Abstract

The Repository project intended to centralize all documentation in a single "one-stop shop" for creating, updating, storing, and searching documents, to provide various information about every document so documentation authors and information gatherers could search for and use or reuse existing similar documentation as appropriate. It also was intended to be minimally intrusive for both the authors and the users of the documentation. This allowed the company to enforce a common look-and-feel for all documents within a certain type and for consistency in content as well. Other goals included the ability to update content in exactly one location and have that change propagated throughout all relevant documentation.

The user interface had to be simple enough for nontechnical people (managers, sales staff, administrative assistants, and so on) to be able to use it to add, edit, and search for documents meeting their variable criteria, and yet complex enough to be meaningful in terms of the results. Because of the high costs of solving this problem correctly, we decided to take a low-key internal approach to the project instead.

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