Glossary · Information delivery
Component content management system (CCMS)
Also known as: CCMS, component CMS, content management system for technical documentation
German: Redaktionssystem
In technical communication, a component content management system (CCMS) is a content management system that stores and manages content as reusable components — such as topics, fragments and media objects — rather than as whole documents, with versioning, variant and language management, workflows and metadata, and that publishes deliverables from these components, for example PDF manuals, HTML help or iiRDS packages.
- Information architecture
- Technical documentation
In one sentence
A CCMS manages documentation as reusable components with versions, variants, languages and metadata, and publishes manuals, help and iiRDS packages.
Example
A machine builder writes the safety notes for all its palletizers once as components in the CCMS and publishes each machine's operating instructions, its VDI 2770 container and an iiRDS package from the same sources.
How it applies
- Authoring and reuse: Content is written once as components and assembled into many deliverables; variants are controlled through metadata and conditions, translations are managed per component. Many systems work with XML such as DITA or with a proprietary schema.
- Metadata at the source: The metadata that portals and assistants need later — product, component, information type, lifecycle phase, audience — are best assigned in the CCMS. The iiRDS specification names DMS and CCMS as the systems where administrative information is kept, and its example stores the module IDs from the CCMS as iiRDS identities.
- Output to delivery standards: A CCMS typically acts as an iiRDS Generator — an application that creates iiRDS-compliant information from a source format — and can also produce PDF/A documents with VDI 2770 metadata for the handover to operators.
- Governance: Review and release workflows, version history and audit trails in the CCMS are where documentation evidence is created; a delivery package can only carry the lifecycle status that the source system recorded.
CCMS vs. content delivery portal
The CCMS is the authoring side: it holds the sources, versions, variants and workflows. A content delivery portal is the reading side: an iiRDS Consumer that imports published content and lets users search and filter it. The iiRDS package is the hand-over between both. iiRDS itself is an exchange format, not a format for storing or authoring content — the iiRDS Consortium says so explicitly.