Igniting a (DITA) pilot!DITA L&T Specializations at Gaz Métro

Presented by

Raymond BissonnetteSenior Training Advisor

Revision: 2016-03-16

CMS / DITA North AmericaReston, Virginia | April 4 – April 6

About Gaz Métro

Largest Natural Gas distributor in Québec

The only French speaking company in the CGA-AGA

Faced with

information management issues

some legally mandated authoring issues

increasing expectations from all consumers

training and engineering working closer

limited budget and man power

About our Training Center

In operation for more than 40 years

Part of the HR branch of the company

Three teams (corporate, internal an external)

Public offering under the trade name

École de technologie gazière

Lab containing over 250 appliances

Large workshop equipped for distribution training

Recently started writing work instructions with engineering

With the internal team (Gaz Métro’s employees technical training)

Total of 15 authors/trainers across the three teams

About Me

Working at Gaz Métro for 32 years

As a draftsman and service technician

As a technical trainer since 1989

As a senior training advisor for the last 10 years

Started scripting VBA when it came available (early ‘90)

Built a first web site in '94

Learned about DITA around 2004 *

Have been reading the [DITA User] Yahoo list since

* Through France Baril’s article (The mechanics of a single sourcing project)

Table Based Word Templates

Course Plan

Work Instruction

Hands-On Workshop

Custom Ribbons and VBA

Plan de cours

Évaluation théorique et pratique

Cartable électronique

…

Existing IA

Links Management Issues

Content Client/Curriculum/Courses

?lead to the creation of the “electronic binder”

The Electronic Binder

was replacing the

hard cover students

and trainer’s binders

from the ‘90s

Document Management Challenges

More job roles are continuously integrated into our

training programs and courses, lot’s of content is

shared between courses

Competency based grading (used for automated

dispatching) and unionized workers require a specific

exam by job roles

Keeping the electronic binder and the course plan in

sync is a challenge

Manually capturing the objectives and agenda table

outside of the content map is problematic

Profiling Exams in Word

was an unsustainable solution

Igniting a DITA Pilot

After looking for a while at products that could replace

our current toolset, a new management team decided

to start working on the information model and common

deliverables between our three business units

A representative Pilot Team was created and met with

Comtech in spring/summer 2015 to develop the I.M.

The first pilot, with the objective to validate the

proposed I.M. was conducted during autumn 2015

The Pilot Team

• Raymond• Senior advisor

• Pilot lead• Josée• Corporate training team

• Map author (OJT focus)

Josée

Manager Dawn

Consultant

• Simon• Internal team

• Map and Topic author

• Serge• External team

• Topic author

Devy Christian Normand

Senior

advisors

Information Model Overview

Using Custom Attributes

Is an easy specialization to implement

Recommended as a best practice in most implementation

To filter and flag content (for specific requirements)

To trigger Schematron rules against templates

The following attributes were added

ccms – explicit tagging (learningMap vs 1.3 new map types)

region – regional offices (for filtering regional content)

strategie – main learning strategy (mostly for lessons)

tag – generic attribute (leaving outputclass available)

unite – business unit (for specific team requirements)

Doc Types and Templates

Templates and Schematron

While Schematron does not provide the same

functionality as other schema types, it is quite flexible

and much easier to develop

Limiting specializations as much as possible

To a few custom attributes

And some basic constraints

Schematron also represents a possible foundation to

address our legal (gender related) authoring issues

While this approach might not scale to a large

distributed organization, it does fit our smaller team

context well enough

The Anatomy of a Template

Improving The Authoring Experience

Without the Editor CSS With the Editor CSS

mapref {display: none !important;}

Igniting the Main Burner

The modeling phase pilot was a success (autumn 2015)

We’ve been able to demonstrate interesting options

Applicability of the L&T specializations

Different reuse strategies

Using Subject Schemes

Schematron and Quick Fixes

Handling the pilot files to selected cCMS suppliers

RFP prepared with Comtech

Preparing for a Second Pilot

After the RFP winners are selected

With new users in a “sand box”

Creating Document Shells and Plugin

A best practice is to package customised document

types and transformation targets as a plugin

A doctypes plugin was created along with the pilot

update to the DITA 1.3 vocabulary

The plugin contains custom attribute specialization and

some basic constraints (mostly removing domains we don’t use)

Custom transformation types will be added later on

com.gazmetro.etg sets the stage to have more

Gaz Métro doctypes/transtypes in the future…

Engineering is probably next on the list!

Why DITA 1.3?

To better support learning content (assessments)

Richer markup in learning interactions

New learningGroup and learningObject maps

Integrated MathML and SVG domains

We still link to SVG files though

Investigating usage of MathML…

The deliveryTarget attribute

Frees the product attribute for another usage

The new troubleshooting topic type

Branch filtering

Outputs vs doc types

Preparing a RFP for a CCMS

Workshops were held with Comtech and RFPs were

sent to a few selected suppliers at the end of February

Proposals were opened last week and requests for

demonstrations were sent to selected vendors

A copy of our pilot was sent along to be used in the

vendors’ demos, which are scheduled for next week

A sandboxed installation will be used to develop and test

our custom transformations once a product is selected

Change Management

Involving HR and other collaborating departments

Progressive implementation

With three different teams

Progressive training

Structured writing

DITA, XML and Web Standards

The ETG Information Model

Working with an XML Editor

Working with the ETG cCMS

Coaching and support

Which is often more important than initial training

Changing Mindset

Old period/time driven map New module/lesson driven map

Matching People to Work on Smaller Tasks

Understanding How the Pieces Fit Together?

Communicating the Publishing Process

Autumn 2015 Spring 2016

Pilot 1 Pilot 2

The Conversion and Migration Processes

Conversion to DITA

Could be semi-automated

With manual cleanup and completion

Now needs to match the information types

Investigating Stylo Migrate to help with the conversion

Migration to a cCMS

Will we migrate every files?

The migration plan still needs to be worked on

It depends on the final products that will be selected

Vendor and third party will most likely take part in the process

What’s next?

Vendors demos and purchasing

Installation and configuration

Integration (development)

Plugin (development)

Testing (sand box)

Training (users)

Deployment

Conversion

Migration

Management (and Long Term Support)

Questions?

?