The Knowledge Author – transitioning your DOCX/PDFs to HTML
Published: 2020-03-20 by qualitem-com-user-prod.
To call yourself a knowledge author, is to participate in knowledge management. The key term here is participate. In the context of corporate knowledge, I am defining knowledge as content that is unstructured (document-based), long-lived and highly valued by the organisation. If the content you curate, managed and archive is seen as important to your organisation, you are a knowledge author, congratulations!
My guess (and probably the reason you are still reading this) is that most of your content resides in DOCX/PDF files, but you understand the benefits of moving it to HTML. Back in July 2018, I wrote an article about why you should consider transitioning to HTML and I listed eight (8) reasons for this – https://www.qualitem.com/2018/07/02/8-reasons-to-convert-word-and-pdf-to-html.
The above article mentions the idea that a fundamental paradigm shift is needed. No longer should we think that DOCX and PDF is good enough as a reading format, nor should they be final destination for intranet content. DOCX and PDF are great for printing and we definitely need to retain the source content in these formats because it is easier to maintain. However, our intranet should be more interactive, responsive to mobile form factors and easy for staff to find the information they are looking for – not just a bunch of links to documents.
Should it live as DOCX/PDF forever?
Yes and No. I would encourage the source document remain as DOCX/PDF as these tools are best for editing and printing. However, think about what this means for mobile users. Let’s face it, DOCX and PDF are not ideal as viewing formats for mobile devices as they are near impossible to read and zoom in-out is clumsy.
If you think moving to the HTML is all too hard, you are not alone. Most knowledge authors are challenged by HTML and although the page creation experience is getting easier (through the use of WYSIWYG editors), you still have the issue of managing images and other document-based artefacts and style formatting to contend with.
How can I more easily transition?
The paradigm shift to HTML needs to be led by you, the knowledge author. However, if you struggle to understand how, hopefully we can address that with a solution that elegantly integrates with Microsoft Word. In fact, a Word-based solution to your HTML requirements means you can have the best of both worlds.
Introducing Live Publish, a modern Word add-in that publishes the Word content to your intranet as HTML pages. This empowers knowledge authors to create HTML themselves and removes the need for IT staff to intervene.
For more information, please refer to https://www.qualitem.com/livepublish/