Content Fusion Cloud CMS Overview
We recently made available our Content Fusion content management server as a cloud solution, aimed at companies or individuals who want to securely manage, create, edit, review and publish technical documentation projects using the DITA XML standard without the need to install server side components on their own servers.
As a software engineer whose development has been mostly focused on the Oxygen XML desktop products, I've been skeptical in general of using web editing tools. But now, as I'm sipping my hot chocolate and using Content Fusion Cloud connected to the Oxygen XML Blog Git repository to write this very blog post, I see that things are running smooth indeed.
There is also a past webinar recording by Cristian Talau the Content Fusion project manager with an overview of the entire system.
I will list below some of the Content Fusion Cloud main characteristics and then I will try to expand on each of them. My last section in this article will be about what's missing and how it can be compensated.
- Create and manage an organization. Your organization will let you invite and manage members, control the subscription, authentication and security details.
- Assign roles in the organization. There are now two types of roles: writers and subject scheme members.
- Create projects in your organization. Your projects can be either local to the server or synchronized in real time with a private or public project on an existing public Git server like GitHub or GitLab.
- Work on projects with full support for editing the publication table of contents, project wide search and validation. For DITA XML files you will benefit from the rich possibilities offered for content reuse, filtering and customization offered by the standard. Full history support and mechanisms to merge changes and manage potential conflicts are included.
- Create, manage and integrate feature, release or review branches.
- Create review tasks and assign them to Subject Matter Experts. Review tasks can be edited sequentially or simultaneously by multiple SMEs.
- Use the AI Positron side view (with a separate subscription model) to make changes in your project, review content using the numerous included AI actions or vibe write.
- Define deliverables, create publishing templates and publish them to WebHelp or PDF formats. Limited output hosting is also included to test and see how your deliverables look like on the web.
- Integration with the Oxygen XML desktop applications via the Content Fusion add-on allowing Oxygen XML desktop users to edit or create review tasks in the Content Fusion platform.
- For Content Fusion projects which are synchronized with an external Git repository you can access the project content using any type of Git tools.
- A 30 day trial to freely use the CMS and see if it is fit for your use and organization.
And now let's expand on these features that Content Fusion Cloud offers.
Create and Manage Organizations
Your first contact with the Content Fusion Cloud web site will probably be to create your own organization. You have a 30 day trial so if you've been curious about working with DITA XML content or with a DITA XML CMS you can jump right in, create an organization, create a project and give it a try.
Depending on your Subscription model you will get a maximum number of authors and subject matter experts that you can invite to join you in working on the projects. You will also get a maximum storage capacity.
For example for the trial I can invite 5 writers and 25 SMEs to join my organization and I have a maximum of 5GBs of storage space to squander.
I use my GitHub account to login to Content Fusion Cloud, you can also use your Google or Single Sign On. The Authentication tab allows the organization admin to control various authentication related settings.
In general I found my organization's administration pages quite easy to figure out, I can invite members, assign roles, change various settings, the UI is well thought and intuitive.