Understanding how content is organized using objects

In IXIASOFT CCMS Web content is organized into different types of objects.

There are four different types of "objects" that comprise a document within the IXIASOFT CCMS Web:

  1. Topic: This is the basic unit of information, covering a single subject. It can convey content which can be conceptual information, instructions, or reference data. A topic can also contain references to other objects such as images or resources. Think of it as a "page" with a heading and the information you want to write under that heading.
  2. Image: This object contains the image (which could be a screenshot or drawing) along with other information such as keywords or descriptive text. This object may also contain multiple images in different resolutions and formats for use with different types of output.
  3. Resource: A object of read-only material (such as a PDF file, legacy documentation, and so on) that is not directly editable.
  4. Map: This provides structure to the other objects. To create a document, assemble all the topics that you want as part of the document and organize them with a map. The map is a file that contains references to all the objects, usually topics, that are included in the document. Think of it like the table of contents or an outline for a document.
Figure: Hierarchy of objects
Hierarchy of objects

By creating content using objects, it becomes possible to reuse an object in different documents without duplicating them. So, an image can appear in many topics or a topic can appear in many maps without creating many copies of them. If you make a change in the object you only have to do it once in the original and it will appear as updated everywhere it is used.

The content may also include placeholders that display content that you can see but cannot modify. These placeholders represent content that automatically inserted into the topic from another source (referred to as a "conref" or referable-content by technical writers) or content that changes depending on definitions included in the map (referred to as a "key", which works like a variable). This is another way to avoid making duplicated content and keeping content consistent across documents.

For example, you might see a product name replaced by a "key" in a topic. That way if your marketing department changes the product name, you just need to fix the value in the key and the new name automatically appears everywhere you used the key without needing to do an error-prone effort to find and replace all the instances of the product name in all the documents.

This is why when you are assigned a topic, the assignment includes a map referred to as a Context Map. A Context Map is a map that not only provides you with context for the topic so you can understand how the content fits in to the document as a whole, but it also provides the definitions to resolve any keys contained in the topic.