Connectors at a Glance - Fluid Topics - Latest

Whenever different teams use different tools to create content, there is a risk of creating content silos that hinder content accessibility. Fluid Topics empowers content creators and managers to break down these silos and publish any type of content to a centralized repository, as demonstrated in the following illustration:

Connectors simplify the publication process by transferring different types of content directly to Fluid Topics. Along the way, they make content easier to find by applying metadata generation rules and protect content by implementing access rights.

Connectors are also helpful when migrating documentation from one format to another or mixing legacy documents that are still relevant with new documents that complement them.

As a Content Delivery Platform, Fluid Topics provides a seamless content experience for readers thanks to the ability of its connectors to ingest any content regardless of its initial format.

A quick presentation about all the dynamic publishing capabilities of Fluid Topics is available in this video.

The following list shows the official Fluid Topics connectors and the types of content they support:

• FTML: HTML5 content from any application, including multimedia.
• UD: Unstructured documents such as PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, videos, and more.
• DITA: Content created using authoring tools such as Ixiasoft CCMS, Heretto CCMS, Componize CCMS, oXygen XML Author, DITAToo, Doxygen, and Tridion Docs.
• Microsoft Word: DOCX files.
• MadCap Flare: Content created in MadCap Flare.
• Adobe FrameMaker: Content created in Adobe FrameMaker.
• Author-it: Content created in Author-it.
• Paligo: Content created in Paligo.
• Markdown: Archives containing Markdown files.
• OpenAPI: OpenAPI documents.
• External: Documentation from an external source.

Along with these official connectors, Fluid Topics supports integrations with software such as Salesforce and Confluence as well as with Gitlab, Github, BitBucket, Jenkins and any other type of Continuous Integration system.

Specific scripting or development skills may be necessary when automating publication workflows and configuring Fluid Topics integrations.

Exploring possibilities beyond the official Fluid Topics connectors may come with consulting or licensing fees.

Teams at Fluid Topics use the following tools to create content:

• Author-it.
• Text editors such as Visual Studio Code and TextEdit, with or without specific tools and CI integrations (GitLab and ftpub).
• oXygen XML Author (with the Fluid Topics add-on).
• Doxygen.
• Microsoft Word.
• Jira (using APIs to publish).
• Camtasia.

Our documentation portals implement the following connectors to publish this content to the Knowledge Hub:

• The default Author-it connector.
• The default FTML connector.
• Custom FTML connectors.
• The default DITA connector.
• The Microsoft Word connector.
• The default Unstructured Document connector.
• An external connector.

Thanks to the power of Fluid Topics, our teams can publish all of this content to the same documentation portal. Moreover, they can make it easy for users to search for specific information originating from any source while protecting content from being accessed by users who do not have the right to see it.