TCI - Tech Comm Distro Requirements

This page is attempting to capture all of the major requirements for a tech comm web CMS. Please note that we are not trying to define what's needed for Drupal.org docs (for an overview of the doc tools that are currently planned for Drupal.org see Help and Curated/Official Documentation System) but rather to sketch out what a complete stand-alone tech comm CMS would look like and how far Drupal could be configured to meet those needs. In fact, some of these requirements may not be possible or practical at this time (or ever) in Drupal, but it would be good to know what they are and to know know whether they might be addressed. Also some features (e.g. taxonomy) may be built in to Drupal, but we'll still include them here.

Hopefully this page will lead to the creation of a tech comm distro which would benefit the tech comm community directly and would indirectly benefit the Drupal docs by introducing more technical writers to Drupal. If this distro were created and actively maintained it would also likely feed back enhancements to the drupal.org documentation tools.

Authoring

• In-place, true WYSIWYG editing with the ability to limit features to only valid markup options
• Track changes
• Macros
• Search and replace across single page, map or sitewide
• Copy and paste from Word, Framemaker, Open Office etc.
• Add images and videos
• Apply conditional text by pointing and clicking (e.g. can choose from valid conditions from a separate block or a popup)
• Toggle display of conditions on and off
• Apply variables by pointing and clicking (e.g. can choose valid variables from a separate block or popup).
• Spellchecking (using custom dictionaries)
• Wiki syntax available
• Able to define and validate rules for structure (e.g. specify that an h3 heading must go after an h2 heading with some body text in between the two headings)
• Create walkthroughs of web based applications (including external/non Drupal sites)

Content management

• Manage conditions
• Manage variables
• Manage dictionaries (taxonomies)
• Manage content maps using a drag and drop UI
• Show in what maps a chunk of content displays
• Manage translations and translation workflow
• Import, validate/clean legacy content (Word, HTML etc)
• Digital asset management (DAM)
• Unique IDs for content
• Able to provide a central doc server from which other systems can be updated

Project management

• Create projects and tasks
• Define teams and team members
• Create and track budgets
• Assign work to team and/or team members
• Status reports
• Issue queue

User experience (i.e. doc end user)

• View content appropriate to conditions (e.g. version, role etc)
• Submit feedback
• Submit a translation
• Flag a page or section as 'favorite'
• Notification of changes to favorites (option of getting emails at various intervals or just onsite)
• Download/print PDF of page or all content in a map
• Faceted search
• Dictionary terms highlighted with definitions displayed on mouseover
• Interact with walkthroughs