Part 4: Top Three Resources for Arbortext Users

This is part four of the four-part series

If you're an Arbortext User, you should know about these resources:

1. Mailing list hosted by PTC/User
   
   The PTC/User portal (http://www.ptcuser.org) hosts the long-running Adepters mailing list. Arbortext engineers monitor the list as well as many long-time users and tools folks. If you have a question, it's a really good resource.
   
   The List Email Address is: adepters@lists.ptcuser.org
   
   You can join the list from the PTC/User portal: http://portal.ptcuser.org/index.php?mo=fo&op=si
   


2. The Adepters Information Archive
   
   The Adepters Information archive is located here http://www.adepters.org.
   
   Many Arbortext users regularly search it for help with difficult to solve issues. The archive was started by Karl Johan Kleist. In 2008, Karl changed career paths, and I've been maintaining it ever since..
   


3. Mailing List hosted by Yahoo Groups
   
   Yahoo Group Name: 3b2users
   
   3b2users is a list for users of Advent 3B2, now called Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher, for the exchange of information, hints and tips.
   


4. Introduction to DITA: A User Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture Arbortext Edition - JoAnn Hackos
   
   Although not an online resource, this is Arbortext-specific. Procedures and Examples in this book use Arbortext Editor.
   

Read the complete series:

1. Part 1: Resources for folks doing single-sourcing projects


2. Part 2: Top 6 book choices


3. Part 3: Top 12 online topic-specific resources


4. Part 4: Top 4 resources for Arbortext users.

Starting a User Group

We're doing our best to start a local PTC/User chapter in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have setup a MeetUp page and are preparing to launch this organization in coordination with the national PTC/User organization. When Arbortext was acquired by PTC, a lot of things changed for existing Arbortext customers. We were used to speaking directly with Project Management and with Developers (when necessary), and we had a strong and successful relationship with our Sales Representatives. After the acquisition, this changed dramatically. Sales Reps were replaced by VARs and many support calls were replaced by proposals for consulting work by PTC.

A lot of this has to do with the way PTC has traditionally done business. It also has to do with the separation between PTC and PTC/User. In this new structure, PTC expected that much of the user support and interaction for simple questions and implementation issues would be handled between users at local RUGs (Regional User Groups), through mailing lists, and the online PTC/User bulletin board.

After two years of adapting to the PTC world view and after becoming a PTC partner, we finally understand how to improve the experience of PTC/Arbortext users: We have decided to start one or more local user groups, to support the regions that our partnership with PTC defines. The SFBay RUG is the first. If you're in the SFBay, and you want to be a part of this group, please see the meetup page. Local customers will also be receiving an invitation from the PTC Channel Sales manager. If you're in another region, we'll do what we can to help you get a RUG started in your area, too!

SF Bay Meetup Page

PTC Technical Committee Meetings

I recently joined the Technical Committee for the PTC Arbortext product line. The technical committee is a customer-focused mini-conference where the attendees are customers of PTC and PTC project managers.

In addition to the Arbortext TC meetings, I attended two meetings for the other product lines -- Windchill and MathCad.

The Arbortext meetings were each hosted by two PTC project managers. One PM presented a particular feature ("Review") or product (Styler) or application (S1000D); the other would record, take notes, and run the projector (as most presenters were remote). The discussions were geared at finding how customers are using the product, what work-arounds they're doing, so PTC can address these as necessary. As in, what prompted the work-around and can they improve that experience?

The Windchill meeting had 4 user presenters who got 30 minutes each to present an issue and answer questions. These sessions were also hosted by a PTC PM, but the presentations were by user/customers. After talking to the Windchill users, this appears to have been the standard for the Windchill presentations. They said there was only one that was driven by PTC.

The MathCad meeting was similar to the Arbortext meeting, in that it was PM driven/presented. These guys are a lively group of users! I did some usability testing for the next release of the MathCad product. It's very friendly to new users. I haven't used MathCad (or maybe it was MathLab) since my Calc 3 class in college nearly 20 years ago. I had no problems writing or changing equations or doing simple problems (provided by the usability test).

Over the last two years, as PTC/User has taken over the annual conference, Arbortext users have been consistently disappointed by the lack of PTC presence there. We were used to having developers and product managers there to talk to, discuss issues and problems with, and discover strategies for handling particularly tricky requirements that weren't so easy to do. The Technical Committee structure appears to be the forum for that sort of interaction between customers and PTC. The focus was very much on finding out what issues customers have in the product and what the nice-to-haves and must-haves are. At the end of each session (not including Windchill), there was a prioritization of issues that came out during the session discussions.

We also got a bit of a preview of what's to come (to be updated in 6 months at the TC meetings in June).

Helping Arbortext Customers Get Started

After years of impartiality, we've decided to focus on what we do best: helping people get started. Regardless of your choice of doctype, we know that writers and publishers still need the right tools to be successful. We want to help people learn to take charge of their xml publishing projects.

After the acquisition of Arbortext by PTC, we saw an steady increase of new customers having problems implementing Arbortext based on insufficient information from inexperienced PTC sales staff and reseller-partners.

When I started working with Arbortext products, I was also learning XML, XSLT, publishing, content management, all at the same time. I was lucky enough to have a part-time expert consultant available to me to help get me started. She did the initial print stylesheet development, and taught me as she went. I was learning the technology while learning on a concrete example that, more importantly, was an actual deliverable! None of the training was generic or unrelated to what, eventually, I needed in order to deliver published documents on-time and with high quality print composition.

In addition, I was able to apply the lessons to begin the rest of the multi-channel outputs (3 versions of HTML, Palm Reader, and eReader) and have the expert consultant review my early work, help with hints to better optimize my code and polish my final output, as I took over and she phased out.

The expert was expensive, but we came in far, far under budget with respect to her. Having an expert do intensive training for me (as well as the early authoring staff), on our data, producing product-ready deliverables went a long way to getting me ready to maintain and enhance our publishing environment long-term.

It also got me ready a lot faster than we expected. We kept her on retainer for a period of time after the intensive training period. And we got our money's worth out of her. We were able to control our costs with regard to her: she was never sitting around or doing work that I was destined to do, or doing work that wasn't a product of her expertise.

It was a system that worked so well, we've been doing the same for our customers ever since.

We joined with PTC as a direct result of hearing customers cry out for temporary expertise that would help them get their staff proficient in the Arbortext products and technology. These were customers with limited budgets, that wanted to keep the work in-house, and grow the necessary expertise with existing staff resources.

We decided that we would answer the call and help customers who wanted what we wanted: working, polished, resusable content that could be published easily and efficiently with staff resources who were capable of making it happen.