Preparing Content for Import

Overview

Below are some best practices for preparing content for loading into Responsive. It is important to think about the kind of content to load into the Library, how the content will be organized and searched, and how it will be kept accurate and up to date in the long term.

Included are some questions to consider and a series of do’s & don’ts relating to the identification, selection, and preparation of content so that it’s set up for success once it is loaded into Responsive.

Select the applicable tab for your edition of Responsive.

• Gathering Content

  Identify the content (such as Q&A pairs) to import into Responsive. This can be more narrative content. For example, “Company Overview” as the question, and then a narrative response as the answer.

  • It is possible to load content from both Word and Excel file formats, but there are different capabilities to bear in mind with each one:
    • Word: can load Question & Answer text and preserve formatting (if applied) to the text when loading. However, any other metadata cannot be loaded (e.g. Tags, Owners, Use Counts, etc.)
    • Excel: can load Question & Answer text and some or all of the metadata fields, but it is not possible to preserve any formatting that may have been applied to the text.

  Eliminate the ROT – redundant, outdated, or trivial content. This will improve search result accuracy, as well as reduce the number of records needed to manage.

  • Look for duplicate content.
  • Weed out low value content that is not accurate, relevant, or useful for future projects.
  • Consider rewriting any customer-specific, or very custom, answers into neutral responses.

  Discussion Question: What does your content look like now and is it the content/formatting that you want to use for future RFx responses?

  Refining Content

  • Remove numbering from questions.
  • Replace customer names with the Responsive Merge Tags
  • When preparing Word documents, pre-format content before loading, such as font, color, sizing, etc. This will maintain “look and feel” consistency, and reduce the need to re-format a response post-export before sending it out.

  Organizing Content

  Consider how to organize/group content by topic or categories. This will help with developing tags.

  • Think high-level concepts or categories that can be used to segment content.
  • At least one tag is recommended for each Q&A pair.
  • Having four or more tags on a Q&A record starts running into the law of diminishing returns; the more tags there are, the less meaning each individual tag holds on that record.
  • Think of tags as a way to point a search query to a specific set of content.

  Discussion Questions:

  • How do you respond to projects? Is it by product, service offered, or geographical location?
  • How do you currently search for content? By keyword? Or are you utilizing a categorization or folder structure?

  Consider privacy needs of the content.

  Discussion Question: Does your content require read/edit privacy restrictions? If so, do you want to restrict based on Role or Individual User?

  Managing Content

  Identify owners for each piece or type/category of content.

  Discussion Questions:

  • Which individual is best suited to update specific Q&A pairs/types of content in the long term?
  • How often will each type of content need to be reviewed? For example, security content needs to be reviewed monthly, but marketing content needs to be reviewed quarterly. If possible, avoid a single review date for all content. Stagger reviews over a period of weeks/months for better manageability.

• Essentials features are subscription-based and may not be available for all users. Contact your account manager, or accountmanagers@responsive.io, for more details.

  Gathering Content

  Identify the content (such as Q&A pairs) to import into Responsive. This can be more narrative content. For example, “Company Overview” as the question, and then a narrative response as the answer.

  • It is possible to load content from both Word and Excel file formats, but there are different capabilities to bear in mind with each one:
    • Word: can load Question & Answer text and preserve formatting (if applied) to the text when loading. However, any other metadata cannot be loaded (e.g. Tags, Owners, Use Counts, etc.)
    • Excel: can load Question & Answer text and some or all of the metadata fields, but it is not possible to preserve any formatting that may have been applied to the text.

  Eliminate the ROT – redundant, outdated, or trivial content. This will improve search result accuracy, as well as reduce the number of records needed to manage.

  • Look for duplicate content.
  • Weed out low value content that is not accurate, relevant, or useful for future projects.
  • Consider rewriting any customer-specific, or very custom, answers into neutral responses.

  Discussion Question: What does your content look like now and is it the content/formatting that you want to use for future RFx responses?

  Refining Content

  • Remove numbering from questions.
  • Replace customer names with the Responsive Merge Tags
  • When preparing Word documents, pre-format content before loading, such as font, color, sizing, etc. This will maintain “look and feel” consistency, and reduce the need to re-format a response post-export before sending it out.

  Organizing Content

  Consider how to organize/group content by topic or categories. This will help with developing tags.

  • Think high-level concepts or categories that can be used to segment content.
  • At least one tag is recommended for each Q&A pair.
  • Having four or more tags on a Q&A record starts running into the law of diminishing returns; the more tags there are, the less meaning each individual tag holds on that record.
  • Think of tags as a way to point a search query to a specific set of content.

  Discussion Questions:

  • How do you respond to projects? Is it by product, service offered, or geographical location?
  • How do you currently search for content? By keyword? Or are you utilizing a categorization or folder structure?

  Consider privacy needs of the content.

  Discussion Question: Does your content require read/edit privacy restrictions? If so, do you want to restrict based on Role or Individual User?

  Managing Content

  Identify owners for each piece or type/category of content.

  Discussion Questions:

  • Which individual is best suited to update specific Q&A pairs/types of content in the long term?
  • How often will each type of content need to be reviewed? For example, security content needs to be reviewed monthly, but marketing content needs to be reviewed quarterly. If possible, avoid a single review date for all content. Stagger reviews over a period of weeks/months for better manageability.