Stop Doing the Work of the CMS! - Part 1

Picture this: you have a flat tire and you pull over to change it. To achieve your goal of changing the tire you perform the following tasks:

1. Put the jack under the car
2. Place the wrench on the lug nuts
3. Crank away with (on) the wrench and remove all of the nuts
4. Pull on the tire
5. Attempt to lift the entire car up by yourself
6. Step back and observe your conundrum

Did you notice the missing step? (Lifting the car with the jack, anyone?)

So what is the moral of this story? Don’t attempt to lift the car by yourself when you have a fully capable tool that can help you. The same can be said for content management systems – don’t attempt to “create” key activities of the information lifecycle on your own, let the tool do it for you.

In my previous post, E-mail is NOT a collaboration solution, I talked about why collaboration through email is a bad idea and offered some CMS alternatives to this [horrendous] practice. Today, I’m going to cover a few initial recommended practices with your new CMS so you’re not trying to lift the car without the help of a jack.

Note: the following recommendations are based on the assumption that your CMS has versioning capabilities and they’re enabled.

Recommendation 1: One instance, one file – period. Do not physically label versions of files that are stored in a CMS in the filename.

For example, let’s say we’re creating a new Product Manual for a VCR (remember those?). When the Manual document is created and loaded in a CMS it’s automatically assumed to be version 1.0 (or 0.1, 0.01, etc. depending on your CMS’ configuration). So, always leave the “ver X”, “vX” (where X is typically a number) out of the file name.

Why?

Because the CMS is controlling the versions internally behind the senses. For example, if you have “Product Manual v2” and it’s iterated on multiple times, you might have 10 versions of “Product Manual v2”. How do you explain that to your consumers?

“Mike, check version 10 of version 2 in document version 8.”

Mike is thoroughly confused at this point and doesn’t want to use your document at all. Instead, call the document “Product Manual”, let the CMS control the versioning. When it’s ready for public consumption publish “Product Manual” and let the incremental versions be contained behind the scenes.

Next Post: Recommendation 2: Communicate revisions inside of the document