Implementation of DITA content management system at Auto-Tech (Repco Australia).

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REPCO CASE STUDY (DITA)
Australian Society for Technical Communication
Conference 2014

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Hello!
Gareth Oakes goakes@gpsl.co
• Working with software development, authoring, publishing,
for 15+ years in A/NZ, UK, USA, Canada, India, etc.
• Chief Solution Architect for GPSL, based in Queensland
GPSL (Global Publishing Solutions)
• Structured content experts with a long history in technical
documentation technology: authoring, publishing, CMS
• Consultancy, software development, tools & training, etc.
• Arbortext representatives for A/NZ and worldwide
• Headquartered in UK, operating worldwide
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Summary
• Between 2011-2012 we worked with Repco to design and
implement an automotive content management system
(Autopedia www.autopedia.net.au)
• This system manages more than 250GB of content, and
provides conversion, authoring, and publishing capabilities
• Content is delivered to consumers via web
• Content is stored and managed in DITA format
• Content is a blend of own-authored topics and third-party
materials
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Agenda
Repco & Autopedia
Growing Pains
DITA Solution
Q&A
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Repco
• Leading supplier of aftermarket automotive parts in A/NZ
• Trade (workshops) and retail customers
• Annual revenue exceeds $1B, 5000+ employees, ~400 stores
• Founded in Australia in 1922, expanded to NZ in 1981
• Acquired by Genuine Parts Company (USA) in April 2013
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Autopedia
• Subscription product for mechanics and workshops
• Provides automotive service and diagnostic information, for
the majority of on-road cars in Australia
• Hierarchical retrieval of information based on subject area
and vehicle year/make/model/engine
• Access to hundreds of thousands of topics
(e.g. diagnostic codes, timing belt replacement procedures,
wiring diagrams, component locations, labour times guide)
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Autopedia screenshot

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Autopedia History
• Circa 2010 “Auto-Tech Encyclopedia” was a CD mailout
subscription, with a very limited range of content, dated UI
• Business was unable to grow
• Manufacturers do not supply manuals or service information
to non-brand workshops …
• Therefore content was originated by Repco technical writers,
who would often rent and strip a vehicle to document it
• This process is slow and expensive
• Vehicles becoming more complicated and computerised
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Autopedia Growing Pains
Summary of problems at this point:
• Lack of up-to-date content, and poor vehicle coverage
• Expensive and slow to maintain and grow the content set
• Consumer demand for online product (not CDs)
• Business demand for “tiered” product offerings (think
Foxtel subscriptions)
Repco came up with a vision for “Encyclopedia 2.0” (Autopedia),
and engaged with GPSL to design the solution …
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SOLUTION

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Autopedia Solution

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Points of interest: content
• All content stored as standalone topics (DITA 1.2)
• Each topic is tagged with vehicle applicability (e.g. same
engine may be used across multiple makes/models/years)
• Certain “semantics” are added to the content only where
required to support web site display needs
• Good balance between simplicity of system versus
redundancy/reuse of content
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Points of interest: conversion
• Repco content (makes up only 1% of content):
• Existing content was migrated by GPSL to DITA format
• New content is authored by Repco in DITA
• Third-party content (imported from USA):
• Arrives monthly, in multiple formats: database, CSV,
custom XML, image files
• Converted to DITA format: all relationships resolved and
output as topics, grouped by vehicle applicability
• Conversion runs monthly but the update process will only
send new or changed content to the web site
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Points of interest: delivery
• All content is transformed to HTML for delivery
• Web server receives content and updates the navigation
structures according to a “vehicle mapping table”
• Bulk of contents are images which are hosted on a CDN
• Due to size of content, we feed minimised update packages
(rather than complete content replacement packages)
• Content can be published/unpublished at the web site level,
the DITA CCMS acts as staging area and master repository
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Tools & Technologies
• Content: DITA 1.2 (with specialization by GPSL)
• Authoring: Arbortext Editor
• DITA CCMS: Arbortext Content Manager
• Publishing: Custom code (Java and XSLT)
• Conversion: Custom code (Java and XSLT)
• Reporting: Custom code (Java)
• Web server: Umbraco (not setup by GPSL)
• Hosting: Arbortext by Repco IT
Web server by Telligence
CDN by Rackspace
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Project timeline (approx. 9 months)
• Design sessions with Repco, and specification of system
• Planning sessions with web team
• Development of custom code, Agile, with Repco involvement
• Development of vehicle mapping table (Repco)
• Migration of existing content to DITA
• Integration of system components and testing
• Documentation, training and knowledge transfer
• Initial conversion and content upload (200+GB)
• Go live!
• Ongoing technical support
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Project launch
• Positive response from market – within the first 6 months:
• Most existing customers migrated to the new system
• More than 1000 customers were signed up
• Revenue goals and ROI were met within the first year
• Customers loved the new site design and range of content
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Project footnotes
• DITA worked very well for this system, we used basic topics
with a very light layer of specialization for vehicle tagging
• Further specialization may be required in future, there are
consumer demands for more dynamic representations
• Sheer size of the content caused many delays, and was not
fully taken into account at the start of the project
• Complexity of vehicle classification scheme required a
number of design changes during the development phase
• DITA CCMS needed specific configuration and tweaking to
handle the large volume of images
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Summary of DITA Benefits
• Single-sourcing
• Content reuse
• Quality and consistency
• Speed and efficiency
• Content portability
• Enjoys cross-vendor support amongst a wide range of tools
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Summary of DITA Drawbacks
• Requires a level of XML familiarity and knowledge
• Requires content to be authored as topics
• May require new or different software tools
• May turn you into “one of those DITA people” that runs
around recommending it to everyone else 
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Questions & Answers
Thank you! Please let me know if you want to hear more detail
Some areas I didn’t cover:
• Security
• System architecture
• Sales & subscriptions
• Vehicle mapping table
• Performance, reliability, availability
• Other?
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Attributes of DITA
• XML format provides “gold plated” solution for single-source
content that is also modular, reusable, flexible, portable
• Allows specialization, meaning the basic format is retained
with a domain-specific layer of tagging added
• Enjoys cross-vendor support amongst a wide range of tools
• DITA content is very flexible, and can be …
• Readily moved between applications, projects, customers,
suppliers, etc.
• Tagged with applicability information
• Enriched with semantic tagging, allowing for many
interesting uses and opportunities
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