Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite Panned By TechComm Bloggers

adobe robohelp,adobe captivate,adobe framemaker,framemaker,robohelp,technical communication,technical writing,Web 2.0,MadCap Feedback Server,workflow collaboration

Today’s an easy subject: Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite. This includes RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate and Acrobat 3D.

I started off my Adobe day with a spot on Ron Miller’s site I linked to from within the HATT community. Ron’s got an open mind:

 When Adobe demonstrated RoboHelp 6 for me last winter, I was not impressed at all, but with some time to rework it, they appear to have answered all the criticisms I had of RH6 and then some with RH 7. What’s more they have integrated it with Frame to create a fully featured publishing environment.

While this is plenty to write about, it’s been a long week and I’ve been under the weather. So let’s look at other key influencers in the TechComm industry starting with Astoria Rich Media - Dan Ortega:

For example, all of Astoria’s customers are heavy users of technical documentation products, and a significant percentage of them are FrameMaker users. 

The problem for FrameMaker users is that they work in isolated silos, which is one of the characteristics of a desktop solution.  They may have workflow integration with other Adobe products, but they lack integration into the broader production workflow.
 
… What is required is full visibility into the documentation production process for teams that may be spread out across 24 time zones, operating in 30 languages, and delivering documentation to over 100 countries. 

The desktop-centric model just doesn’t work in this context.
 
If Adobe plans to succeed in the enterprise, they have to take a much broader view of how technical documentation teams work by moving beyond the creation perspective. 

They need to adopt a perspective that encompasses the entire production cycle, which by default means they need to incorporate a robust, muscular content management system that is delivered on-demand and optimized for rich media.   

Dan has also examined Wikis in the workplace which could help push reviewed material through collaboration. I’m curious and I’ve only recently started reading Dan’s blogging. They’re full of raw data and analysis which I totally dig so I highly recommend reading the site’s posts.

I would love to hear of workflow collaboration solutions with FrameMaker that give what Dan’s looking for.

Update: Astoria has a strong custom solution suite for these collaboration solutions.

I am still looking to review the MadCap Feedback Server this week or next, depending on when I’m feeling better.

According to the usage claims I’ve heard, Feedback Server demonstrates a Web 2.0 step in the right direction towards the production cycle by addressing the reviewer’s change requests with the ability to comment directly on each page.

Fair and Balanced Segment

Let’s talk about what other bloggers think of the TechComm Suite. Bill and Sarah are fairly influential in the industry. Besides, they don’t like me very much so we know that their thoughts are completely independent from what I might write.

Here are the thoughts from Bill Swallow, HATT list owner. Quoted from waxing techcomm: Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite: My Thoughts

Adobe uses a few catch phrases to describe the relationship between FrameMaker and Robohelp. The press release describes it as an “integrated solution“.

This to me indicates that the two tools are indeed working together or are assimilated somehow into each other in order to create a seamless work flow…

Totally hooked me. I’m always interested in workflow collaboration. I’ve quoted some of Bill’s previous blogposts here because he’s very savvy in that space. That’s what I’ve been focused on for the past year or so.

So what is Adobe telling me they’re going to give me that improves my workflow collaboration? Bill concludes:

…In essence, the pairing of FrameMaker and RoboHelp is still a repurposing solution, since once you import into RoboHelp, your FrameMaker source is not updated should you start making tweaks in RoboHelp.

Some may argue that WebWorks Publisher and such tools are not single source tools either since they too import .fm and .mif files to produce output, but the reality is that these tools are not authoring tools. They are conversion filters, which take a master content set (FrameMaker) and convert that single content source to an output. Any content changes MUST happen in FrameMaker.

I’m sure I’ll be getting my fair share of grief over this distinction (I’ve already been countered on a couple mailing lists in response to these single sourcing claims) but when you look at the model, the RoboHelp solution is still a repurposing solution.

No grief from me, Bill. I was hoping that this release would have much more innovation, but I’m once again disappointed.

One issue which could be considered collaborative would be whether one could use DreamWeaver generated files without RoboHelp breaking the code. That would be cool for updating / collaborating with others however I’m uncertain how this will work.

So, according to this review, I’m stuck learning a new GUI yet again if I’m a RoboHelp user who needs to update FrameMaker content, and vice versa if I’m a FrameMaker user.

That’s not very collaborative.

I was under the impression with Vivek’s blogpost that their Technical Communication would become more collaborative. He didn’t specify this, merely that they were offering …much closer integration.

Vivek’s conclusion:

Cross product integration is a long journey and with FrameMaker 8, we have moved significantly forward. For sure, we have many more milestones to cross.

I’m wondering why Vivek claims that cross product integration is such a long journey when their competition has done it with FrameMaker for about a year or so.

Therefore, it’s not seeming like RoboHelp is leading the market anymore, rather they are playing catchup. I could be wrong, but I really. Dont. Think. So.

Vivek concludes with:

Please do share your comments and suggestions.

Sure. But I don’t want to hold my breath with posting comments; last time I did that about the RoboHelp Server, it never showed up. One reason I started my own blog.

Another Fair and Balanced Adobe TechComm Suite Review

Here are some thoughts from Sarah O’Keefe who owns a company which is an Adobe Authorized Training Center, doing a lot of work with FrameMaker. Sarah is not very fond of me and insists that I not call RoboHelp 6 ‘SixOfRoboHelp’ because it’s disrespectful. I would say that her perspective is balanced and did I mention she’s not fond of me?

Yet Sarah is not impressed with much more than the price point drop of the bundle. Quoted from Palimpsest: Not So Creative Suite | eWeek analysis of TC Suite

Here is the unauthorized translation [of the article]:
This TC Suite is going to hurt our competitors, who are all providing point solutions. Even if you concede that, for example, Flare might be better than RoboHelp, when we put FrameMaker and RoboHelp in a single box with an attractive price point, it makes purchasing FrameMaker and Flare separately less appealing.

ePublisher Pro’s integration with FrameMaker is probably better than RoboHelp’s, at least for now, but licensing RoboHelp as part of the Suite is going to be much easier than justifying two separate purchases.

If we can piggy-back Captivate onto the big authoring tools (FrameMaker and RoboHelp), we’ll get incremental revenue from people who might have otherwise not bothered with buying a simulation tool.

So there you have it. Not exactly compelling, not exactly what the market’s wanting. But it’s cheap.And you get Captivate for next to nothing, undoubtedly the best part of the package.

Analysis

If Adobe truly understood collaboration and what the Tech Comm market needed, they would have also included Contribute in this package.