts and also change the quick style bar.
• A style can automatically assign style for the next para (e.g., Title can create Heading 1).
• A shortcut to a macro that does Edit | PasteSpecial | Unformatted Text is your best friend
• Probably best to avoid use of the default “Normal” para style, because it may not be clear whether para should be normal or you just didn’t take any action; perhaps use something like BodyPara in its place.
• Do not use empty paras for spacing; assign spacing via the style.
• Adding formatting to the styles so that the author can tell immediately that a heading is a heading and a list is a list, etc, is good.
• Trying to replicate the look and feel of the product is wasteful and can distract authors from the task at hand, which is good content.

I hope these best practices will be useful in your publishing workflows. To learn how some of our publishing clients are implementing this, download your free white paper: "How Successful Publishers Deliver Content: RSuite CMS and DITA For Publishers."

Next Tuesday, June 26th, RSI Content Solutions will host an early screening of its next software release, RSuite CMS 4.0. This latest iteration of content management for publishers offers a new approach to creating, managing, and delivering content anywhere, any time, in any format.

There's a lot to see both from a user perspective as well as a developer perspective. The new fluent user interface benefits the user experience with contextual menus that detail what choices a user has based on current state.

A networking reception will follow this screening. If you are a publishing executive in the New York City area and would like to attend, please contact me for details.

One of our readers shared a recent infographic she put together with a team of designers and researchers:

Created by: MBAOnline.com

Macmillan Higher Education (MHE) is widely recognized as publishers of high quality content with a strong focus toward innovation and course redesign. Macmillan Higher Education includes Bedford/St. Martin's, W. H. Freeman, Worth Publishers, Hayden McNeil, i>clicker, and Bedford, Freeman, and Worth High School. MHE recently licensed RSuite CMS by RSI Content Solutions. RSuite CMS is the leading content management system for publishers who want to manage, store, and deliver content to any channel, in any format, at any time.

RSuite CMS will integrate with a number of existing tools, such as Word and InDesign, to provide a secure centralized repository to store content, related assets, and metadata for the organization’s new publications.

“Macmillan Higher Education has the distinction of serving global markets with regional and specialized products,” stated Barry Bealer, CEO and co-founder at RSI Content Solutions. “RSuite CMS will provide the Macmillan Higher Education publishing team with workflow tools and content discovery tools that serve their global mission to deliver precise content to specific markets.”

“We required a content management solution that honored our Word-based editorial workflow but still brought us the benefits of early XML,” explained Chad Crume, Director of Content Solutions at Macmillan Higher Education. “RSuite CMS will provide us with automated transformations to publish to multiple formats and products from a single source. Additionally, it will offer us the benefits of a central repository where staff can easily search content to find publication-ready pieces that can be reused in new products.”

To learn more about RSuite CMS, or to schedule your demo, please visit www.rsicms.com.

The term "content management system" means different things to different people. Sometimes, when discussing CMS, I'll realize that the term "web" is omitted from the conversation but absolutely implied. A web CMS is quite different than a CMS like RSuite. So when selecting a CMS, getting ready for a CMS project, or implementing a CMS it's important to establish your definition and communicate that to your team.

Teams struggle because there is not always a shared vision of what they are undertaking and, depending on perspective, team members have a different focus in mind. Some folks focus on the need to store all content in a common repository, others think about workflow management, and still others may be fixated on content structure and delivery.

With these things in mind, I define a content management system as the processes, technologies, and people involved in acquiring, preparing, and delivering content. This definition ensures that all aspects of content management are considered and ultimately leads to a better understanding of necessary technology components. You may find that there are process changes or organizational changes that are equally important as implementing technology.

Technology is an enabling device. Technology won't manage your content any more than a filing system will file your documents. Be prepared to think hard about the processes that make up your content management system and how people interact with the content and that process. There's no point implementing a Content Management System if you don't intend to manage your content!

How do you define CMS?

How do you create and manage content that's ready for print, web, mobile, tablets, and future publishing channels?

The source is the solution!

The PRISM Source Vocabulary (PSV) is a standard framework for encoding digital content and configuring content management and digital asset management systems to produce future-ready content.

The latest vocabulary from IDEAlliance's nextPub initiative will be discussed tomorrow during a free webinar from RSI Content Solutions and Data Conversion Laboratory.

Come hear Dianne Kennedy, vice president of emerging technologies for IDEAlliance, share her thoughts on opportunities to advance automation for publishing systems where there has been little if any automation to date. She'll discuss where roadblocks exist, what opportunities are out there, and what role standards play in all this.

We'll also be introduced to the PRISM Source Vocabulary and learn how design-based publications can begin to and should take advantage of automation with standards, tools, and technologies available today.

Reality Check: The Truth About Automation

May 9 | 1:00 to 2:00 EDT

Presenter: Dianne Kennedy, VP of Emerging Technology at IDEAlliance

We are often asked by publishers what they can do to get a content management initiative headed in the right direction. Following are 7 tips that all publishers can follow to ensure a successful CMS project.

1. Data conversion | Typesetting service providers. Define what role a conversion house or a typesetter will have in the project and communicate that to in-house staff and the service provider. Get them involved early and detail the business requirements to them as well.

2. Pilot content. Identify and select representative publications that you would like to use as test content. It's useful to have a range of content types from your publishing organization (eg, 1 journal, 1 textbook, 1 instructor's manual, etc). But keep the number of actual documents small so you can work out the data details. You don't want to spend too much time just massaging data and not implementing core features.

3. Business rules. Define the essential business rules that the system needs to reflect. What are the high-level business process workflows? Keep the business process as simple as possible yet still document useful tracking and management. This usually means reflecting the key development, review, and approval steps. Don't necessarily model each little thing each actor does in the process. Shoot for the 30,000-foot view.  Typical RSuite customers require

• permissions
• data validation
• approvals

4. Metadata and search. Pinpoint the key discreet pieces of metadata that need to be captured to enable searching, reporting, and general management of content objects. Think about how you'll want to be able to search and find things from various users' perspectives. Also consider what you'll need to report on from a management and tracking aspect. Typical metadata fields include

• ISBNs
• DOIs
• author names
• classifying metadata
• controlled vocabularies
• approval statuses

5. Key deliveries. Determine what the system needs to deliver and export in order to demonstrate success.  Some key deliveries RSuite customers require include

• input to page layout
• XML for aggregation
• HTML for a Web site
• EPUB

6. System integration. Consider what systems the CMS will need to interact with now and in the future. Create a thorough list of systems that your editorial and production staff use. Obvious systems include page layout systems such as Typefi or InDesign. What about peer-review systems? Will your CMS deliver content to your web site? 

7. User roles. Specify all types of users of the system and define their roles. Will users interact with the CMS on a daily basis? What are the logical job roles? Will you need to provide for "casual" users of the system?

The main idea is to get your staff thinking about content management and CMS before you embark on an actual CMS implementation. Define, document, and communicate to internal staff, decision makers, stakeholders, and service providers. Have any other tips to add? How do you measure the success of your CMS implementation?

Compromise Will Set You Free: Lessons Learned From RSuite CMS Implementations

RSI Content Solutions' Lisa Bos will speak at the 2012 MarkLogic World Conference next week in Washington DC. Lisa serves as the CTO and EVP of publishing solutions with primary responsibility for the RSuite CMS product vision and engineering. Lisa is a recognized industry professional and an expert in the design of XML-based content management systems.

Her presentation at MarkLogic World, “Compromise Will Set You Free,” presents lessons learned during RSuite CMS implementations about simplifying projects. Lisa explains

“Our customers invest significant time, energy, and money to collect their assets into a central content management system. They do so with vital strategic goals in mind—single-source publishing, content discovery, and rapid product evolution. But many sabotage their efforts by resisting compromises intended to reduce the complexity and inconsistency of their systems, workflow processes, and content. Instead, they get bogged down with painful specifications and conversions—from Word to XML, from XML to InDesign, and so on—and they are distracted from the goals that are truly key to their success."

Lisa will share ideas and customer experiences that will inspire publishers, media companies, and content-centric organizations to make some tough decisions that result in simpler, more successful projects and that make them wonder why they resisted compromise in the first place.

The 2012 MarkLogic World Conference is May 1 to 3 in Washington, DC. It is the premier event for organizations looking to collaborate with and learn from leading industry experts, partners, customers, and MarkLogic employees on how you can turn “Big Data” into “Big Ideas.”