This is a presentation I gave at the 2016 MadCap MadWorld conference in San Diego. You know that MadCap Flare has content reuse features, but are you using them to your best advantage? In this session, Paul Pehrson of DocGuy Training discusses the top five content reuse features available in Flare and shows you how you can improve implementation in your current projects. We’ll also talk about variables, conditions, snippets, snippet conditions, and more.

1. PRESENTED BY
Top Five Content Reuse Features
in MadCap Flare
Paul Pehrson
@docguy | www.docguy.training

2. About Me
• (Ab)using Flare for 10
years
• Full time technical writer
at Venafi
• Part time Flare consultant
and trainer at DocGuy
Training

3. Content Reuse? Single-Sourcing?
• Single source content, used in multiple places in your
project
– Images
– Content chunks (snippets)
– Variables
• Multi-channel publishing
– Online vs. PDF
– Different audiences

4. How does Flare help me single source?
• Variables
• Snippets
• Conditions
• Snippet Conditions
• Nested TOCs
• Target Conditions

5. Variables
• Strings of unformatted text
• Variable formats
– Plain text
– Multi-select
– Date/Time

6. Snippets
• Chunks of formatted content
• Small as a word
• Large as an entire topic
• Ways to use
– Single sourcing
– Boilerplate content

7. Conditions
• Customize content for
– Output Format
– Deliverables
• Apply condition to:
– Character, word, phrase, sentence (span conditions)
– Paragraph, multi-paragraph, div (element conditions)
– Topic, folder (Content Explorer)
– TOC node
– Glossary terms (Flare 12)

8. Snippet Conditions
• Special type of snippet where condition applies at the
snippet level instead of the project level
• Not audience- or deliverable-based
• Topic destination-based
• Apply condition at topic level (Flare 11 or 12)
• Apply condition at snippet-level (Flare 12 only)
• Special use of variables in snippets (Flare 12 only)

9. Nested TOCs
• Insert TOCs in other TOCs to prevent duplication of
content
• Especially useful for multiple writers in a project

10. Target Conditions and Variables
• How to set condition and variable settings in the target

11. Best Practices
• Tie conditions to a deliverable
– Admin guide vs. Standard Guide (only need 1 condition)
– Admin guide vs. Installation Guide vs. Standard guide (maybe need 2 or
3 conditions)
• Have strategy for creating and using conditions
• Minimize number of condition tag sets, variable sets
• Create separate variable and condition sets for snippet-level
conditions and variables
• Create boiler-plate snippets for an easy starting point

12. Q&A

13. Thank You!
Visit my website for more information on consulting and training opportunities
www.docguy.training