SiteManager users are always surprising us with new and innovative approaches that we had not anticipated when we started the service. One of the latest such uses involves SiteManager as a support tool for a software development effort.

An increasing number of software developers are using standard HTML as the language of choice to deploy help files along with their software. Many development tools exist on the market to facilitate such development. These tools can be bulky and difficult to use especially when the team is not in a single geographic location. A large number of files are constantly updated and transferred from location to location for review, updates, and inclusion into the software.

SiteManager alleviates these issues, and makes the development of these files a lot smoother. This is accomplished through templates that use the XML content delivery capabilities of SiteManager to describe different portions of the screen. The process follows the following steps:

• Technical staff along with layout engineers develop the basic templates.
• The templates include the necessary combination of calls to allow parameter based content delivery.
• Non technical developers create the main textual content in TextManager.
• Any other content is created using the appropriate SiteManager service.
• A technical integration specialist creates the documents by invoking the templates with the appropriate parameters and saves the resulting files under the appropriate name recognized by the software.

SiteManager provides this development with capabilities otherwise difficult to achieve.

• By separating the template from the content, progress is made on both aspects at the same time. In fact, the templates are modified at any time to create better layouts and test customer reception.
• The physical location of the staff is no longer an issue. All the text is stored in a web-enabled environment accessible from any internet computer in the world.
• Technical knowledge and expertise in the development tools is no longer an issue. The text developer no longer needs an in depth technical knowledge of the development environment. Once the initial templates are created, the documents can be created by individuals who understand the end-user "lingo".
• There are no files to move from location to location and from server to server. Version control becomes a simple matter. There is one version and everybody is developing from the same source.
• The deployment help files are created once through the simple process of generating the template and saving files.

The developer currently has plans to integrate the distributed help files with an integrated online add-on. This feature will help users access any new information and enhances the developer's capabilities to react to customer needs sooner and without the expensive process of redeployment.