Madcap Roadshow 2012

I spent the other day at the Mapcap Roadshow and it caused me to rethink the setup of my team’s projects. It was good to stop and review how we do things.

We use a master project with the basic elements for specific projects. This enables our outputs to have a similar look. Changes made to the master project are pushed down into the rest of the projects. This includes the style sheet, skins, copyright page, etc.

While the morning sessions were review for me, I was able to glean a couple of tidbits to help make our workflow even smoother. They were simple things. If we use a date variable on the copyright page, we don’t have to update 12 copies manually. Variables can be set on targets to override the variables from the master project. This functionality was already there, but these were things I hadn’t considered.

A few items stood out as reminders. Context is needed for each topic, since any topic can be read without reading other topics. I find that I still think too linearly when I write, even though I don’t access online/mobile help that way. I also need more templates in the projects. I find that I’m creating too many things from scratch, especially inserting tables or changing styles in topics. I created one topic template with the most common elements already inserted to help reduce those clicks.

Mike Hamilton also gave some good tips on how to get specific looks with CSS. I’ve updated my master style sheet with some of his suggestions.

The questions that other attendees asked were the most interesting to me. I’d like to see more use cases incorporated into roadshows and webinars. When I learn how others use the products, I can relate them to our situation. I can use some of the info to better our projects. Sometimes a small change can make a huge difference.