Content Management System Benefits

Daniela Barros: …how a CMS could benefit us…

Every authoring situation requires having backup/recovery, and knowing that you are working with the latest version of a document. FM's built-in "backup" feature is generally inadequate. You often discover you really need that .backup file upon opening the .fm file, at which point that ,backup is gone. If your enterprise uses a journaling file system, you might have this covered (and in my last position, this is what we relied on it, and it was a life-saver in several instances).

The "us" suggests more than one author. The FM locking feature can at least prevent simultaneous/overlapping access directly to the files, but won't help if people are working on local copies, then copying them back. A CMS provides broader control.

Do you have strict revision control? Do you require at least reference copies of prior revs? Do you have need of generating prior revs? Do you need to maintain prior revs independently? CMS can do that.

I do not know if there are any CMS products that are content-aware for FM binary formats (.fm, .book). At the very least. you'll want a CMS that can store arbitrary binary formats.

re: …consider investing in.

There appear to be a number of open-source CMS products in addition to the commercial products.

Yes a CMS can be used in multi-author environments to provide version control. It can also be used in structured content to provide content reuse and localization (usually that becomes a CCMS - Component Content Management System).

That would be for Technical writing content. Is that used for it?