Adobe Experience Manager Guides

AEM Guides integrates with Adobe Experience Manager Assets. Therefore, you can manage technical illustrations and marketing assets in AEM Assets. XML and DITA have become the international standards for technical documentation. AEM Guides, therefore, comes with a range of visual XML editing tools. Content creators can use these tools to create so-called DITA topics and DITA maps. DITA stands for “Darwin Information Typing Architecture.”

• Darwin – DITA uses specialization and inheritance, analogous to Charles Darwin’s ideas on the origin of species.
  
• Information Typing – Information units are typed (classified) in DITA according to their content.
• Architecture – DITA is an Information Architecture. It is not simply a DTD but includes rules for deriving new information units.

DITA, in turn, is an OASIS standard (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) that provides an XML-based information architecture created specifically for maintaining complex documents and information. With DITA, you can manage large documents and entire groups of documents using uniform concepts for content reuse.

When we talk about technical documentation, we also mean operating instructions, training documents, product catalogs, data sheets, assembly instructions, etc. In the past, there were mainly these two “camps” when it came to creating these documents:

• Companies and technical writers who “think in manuals”: However, this approach leaves out the possibilities of other output formats, such as website and app: Visual design, customer experience through lack of personalization, multi-device delivery (PDF vs. mobile), and marketing potential through cross-sell / up-sell / lead generation via digital channels suffer.
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• Companies and technical writers who “think in marketing and sales processes,” neglecting norms and standards.

The charm of AEM Guides is that the solution serves both “camps.” However, before we get into the technology, I would like to start by writing a few sentences about the two basic technological approaches:

AEM Guides also comes with its own web-based XML editor. Technical editors, therefore, do not have to take the “diversions” via an external XML editor. At this point, one might ask what the raison d'être of a desktop editor is in perspective: it is probably primarily offline work on documents.

The user-friendly web editor allows the creation of content independent of presentation. In addition, you can ingest content from Word, HTML, Markdown, InDesign, and many other formats and transform them to the DITA format via a separate framework.

AEM Guides offers the best content management features currently available, such as advanced content reuse, version and reference management, tag management for search and metadata, or translation workflows.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning based on Adobe Sensei enable fast delivery and more accessible content discovery.

Web-based coordination saves time and allows multiple authors and reviewers to collaborate in real-time. Administrators can assign different roles to users and track progress via admin dashboards.

Organizations can then provide technical content in various channels like web, app, portal, print, or PDF.

Technical documentation can be published natively to Adobe Experience Manager sites via AEM Guides. However, through publishing engines and REST APIs, content can also be delivered to many other touchpoints, such as HTML websites, CRM platforms, IoT apps, chatbots, Amazon Kindle, etc. The benefits of digital delivery are apparent:

• You can analyze the consumption of digital documentation (how often which docs are retrieved, how are they used)
• Organizations can leverage the technical content in a broader marketing context (personalized content and offers)
• Documentations are responsive and are displayed optimized on all end devices.

However, the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC still requires that printed instructions for use accompany a delivered machine and that, within the European Union, these instructions have to be translated into the official language of the exporting country.

But even this is not a problem because the provision can also be made by native publications in Adobe PDF and as a printed product.

We all know the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In the field of technical documentation, we can extend it as follows:

“A picture is worth a thousand words; a 3D model is worth a thousand pictures.”

The legislation still requires printed instructions, but the trend is toward interactive content presentation. 3D equipment models have been viewable as Adobe PDFs in Adobe Reader for many years. (CAD design drawings created with Auto-CAD, for example, can be embedded in a PDF via an Acrobat plug-in. This, in turn, can be opened by end users in the free Adobe Reader).

But Adobe also offers the possibility of displaying 3D assets for the web world through AEM Assets Dynamic Media.

Every company that makes something needs a technical documentation solution.

Images, videos, animations, and 3D models are international. They don’t need to be translated and describe more than words. These assets will increasingly become the focus of interactive documents.

Customers want a smooth transition from marketing to technical documentation. There is still a large discrepancy between the two in terms of presentation, quality, and modernity. There should no longer be a noticeable difference in the future, as both are equally part of the customer experience.

Companies are literally thirsting for a solution. In many companies, Tech Doc departments have to “beg” for support in the design department. In the daily (cross-departmental) work, there is great potential for efficiency gains and cost savings, for example, through automated translations, content reuse, or coordination workflows.

We have now talked extensively about the “HOW” platform of companies. Once everything is perfectly documented and visualized, the only question is how to train employees to implement the corresponding measures. Adobe has a corresponding AEM extension for this as well, namely AEM Learning Management (formerly Captivate Prime). But we will go into this topic in more detail another time.