With Document.Factory you can use a single source document to create multiple variations of a document to target different audiences.
To illustrate, consider the case of Martyn Strange, a project manager working for a mid-sized non-profit organisation in New Zealand. Martyn needs to write up a business case seeking approval to start development of a new system for their human resources department.
The HR system will eventually manage everything related to management of their workers - and because their workforce includes both paid employees and volunteers, none of the available off the shelf products came close to delivering the business requirements.
Martyn needs to deliver multiple copies of the business case, each customized to serve a particular audience:
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Senior management need a summary document that describes the business initiative in broad terms, along with indicative project costs and an approximate time-line. As busy executives, they don’t have time to read more than two or three pages of information.
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People in the HR department need a document that also includes information about the “road not travelled” - other options that have been eliminated and why. Martyn knows that keeping track of these details will help to avoid going around in circles, re-litigating decisions that have already been made. Conversely, they have no need to know project costings.
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Technology specialists - the boffins who will be helping to deploy and operate the new system - aren’t interested discarded options; they’re interested in the special cases the system must support so that they can start planning well in advance.
Martyn knows that all three of these documents must be consistent with each other and he’s keen to avoid having to make parallel changes across all three versions. By using Document.Factory to generate the final documents, he can concentrate on writing a single master document that meets everyone’s needs.
