Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Article Idea:

Content inventory - a cheap and cheerful approach

suggested by Patrick C. Walsh on 2007/05/16

I recently appealed on both the IAI and ASIS&T e-mail lists for approaches to compiling a content inventory but there did not appear to be anything beyond the use of Excel spreadsheets and bespoke software. As an in-house content (and everything else) manager for a very large intranet site a formal inventory has become a ‘must’. However as my annual budget is miniscule I have had to come up with an approach that fulfils my needs and costs next to nothing. To my surprise I came up with something.
The content inventory I am now compiling uses Visio and Access and gives me what I need –
- Detailed information on every page and document in the system
- Graphically displays the links between pages
- Displays the types of pages in the system (child pages, pages from other areas, external links etc)
- Links to the actual pages from the page ‘maps’
- A link to the Access database page from the page ‘maps’
The approach would appear to be quite flexible and I’m sure could prove of value in many areas. I realise now how useful this approach would have been if used during the development of the intranet. It could have been used as the initial structure from which everything else could have been attached and if compiled as the site was being developed I would have had now had a fully functioning content inventory for ‘free’.