Functionality of Paligo
What is PaligO?
Background
Paligo is a Swedish company that strives to make authoring easier. It is a cloud based component content system that has 3 goals in mind:
Easy structured authoring: Author can focus on content instead of layout.
Single sourcing: Easy to find and edit specific sections of your content.
Content reuse: Existing content can be easily used in other manuals or documents that you need to produce.
Impact
Paligo touts that it is used by big corporations like Microsoft, Mitsubishi, and Amazon. It advertises to be a one stop shop for all publication needs.
What can you do with Paligo?
As an Education Venture Analyst, I had the chance to view the live product demonstration of the VP of Sales Operations and Sales Engineering as well as the Solutions Engineer of the company. They presented a 46 minute presentation and the summary of their presentation is listed below. Some parts are also aided by shorter 3 to 5 minute videos showing a sample of each function in Paligo's interface.
Authoring
Check out the suplementary video which shows how the elements listed below are done.
User can create documents easily and label it accordingly. For example, topic, publication, appendix, caution, notice.
XML tree: It is basically a list of topics within a publication and you can move whole topics around the tree. You do not need to copy and paste anymore.
Putting content into publications is just a matter of drag and drop for as long as the topics you want to put within the publication are labelled properly.
Reuse
Reuse is when a user wants to include existing text, video, picture or any other content to make a new publication. The user does not have to make new content again which saves time.
If there is a specific topic that you want to reuse in various documentaion, you can convert the content to "reusable content" through the settings.
Topics are easily searchable and can be inserted in any document. Again, limiting the copy and pasting but also limiting room for error as content is consistent everywhere.
Versioning
Check out the suplementary video which shows how the elements listed below are done.
There are 3 main things you can do with versioning:
Revision control: This allows the user to see the version history. The user can then compare documents or restore previous versions.
Version branching: The user can create a "new branch" of content from the original document. This allows the user to have two living documents at the same time. The two different contents can also be merged.
Release management: The version number changes as the workflow changes.
Collaboration
Check out the YouTube video for a sample demo.
User can easily create documents for review. You can add people involved (usually Subject Matter Experts), set up deadline, and send through Microsoft Teams, Slack, or email.
The interface of the document on the Subject Matter Expert's side is like Google Docs and Microsoft Word. All the familiar features are there like adding in comments, mentioning anybody who is involved in the review process, and setting track changes.
After the work of the Subject Matter Expert is done, they can press "approved" or "needs some work" to signify the extent of work needed.
All of these things can done within Paligo itself. This lessens the back and forth emailing of the documents. This back and forth emailing causes delays and the inability to maintain document versioning.
Translation
The translation service can be handled by a partner company through Semantix or Phrase. The user can also manually add translations through the built in Paligo translation editor.
User can translate documents from English to French or German with ease. At this point, not all major languages produce good translations.
You can opt in or out to include or exclude "fuzzy translation" which are parts of the text that is not been approved by a human reader.
Publishing
Check out the YouTube video for a sample demo.
The user can import content to various file formats like Word, HTML, Docbook, and DITA.
The user can also upload content to various outputs like PDF, GitHub, Nestify, and FTP to make e-learning products or websites.
The PDF layout editor of Paligo removes the need to spend hours fixing page breaks and formatting before publishing.
Bonus feature
E-learning
Paligo also allows content to be published in SCORM and other elearning formats. This can be used in most compatible LMS products available in the market.
The content can also be transformed using assessment and quizzes to add an interactive element to the content.
See the linked video on the left to see it in action.
Now that you have a basic understanding of Paligo, you can click on the Venture Cube button below to find more about how the company relates to the wider market.