BIOVIA Structured Document Manager | Overview & What's New

Summary

The session introduces structured document management, highlighting its efficiency over traditional methods. It emphasizes the ease of collaboration, centralized control over formatting, and the ability to handle data-rich documents. The presentation covers core concepts like document maps, topics, and repositories, and showcases recent updates including template management, content duplication and move support, and user notifications. The session demonstrates how these features streamline content creation, management, and publishing across multiple formats and audiences.

Takeaways

• 📚 Structured Document Management (SDM) is a system designed to efficiently handle data-rich documents, such as CMC documents or regulatory submissions, by eliminating manual copying and pasting of data from one application to another.
• 🔄 The traditional document production method is time-consuming and lacks data traceability, whereas SDM provides a modern, efficient approach with web-based authoring, simultaneous multi-author collaboration, and automatic data management.
• 🌐 SDM stores content in a neutral XML format, allowing for easy publication to various output formats like PDF and HTML, and centralized control over the final output's appearance and styling.
• 🗂 The core concepts of SDM include document maps, topics, repositories, and render formats, which help organize content, control permissions, and manage the publication process.
• 🔧 The 22x FD04 release introduced significant updates to SDM, including powerful template management, usage analysis, content duplication, and move support to enhance content management.
• 📋 A document map is a structured list of topics, while topics are content fragments like text paragraphs, tables, or images that can be combined with external data and reused across multiple documents.
• 🏢 Repositories are used to organize content by team, department, or project, with different user roles and permissions, such as leader, author, and viewer, to manage access and editing rights.
• 🔔 The 3D experience platform uses notifications to keep users informed about events and changes within repositories, with options to customize the types and methods of notifications received.
• 📄 Templates in SDM control the structure and content of document maps, with topic templates containing instructions and examples to guide authors, ensuring consistency and quality across documents.
• 🔄 The ability to duplicate and move document maps and topics within the system allows for efficient content reuse and management, with automatic updates to all instances of a topic when changes are made.
• 👥 The session provided a comprehensive overview of SDM, its benefits, and recent updates, aiming to improve the understanding and application of structured document management for users.

Q & A

What is the main problem addressed by structured document management?

The main problem addressed by structured document management is the inefficiency and time-consuming process of handling data-rich documents, such as CMC documents or submission documents, where data needs to be manually copied and pasted from one application to another, and verified for each usage.

What are some of the challenges faced when managing large documentation sets with traditional methods?

Challenges include difficulty in tracing back to the originating application, managing copies of the same content in multiple documents, increased overhead of updating content in multiple locations, and difficulty in collaborating in team environments, especially when members are in different locations or time zones.

How does structured document management improve the authoring experience?

Structured document management improves the authoring experience by being web-based, requiring no software installation, allowing multiple authors to work on documents simultaneously, and managing all changes automatically. It also enables seamless combination of content and data in the same document, keeping the data up-to-date and traceable to the original source.

What is the significance of using a neutral XML format for storing content?

Using a neutral XML format allows the content to be published to various output formats such as PDF and HTML. It also provides centralized control over the format and appearance of the final output, enabling consistency and standardization across different teams and departments.

Can you explain the concept of a document map in structured document management?

A document map is similar to a document but contains a list of topics in the map. The content itself is stored in topics, which can be fragments like paragraphs, tables, images, or a combination of these. A data topic can contain data from an external system and can be combined with topics within a document map.

Repositories are used to organize content by team, department, or project. They allow different users to have different permissions as required. Maps and topics are organized by repository, enabling content organization and access control.

Repositories function by organizing related content and providing access control. They allow users to manage content in a structured manner, with different permissions for various team members.

What new features were introduced in the 22x FD04 release?

The 22x FD04 release introduced powerful template management, used analysis, duplication and move support, making content easier to manage. It also added the ability for users to create and manage their own repositories.

How do templates control the structure and content of document maps?

Templates control the structure and content of document maps by providing a predefined layout and content elements. They can contain topic templates with specific instructions and examples, guiding authors on what to include in each section. Templates ensure consistency and efficiency in document creation.

What happens when a topic is updated in a document map?

When a topic is updated in a document map, the changes are automatically reflected in all other document maps that include that topic. This ensures that the content remains consistent and up-to-date across all usages.

How can users be notified about changes in repository access or responsibilities?

Users can be notified about changes in repository access or responsibilities through 3D notifications. These notifications inform users about events of interest, such as being added, removed, or having their responsibilities changed within a repository.

What are the benefits of using a dedicated repository for templates?

Using a dedicated repository for templates allows for centralized control over who can edit and update the templates. It ensures that the templates remain consistent and standardized, which is crucial for maintaining the quality and integrity of the documents created from these templates.