Tag: Technical editing

Chiron and DOCUFY

DOCUFY has been around for 20 years. We have been a customer for almost half that time. This brief article is intended to show how we have fared.

When mechanical engineers make documentation…

We first made contact with the company from Bamberg in late 2008 when we were looking for a replacement for our existing content management system. At that time, XML-based systems were still in the development phase.
DOCUFY’s first presentations won us over to the point that we included COSIMA on our shortlist. However, we were not able to accept the bid for a while as the mechanical engineering crisis got in our way.

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WE are DOCUFY

WE – this is a “colourful bunch” of different age groups, educational levels, genders, strengths and knowledges. By now we have grown to a proud 103 employees (as of 01.04.2018) and the trend is still rising, because we are pursuing a common goal:

The revolution in technical documentation.

We work daily to optimize systems, processes and procedures, to develop new concepts and fill the information space with life. Hand in hand, for our customers, every day anew, fully motivated and with fun!

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Dive into the cold water – with COSIMA go! Getting started completely without chattering teeth

Meister Strömungstechnik GmbH has been working with COSIMA go! since 2009. Based on the positive experience, it was soon became clear that the use of the CCMS would be expanded in the company. To this end, additional employees from different areas of the company are involved, who support the technical editing department.

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New in COSIMA: IGEL – the integrated callout editor

Explaining complex issues in a simple way – often a very difficult task. Images can help illustrate what you want to say. Because you know: A picture says more than a thousand words! Especially in technical documentation graphics are used to put things in a nutshell. The reference of the graphics to the descriptive text is important. These references are created using item lines and/or item numbers, the so-called callouts. With COSIMA Release 7.0 you now have an integrated callout editor at your disposal with which you can easily add position numbers to your images yourself.

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DOCUFY Layouter: create your own layouts

Imagine there is a change in corporate design at your company. Maybe the change is only a general attempt to optimize existing layouts. Maybe it entails a completely new corporate identity with a new logo and different colors. Or maybe your company has a new division that makes new products. Any change, no matter what kind, will have a direct impact on your technical documentation. The cover page needs to be redesigned, and the way headers and footers look will change – as will headlines, safety notices and warnings. It is practical when technical writers can make these layout changes themselves, without any programming skills or troublesome extra work.

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A day in the life of an editorial department

In 2015, the SIEMENS AG Locomotive Documentation department wanted to introduce a Component Content Management System (CCMS) to optimize its editorial process and chose COSIMA go! from DOCUFY. In this article, system administrator Tobias Zieringer describes the introduction of the system:

… I had only just arrived in the office when my mobile rang. The sales department wanted to know when the documentation for our new customer would be ready, oh, and they needed replies to the review comments from last week as soon as possible.

My colleague gave me a questioning look: “How will we have time to introduce a new CCMS? What are the aims of the new system? Should we choose an off-the-shelf product, or start from scratch? And how does publication configuration even work?”

“Enough questions, let’s just get started,” I replied: “There no such thing as the perfect moment!”

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Making space for information

DOCUFY Guest post for the doctima blog

Current trends like digitalization, industry 4.0, mobile computing, social selling and big data will influence the products of tomorrow and, ultimately, impact the future development of our entire society.
Technical documentation is not immune to these changes, of course. On the contrary – information is increasingly becoming the lubricant of our digital world, and who is better placed to provide it than the technical documentation sector? It now has a unique opportunity to leave behind its traditional wallflower image and become a major player in corporate structures.

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The most important department at the company

I have a dream: that technical documentation will become the most important department at a company.

When I presented this dream during my opening speech at our 2016 DOCUFY User Meeting, the audience was exhilarated. But we all know what the reality of today’s documentation work looks like. The technical documentation department rarely has a lobby on the management board and is viewed by many as a mere cost factor that needs to be kept at a minimum. I remember making a visit to a large producer of household appliances. The technical writer there had managed to invite her boss to a meeting about their content management system. He opened the meeting with the words: “I personally think that technical documentation is superfluous. We only have a documentation department because we are required to by law.”

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