Adobe Technical Communication Suite Summer 2020 release

“If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”

This saying by Roy T. Bennett captures the essence of the latest release of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite products. In the past, we have been delivering new major versions only every 18–24 months and giving updates with bug fixes. And with the Summer 2020 release, we are changing that. Let’s look at how we are gearing up for changing our product track, starting with this release.

  1. We are moving to a continuous delivery model for the Technical Communication Suite and its products.
  2. We plan to deliver frequent updates every 3–4 months with bug fixes, new features, feature sneak-peeks, etc.
  3. We are moving towards subscription-only.

The requirements for our customers change every week, month, quarter, and year. Releasing products every 18–24 months does not suffice for all our customers. So, moving into 2020, we are moving to a continuous delivery model for our Technical Communication products Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe RoboHelp. Every 3–4 months, we will deliver updates. And not just bug and stability fixes but also new features, sometimes maybe even early sneak-peeks on upcoming features. We believe with this fundamental change, we can deliver a lot more value for our customers and partners. This also warrants a change in our licensing models, which has been perpetual (serial key-based) and subscription. Over the last 2 years, we have increasingly seen our customers migrating from perpetual licensing to subscription. Aside from financial advantages, they also opt for the flexibility to choose when they want to upgrade to the latest version without having to worry about licensing. E.g., a subscription license of Adobe RoboHelp allows you to use RoboHelp 11 or later up to the latest Summer 2020 release. And even future updates are included as well).

Five amazing tools. One market-leading suite.

The Adobe Technical Communication Suite is your one-stop solution to transform technical content into exceptional experiences. Easily author long, complex XML and non-XML documents. Deliver highly personalized interactive Help and Self-service experiences with best-in-class search. Create responsive eLearning content and transform presentations to enable on-demand learning. Collaborate in real-time with shared PDF reviews. Just released (July 2020), the Adobe Technical Communication Suite brings major upgrades for Adobe RoboHelp, Adobe FrameMaker, and Adobe Acrobat (including Document Cloud). There are also minor upgrades for Adobe Captivate and Adobe Presenter included. However, with the new continuous delivery model, major and minor upgrade differences will fade away …

Adobe RoboHelp Summer 2020 release-blog-post-hero

Adobe RoboHelp

Next-generation software for authoring and publishing Help, policy, and knowledgebase content. For Windows and Mac.

With an all-new cross-platform and modern authoring experience, Adobe RoboHelp offers an unmatched value as one of the best authoring and publishing solutions. Cross-platform? Yes! RoboHelp is now available both on Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows.

RoboHelp supports the seamless migration of your existing Word, HTML, and even Markdown content. Author topic-based and rely on W3C compliant HTML5 in an XML notation and CSS3 under the hood. Create Microcontent for Microhelp and Chatbots.

Collaborate as a team based on Git, SharePoint, and Azure DevOps and organize collaborative online reviews.

Need to reach out to a global audience with your content? Quickly get your content translated using the new XLIFF support and keep track of your translations with the powerful translation management and plug-in machine translation when needed.

And finally, publish your content to high-end PDFs, HTML5 (Frameless, WebHelp, CHM), Chatbot engines, and to your existing corporate customer support knowledge bases like ServiceNow, SalesForce, and Zendesk.

For detailed information on the Adobe RoboHelp Summer 2020 release, refer to our blog post here.

Adobe FrameMaker Summer 2020 release-blog-post-hero

Adobe FrameMaker

Market-leading software for authoring and publishing technical content. Intelligent. Modern. Superfast.

With its 64-bit platform and support across style-based and SGML/XML/DITA-based authoring, Adobe FrameMaker is the market-leading desktop authoring and publishing tool. The new Navigation View helps you to navigate through complex documents. Various feature improvements make the authoring journey seamless. And for authors working with XML/DITA, there are many enhancements such as Word to DITA import, Markdown to DITA support, a new Structure view in the source code editor, LwDITA support, and a lot more. One of the key USPs of FrameMaker, What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) PDF quality becomes even better with support for PDF/A and PDF/X support and accessibility (Section 508) compliance. We have also added new templates and support for embedding a document within PDF. And for HTML5 output, the revamped publishing engine supports the latest CSS paradigms and better style mapping options.

With the new support for XLIFF-based translation workflows, taking your content global has become easier than ever before. The all-new Online review workflow leveraging Acrobat Document Cloud enables collaborative online reviews as a team.

For detailed information on the Adobe FrameMaker Summer 2020 release, refer to the blog post here.

PDF like a boss with Adobe Acrobat and Document Cloud

More than five million organizations around the world rely on Acrobat DC to create and edit the smartest PDFs, convert PDFs to Microsoft Office formats, and so much more. When you’re on the move, and you need to collaborate with colleagues in multiple locations, trust the power of Acrobat DC to make it happen. With the new Document review, sharing PDFs and gathering comments is as simple as sending an email. Supercharge your PDF experience by connecting to your PDFs from anywhere and any device. Use the Acrobat Desktop app to create and edit your PDFs.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wods4vg89lc?feature=oembed

For detailed information on Adobe Acrobat, visit https://acrobat.adobe.com.

Fast forward e-Learning with the new Adobe Captivate

Create beautiful, mobile-ready courses in minutes with the all-new Quick Start Projects, ready-to-go slides, and out-of-the-box interactions. Speed up course creation using automated branching and by copying the appearance and style of one object and applying it to another. Now you can edit SVGs and convert them to buttons, play overlay videos on clicking a VR hotspot, and add multiple overlay slides at any point of your interactive video. With the all-new Captivate updates, creating virtual reality walkthroughs brings in the element of experiential learning.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zaNDfTgveWw?feature=oembed

For detailed information on Adobe Captivate, visit https://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html.

Enabling on-demand learning in minutes with Adobe Presenter

Convert your PowerPoint presentations to engaging eLearning content. Add quizzes, scenarios, and out-of-the-box assets and publish as HTML5 for access using desktop and mobile browsers. Create high-impact interactive training videos. Track the performance of learners using leading LMSs.

For detailed information on Adobe Presenter, visit https://www.adobe.com/products/presenter.html.

Other Information

For more detailed information on new features and workflow, please refer the following links:

I would encourage all of you to download the free 30-day trial of the Technical Communication Suite and experience the exciting new workflows. In the coming weeks and months, make sure you do meet us for our monthly webinar series to learn about all the new workflows and enhancements. Stay tuned.

At Adobe, we believe that everyone deserves respect and equal treatment, and we also stand with the Black community against hate, intolerance, and racism. We will continue to support, elevate, and amplify diverse voices through our community of employees, creatives, customers, and partners. We believe Adobe has a responsibility to drive change and ensure that every individual feels a sense of belonging and inclusion. We must stand up and speak out against racial inequality and injustice. Read more about the actions we’re taking to make a lasting change inside and outside of our company.

We also know many people are still impacted by the current COVID-19 crisis, and our thoughts are with you. The entire Adobe team wants to thank you, our customers, and all technical writers around the world for the work you do to keep us inspired during this difficult time.

This blog post was co-authored with Amitoj Singh, Product Manager for Adobe Technical Communications Tools – FrameMaker, RoboHelp, and the Technical Communication Suite.