ePublisher Archive - Technical Communication

Archive for the ‘ePublisher’ Category

WebWorks Releases ePublisher Version 2012.1

Posted on: May 8th, 2012 No Comments

WebWorks goes to market with its newest version of ePublisher.

WebWorks ePublisher has been hard at work developing its latest release, version 2012.1. One of the pinnacles of WebWorks’ success is attributed to its in-depth understanding of the value of delivering great help documentation.

Today marks a very exciting day for the WebWorks family as they kick off their 20th anniversary with the first release of the 2012 series. This release not only showcases a new look and feel for ePublisher, but it also incorporates several advancements in customization.

For more information on some of the more notable advancements to this version of ePublisher, visit our Latest Release page. For a more in-depth analysis of version 2012.1, take a look at our Release Notes page.

Improved Look and Feel

One of the first things you will notice once you open ePublisher 2012.1 is the updated look and feel to the splash screen. Our new splash screen now displays four icons signifying each of the quarterly releases offered by the ePublisher platform. As each new quarterly release gets updated, the associated marker icons will fill in notating that you are indeed on the most current version.

ePublisher Start Page

While the start page is not a new feature to ePublisher, you will notice the updated look and feel has also carried over. This more aesthetic accent to the start page is just the tip of the iceberg, however. The ePublisher start page offers users many beneficial points of access. At the top left, you will notice the “At A Glance” section, which offers users avenues to view new features added in the latest release, as well as portals to the WebWorks support system. Just below that, you will see the “Recent Projects” section, allowing users to quickly access their most recent projects or start up new projects. Finally, to the right is one of the most useful and often overlooked features of the ePublisher start page, the “News” section, which offers a current feed from the WebWorks blog. Throughout the year, WebWorks will offer an assortment of insightful articles dealing with both ePublisher and the technical writing industry. Keep an eye out here for insightful whitepapers, ePublisher tips and tricks, upcoming appearances by the WebWorks team, and other communications as we strive to help you grow above and beyond your competition.

Advancements in Customization

Most notable to this release are the advancements in customization. WebWorks has made it easier than ever to customize the way your content is published through improvements to the customization UI and style designer’s preview mode. Check out a more detailed description of these advancements as well as some advances in WebWorks Reverb on our Latest Release page.

WebWorks version 2011.2

Posted on: July 15th, 2011 No Comments

The WebWorks team is hard at work developing ePublisher version 2011.2. Stay tuned to www.webworks.com for more information about this exiting release and its new features.

WebWorks Tips and Tricks: Transform Static Content into Engaging Web Pages

Posted on: July 1st, 2011 No Comments

Click the links below to view WebWorks’ Latest Tips and Tricks. Learn how to fully utilize WebWorks Reverb and its Disqus integration to turn your online help or published content into an engaging and interactive web page that will make your end users swoon.

STEP 1: Add WebWorks Reverb to your ePublisher Pro Project >>

STEP 2: Enable Disqus in your Format Settings >>

TIPS & TRICKS ARCHIVE #2 – ePublisher Reports

Posted on: September 27th, 2010

ePublisher is not just about converting your content from one format to another. While automating the publishing process by separating it from the authoring process is one of our key objectives, another is helping you develop the most efficient high quality output possible. To do this we generate reports on what ePublisher is doing and the status of your documentation at every stage of the production pipeline.

Using these reports you can easily find, and correct errors, as well as continue to fine tune your process to ensure that you deliver the best content in the most efficient manner possible.

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TIPS & TRICKS ARCHIVE #1 – Migrating Content From RoboHelp to a Wiki via ePublisher.

Posted on: September 24th, 2010

Recently we have being hearing from a lot of customers and prospects asking about how they can use WebWorks ePublisher to migrate content they have authored in Adobe RoboHelp and publish it to a wiki, and specifically the Confluence Wiki.

Here are a couple of different approaches that we have investigated and recommended to date:

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Which Version Am I Using?

Posted on: April 20th, 2010

With the recent release of 2010.1 we now have 8 supported versions of ePublisher in the market, plus there are still a few customers who have yet to upgrade from unsupported versions.

When you log a support call, or are chatting with either Customer Service or your Account Manager, it helps us help you if we know what version of ePublisher you are running.

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Project Management with ePublisher? Sure, why not?

Posted on: February 11th, 2010

We are used to ePublisher being used to generate online help, building technical websites and even developing eLearning content. Recently we have been talking to a number of customers who use ePublisher as part of their agile software development process as a way to ensure consistent and on-time deliverables.

All of these are great examples of just some of the potential uses of ePublisher. Another application that we don’t talk about too much, but has been a consistent part of many customer conversations is Project Management.

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The End of an Era

Posted on: January 29th, 2010

Yesterday we announced the release of ePublisher 2009.4, the culmination of what has been an exciting year of product development here at WebWorks.

In keeping with our standard policy of a two year rolling support window , this means that ePublisher 9.3 is no longer a supported version and is now officially classified as a Legacy Product.

This marks the passing of an era as we have now moved from products based on an incremental release number to supporting products based on a quarterly release cycle and easily identified by the date in which they shipped.

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It saves you how much?!!

Posted on: August 29th, 2008

Back in March I posted a short note about the white paper I’d written comparing the true long term costs of using the “free” DITA Open Tool Kit to publish your DITA content, against using a productized commercial solution, like ePublisher.

As a follow up to that paper I sat down and created a ROI (return on investment) tool that would allow someone to take the concepts I’d outlined in the white paper and apply some actual numbers to it. Of course the numbers I used were estimates derived from a combination of research and educated guesses based on my industry experience.

A few days ago one of our customers took the spreadsheet I’d developed and instead of using my estimated figures plugged his own actual figures in to it.

The results were staggering.

In summary for his twenty five writer technical publications shop

The actual cost to his organization (when you factored in purchase prices, training costs and time spent) in implementing and rolling out a DITA publishing solution using either the DITA-OTK or ePublisher were almost equal. In fact the actual difference was that ePublisher was 0.1 % more expensive.

Our contention has always been that the real savings in using ePublisher over the DITA-OTK is the long term costs of implementing changes and rolling those changes out. This customers figures did more than just confirm that – they gave results that we hadn’t even dreamed of.

For this particular customer, he calculated that every time they made a change to a publication design, or template, and rolled it out to all twenty-five writers it would cost them just over $3,000.

Making the same change and rolling it out using ePublisher – the cost would be under $30 !

A 100 fold reduction in cost for each change.

It doesn’t matter how much we as a company, or a marketing team, say that buying and implementing ePublisher is a more cost effective enterprise publishing solution than using the “free” DITA OTK, it only really has meaning when a customer proves it – and this customer has more than proved it.

Where's my 9.3?

Posted on: February 8th, 2008

Still waiting to hear from either Customer Service or your Account Manager about that ePublisher 9.3 request you submitted? You are not alone. Some of our customers may have noticed that it took a little while to hear back from us when they requested upgrades to ePublisher 9.3. In fact, some customers are still experiencing delays. So why is this happening?

The simple answer is that we used the release of ePublisher 9.3 to try something new in our internal process.

Coupled with a greater than expected demand for upgrades, we created a process that simply tried to do too much.

ePublisher 9.3 included a slight change to the licensing model that we hoped would streamline the process and make it more manageable and easier to administer for both ourselves and our customers. It seems to have had the opposite effect. We also decided to use the opportunity to do a data point check on customer information in our new Customer Relationship Management tool (making sure we had names, contacts details, product version, maintenance status and license information all up to date etc.)

The result was that what had largely been an automated process before has become a mix of automation and manually checking and verifying each request. While this has lead to improved quality and more accurate information in our customer database, it means that the process has slowed down considerably. Add in the demand for ePublisher 9.3 and our system became overloaded.

Over the last few weeks we have reviewed the process, made some changes, shifted priorities and the backlog has been substantially decreased, but we still have a backlog. The number of 9.3 upgrades we are processing each day is now being matched by the number of requests.

So we are reviewing the process once more, seeing what we can change, plus we are adding more resources to help alleviate the problem.

We are still in the process of upgrading our customer service capability. Our goal is to provide outstanding customer service, something that we regret has escaped us in the past. We are now striving for that goal and will not settle for less than achieving that goal. In the meantime, we are still learning, and dealing with some unexpected challenges. We are grateful for the patience and support that our customers have shown and look forward to smoother operations in the very near future.