LavaCon 2017 - Building Catwalks Between Silos: Using Taxonomy to Drive Engagement from Content Marketing to Product Docs

@joepairman #LavaCon
Building Catwalks Between Silos
Using taxonomy to drive engagement from content marketing to product docs

Attack of the killer silos: separate language
& processes for each team
~ Docs

~ Docs
~ Support

~ Docs
~ Support
~ Marketing

~ Docs
~ Support
~ Marketing
~ Engineering

Will a mega-silo solve the problem?
~ Everyone authors in a big
(DITA?) CMS
~ Anyone can reuse anything
~ Single source of truth for all
content, from product catalogs
through internal policies to
random notes?
~ All those remixed deliverables!

The common experience of a mega-silo
~ Complicated
~ Hard to navigate
~ Restrictive

The common experience of a mega-silo
~ Complicated
~ Hard to navigate
~ Restrictive
~ At worst, like a jail
Carroll County Jail Complex

Separate silos are actually not so bad

We need streamlined communication,
not enforced conformity

Catwalks span silos

Taxonomy (& semantic tech) spans systems
~ What Patrick Lambe calls “boundary spanning”

Taxonomy is:
~ A way to keep track of things that are important to your
organization
– Products, features, versions, environments, teams, users, tasks…
~ A way to keep track of names for those things
– E.G., “hard reset” / “factory reset” is called “master reset” by one team,
and queried by some users under “start over”…
~ A way to indicate some broad relationships between those things
– For support/users, hard reset is a type of reset, under troubleshooting
– For s/w engineers, hard reset falls under core system functions

We tag content with taxonomy “concepts”,
so that we can:
~ Find it in “containers”:
site nav; doc folders
~ Filter it (e.g. facets)

We tag content with taxonomy “concepts”,
so that we can:
~ Find it in “containers”:
site nav; doc folders
~ Filter it (e.g. facets)
~ Create “See also”
links
~ Let people search using
their own preferred
terms for things
~ And more…

A “concept” is:

A concept has a preferred label per language

It may have alternative or hidden labels

Key to semantic tech is allowing different
systems to refer to the same thing

Each concept has a unique ID:

The ID’s all we tag content with
(of course, authors need
to see the label)
https://mekon.poolparty.
biz/mekonchef3/164

Each platform reads the taxonomy
biz/mekonchef3/164
Filter results by:
Preparation method
Chop (23)
Combine (2)
Mince (3)
Shaved ice (1)
Shred (8)
Dietary suitability
Gluten-free
Halal
▸ More…
Type of dish
Main meal
Side dish
▸ More…

Label changes are picked up
biz/mekonchef3/164
Filter results by:
Preparation method
Chop (23)
Combine (2)
Mince (3)
Shave (ice) (1)
Shred (8)
Dietary suitability
Gluten-free
Halal
▸ More…
Type of dish
Main meal
Side dish
▸ More…

Hierarchy changes work too
biz/mekonchef3/164
Filter results by:
Preparation method
Flavoring / tenderizing
Marinate (5)
Dry rub (3)
Food processing
Chop (23)
Combine (2)
Mince (3)
Shave (ice) (1)
Shred (8)
Dietary suitability
Gluten-free
Halal
▸ More…
Type of dish
Main meal
Side dish
▸ More…

Coming up — two cases of content catwalks
~ Content marketing <> product docs:
Connected customer experience via authoring in
different silos
~ Crossing departmental boundaries and linking modular
information with a taxonomy of tasks

Spanning user experience boundaries

@joepairman #LavaConContent Marketing proof of concept

Appealing
recipes…

Link to related
products

But the link is
out of context,
and not obvious

By using structured content +
taxonomy, we could do better

@joepairman #LavaConStarting with a recipe taxonomy

@joepairman #LavaConTech writers create tech docs

@joepairman #LavaConMarcom creates recipes

@joepairman #LavaConIn FontoXML

Connecting key inline terms…

To the taxonomy concepts.

When we
publish the recipes
& blender docs
to DITAweb…

Users
can select a
preparation
method
or ingredient

…to
see the
attachment
that makes the
method easier

To
learn
more about
the attachment,
select the button

From here, you can
buy the product
directly

The doc automatically links back to the recipe,
and the recipe relates to “shave” and “blend”

Taxonomy
info can
also power
search
engine-
friendly
metadata

(What Google can do with Schema.org data)

(What
Google
can do with
Schema.org
data)

Questions
so far?

From spanning UX boundaries…

… to intra-enterprise boundaries

Users may not see un-spanned silos,
but they feel their effects
~ Users having to guess whether they’ll find what they need in
docs, support, communities, or marketing content
~ Inconsistent terminology across those resources
~ Lead-gathering getting in the way of easy engagement
~ Operational inefficiency so needed content isn’t available

Background
~ Project to make Talend’s support content:
– Easier to find (externally & internally)
– More efficient to author and publish
~ Re-architecting content
~ Design, development, & implementation of taxonomy
– Making it work for users & authors alike
– The process of developing a taxonomy can change the shape of
content itself

What were users looking for?
~ Specific goals when using the product
“database migrate oracle postgresql to”
~ Big-picture information
“architecture optimal”
~ Error messages, or troubleshooting
“Cannot commit flush transaction”
“Error converting data int java.sql.SQLException”
~ Rarely, whole guides (and some mentions of those were due
to conditioning?)
“Configuration ESB Guide Infrastructure Services Talend”

Re-architecting content:
a user goal or session per page / URL

Re-architecting
content:
a user goal
or session
per page /
URL
Taxonomy transform to
controlled values at
page level (via conref)

Task focus also reduced duplication & effort
~ From a comprehensive user
guide per product

Task focus also reduced duplication & effort
~ From a comprehensive user
guide per product
~ To a single instance of each task,
reducing product-specific
instructions to installs, etc.

Taskonomy: classifying
user tasks

Taskonomy*: classifying
user tasks
*Borrowed from:

Taskonomy: simplifying by
focusing on user tasks
Top-level tasks:
~ Bridge roles, tools, and environments
~ May correspond to usage lifecycle

An example set of suggested task categories
~ Profiling your data
~ Standardizing your data
~ Deduplicating your data
~ Ensuring data privacy
~ Modeling your data
~ Administering your data
~ Data authoring
~ Preparing your data
~ “Operationalizing data
preparation”
~ Organizing data stewardship
~ Cleansing and curating your
data
~ Installing, configuring and
upgrading
~ Deploying, administering and
monitoring

Final top-level tasks used to unify the content

Insight deep in the hierarchy
Users needed to see content related to their task…
…detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios

Cassandra overview / hub topic

Using taxonomy to weave pages together

Using centralized taxonomy
to co-ordinate and drive
structured content environment

Assembling text & media components
Authoring
tool
(Oxygen)
build maps Delivery
platform
(FluidTopics)
DITA XML
• re-use/re-assembly
• cascade changes
PDF
Web-based output

Assembling text & media components
Authoring
tool
(Oxygen)
build maps Delivery
platform
(FluidTopics)
DITA XML
• re-use/re-assembly
• cascade changes
PDF
Web-based output
Taxonomy
management
(PoolParty
semantic suite)

Talend still need some similar pages
Particularly installation instructions:
~ Products in the same family but with different bits to
install depending on subscription level
~ Different operating systems

Previous architecture for generating
different outputs from same source

Current example of variant content

As before, variants managed by “profiling”

Now, profiling sourced from taxonomy

Consistent, efficient, and queryable content

Summary
~ UX
To… Do this…
• Start building a taxonomy, or
pulling together existing
taxonomy resources
• Get stakeholders’ input, and collaboration, BUT:
• Don’t sacrifice user experience
• Don’t force everyone to use exactly the same
names and structures if it is going to put the
taxonomy project at risk
• Link taxonomies between teams /
organizations / systems
• Use web standards, with a URI for each
concept
• Provide a smooth, connected
contextual user experience
• Create content more efficiently
and sustainably
• Make as much use of taxonomy as you can
• Build applications based on taxonomy relations,
not fragile manual links

We help you make this stuff happen…
~ Taxonomy design: small or big; repurposed
or brand new
~ Metadata-based content delivery
applications
~ Taxonomy integration with authoring tools /
CMSs
~ Plus: will it work for you in the first place?
(content strategy audit)

LavaCon 2017 - Building Catwalks Between Silos: Using Taxonomy to Drive Engagement from Content Marketing to Product Docs

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