Generating content using conditions

You can use conditional profiling attributes to tailor the same document for different audiences, formats, or releases when you generate an output.

Almost all elements in IXIASOFT CCMS Web support conditional profiling attributes. Conditional profiling attributes are applied in your topics to elements that are only for some guides or contexts. You can include or exclude these elements in the final output based on what information you want to appear for that guide. You can even use conditional profiling attributes in your maps to include or exclude entire topics or submaps. This lets you make comparatively minor edits to a few maps and topics, instead of having duplicates of all the topics and maps for each guide or context.

Applying conditional processing to an output

CCMS Web records the attribute values that you enter. When you generate an output, you can apply a ditaval to systematically include or exclude elements with particular values. A ditaval is a set of rules on how to handle the conditional profiling attributes in the map and topics you are creating an output from.

For example, you can set the ditaval to include all the @audience attributes with the value novice and exclude all those attributes with the value admin. If you apply this ditaval when generating an output, the output will exclude only the elements and topics with the value admin for the @audience attribute. So if a topic is shared between an admin guide and a guide for novice users, any content in it for admin can be excluded for the novice users. This lets you reuse the same topic while still having information targeted to specific users.

There are a few points to keep in mind when including or excluding content.

  • If you exclude a topic that has any children in a map, then all the children of the topic will be excluded as well.
  • If you want to exclude a topic from a map, then you must remember to add a conditional profiling attribute to every reference in the map to exclude them as well. For example, you must remember to add a conditional profiling attribute to any links to the topic from cross references in another topic or a reltable in the map.

Defining conditional processing attributes

Before a value can be used for a conditional processing attribute, it must be defined somewhere in IXIASOFT CCMS. If a topic contains a value this is not allowed, CCMS Web flags it as invalid.

Conditional processing attribute values can be defined in a few different places such as a subject scheme map in IXIASOFT CCMS Desktop or through the conditionaltext.xml configuration file by an admin. More information on defining conditional processing attributes are in the guides for CCMS Desktop and admin.