Reuse content at the highest level possible

Always reuse the content at the highest level possible. For example, if a step contains a command and a note and you want to reuse both, reuse the step rather than reusing each individual element.

Always reuse product and application names

Reuse product names, application names, and snap-in names. If you do not see a name in the common topic, submit an issue to the Infosolutions project.

Do not use product or application names for generic references

You should only reuse the common product and application names when referring to the specific product or application. Do not reuse a product or application name when you’re making a generic reference. For example, if you’re talking about the Conferencing product, reuse the name. But if you’re just making a generic reference to the concept of conferencing, type the text and do not reuse the product name. Inappropriate use of the common product and application names is incorrect from a DITA perspective and it also has an impact on localization.

Reusing inline elements

You can reuse inline elements, such as uicontrol, wintitle, and cite.

Do not reuse the following inline elements:

• emphasis

• indexterm

• pre

• q

• simple-equation

• sstitle

• title

• tm

Avoid reuse of part of a sentence

To reuse a complete sentence in a paragraph, you can wrap the sentence in the ph element and reuse it. However, you should only reuse at the full sentence level. Do not reuse a few words in a sentence. This can create unexpected results in the English and issues in localized content.

Avoid conditions in the content that is set for reuse

When you add ID to element for reuse later, and if you need to set conditions to the element, do the following:

1. Checkout the topic and add an ID to the element that you want to reuse.

2. Reference the element in the target topic where you want to reuse.

3. Add the condition to the element that you reused.

Store reusable elements in container topics

Create separate common topics to reuse text in uicontrol and wintitle elements. Each project must also have a common topic for document titles in cite element. If you reuse other inline elements, you can use a single common topic, unless you have several inline elements to reuse and you want to create separate common topics.

Avoid content duplication across projects

For solution documents and products with several models, such as J100 phones, you might have to create common content for common features in the product suite. During the content planning and creation phase, check if the content is already present in other product documents.

Keeping multiple copies of similar content in the content source might increase the maintenance and translation efforts.

Here are some tips to look for common content during the content research phase:

If you find similar content, reuse the content from the source file in Tridion Docs rather than creating a new topic.

Avoid using xrefs to topic within topics that are reused

Where possible, manage links between topics in relationship tables. The use of cross-references can cause issues, especially with reused content.

• If you own common content that is reused, avoid using cross-references to topics wherever you can. When you use xrefs to topics and someone reuses your content, if they aren’t reusing the topic that’s the target of the xref, they’ll end up with a broken link in their output. It also causes potential problems related to localization, which are explained below.

• If you reuse a topic that contains an embedded xref and the target topic is not included in your deliverable, your output will contain a broken link. If you’re reusing topics that include xrefs to topics, request that the content owner move the xref to a relationship table link instead.

• When you reuse content that contains embedded xrefs, that creates a dependency on the topics that are the target of the xrefs. If the content is localized, all content that is referenced is included in the package sent for translation. So if you’re reusing content that includes xrefs to other topics, those other topics are included in the package for localization, even if you are only reusing an element in that topic that does not include the xref. This increases translation costs.

• If you create relationships between topics, you do not need to include a text reference to that topic.

Avoid duplicate IDs in a topic

When you copy an element, Tridion Docs copies the associated ID thus creating duplicate ID error in a topic.

To avoid duplicate IDs, copy only the text or copy the element with ID and delete the ID.

Content reference direction

To prevent circular references that cause delays in opening publication and Publication Manager crash:

• Always make references to common topics instead of the peer topics used in the project.

• Ensure that the direction of references must be in the direction depicted in the image.

For example, add frequently used content, such as steps, uicontrols, and wintitles in a common topic and reuse the content in Adding users, Editing users, and Deleting users. Do not reuse content from the Adding users topic in the Editing users topic.

Reuse icons with alt text

If your content contains a lot of icons, create a common topic with icons and the alt text in the image element. With this, the Localization team can translate the common topic that includes the alt text only once, and do not require to retranslate separate instances of the alt text.