Hello all, We are in the process of gathering information before we select a CMS. Here is our basic request. If you are a vendor and wish to explain how your solution might fit our needs, feel free to contact me by email off-list. If anyone else wants to comment on the request in general, feel free to do so. I appreciate constructive comments. Regards,
Karen Otto Agilent Technologies Herrenberger Strasse 130 71034 Germany [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Introduction We are exploring Document/Content Management Systems for technical user documentation within our business unit. Some preliminary requirements for this system are described below. Our Content We create user documentation for integrated circuit testing equipment. Our audience is primarily engineers. Our current documentation set consists of approximately 30 user manuals plus 15 training sets. We produce these documents in pdf, paper, and Javahelp formats for both PC and Unix systems. Our Process We author documents in Framemaker, Word, and Powerpoint using PCs with NT/Win2k operating systems. We then produce an online document package (pdf) suitable for viewing on Unix systems. Authoring is shared across the following Agilent sites: ? Boeblingen, Germany ? Santa Rosa, California ? Hachioji, Japan ? Other satellite sites in Maryland, Australia and Colorado also author content Our Goal By implementing a Content Management System, we expect to: ? Reuse content between the various documents we produce ? Reduce the amount of unique content created ? Provide more customized documents to our users CMS/DMS System Requirements and Questions File Storage: the system knows the physical locations of the files it tracks, and does not require the end user to know the locations File Typing: files can be assigned to groups by type, based on the criteria we choose Metadata Services: defining data can be attached to a file (such as owner, status, creation date, topic, etc.) Collaboration Services: files can be checked in and out of the system and edited by several people, in many locations Versioning Services: a historical series of files are saved and can be retrieved as needed Workflow Services: files can be routed from worker to worker in an organized and standardized way Access services: end users can find files through tables of contents, indexes, and full text searches Merging possibility: parallel development should be possible, so that different people can work on the same file at a time and afterwards the file is merged Content types: system should support FrameMaker, Powerpoint, Word, CorelDraw, HTML, XML, (Audio, Video, Flash) Information architecture: the system should be able to handle different information structures and shouldn't be fixed to one architecture Publishing services: one file (chunk) should be the source for different kinds of publishing (pdf, html, etc.) possibility of content reuse Hardware requirements: system should run on NT/Win2K compatible with our existing network Database Software: which databases are supported (e.g. Oracle)? is a database included in the DMS/CMS software? Other points: system should be easy to use and quickly learnable system should be compatible with the tools we use (we prefer to access the content from within Framemaker) ongoing administrative effort from within Agilent should be minimal cross-regional support from vendor training should be available Turn key setup: what effort must be made from our site to start up a system? how much would it cost (10 seats, 3 sites) to build from scratch? Include HW as well as SW -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
