Business value
Whenever different teams use different tools to create content, there is a risk of creating content silos that hinder content accessibility. Fluid Topics allows content creators and managers to break down these silos and publish any type of content to a centralized repository.
Connectors allow Fluid Topics to ingest a specific authoring format. Connectors also 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.
Feature overview
The following list shows the official Fluid Topics connectors and the types of content they support:
- Adobe FrameMaker
- Antora
- Author-it
- Confluence
- DITA
- External documents: documents from an external source.
- FTML: HTML5 content from any application, including multimedia.
- Jinja: JSON or YAML content.
- MadCap Flare
- Markdown
- MkDocs
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Word
- OpenAPI
- Paligo
- SCHEMA ST4
- Unstructured documents: documents such as PDFs, videos, and more.
- To add a connector to a Fluid Topics portal, see Sources.
- The list of official connectors is constantly evolving. Check with a Fluid Topics representative to see if additional connectors are available. Undocumented connectors include Salesforce or SuiteHelp.
- It is also possible for clients to develop their own connectors using the
fluidtopicsPython package.
- It is possible to attach one or more files to any structured document by using the map attachments feature.
- It is possible to assign metadata to documents in various formats using a control file.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites to use connectors.
Development skills may be necessary when creating a custom connector.
Contact the Fluid Topics Customer Service team to ask for the creation of a connector.
Example
Teams at Fluid Topics use the following tools to create content:
- Author-it.
- Text editors such as Visual Studio Code and TextEdit to edit Markdown.
- Oxygen XML Author (with the Fluid Topics add-on).
- Microsoft Word.
- Jira (using APIs to publish).
Our documentation portals use the following connectors to publish this content to the Knowledge Hub:
- The default Author-it connector.
- The default Markdown connector.
- The default DITA connector.
- The Microsoft Word connector.
- The default Unstructured Document connector.
Thanks to the power of Fluid Topics, our teams can publish all of this content to the same documentation portal. Moreover, they protect content from being accessed by users who do not have the right to see it.