Glossary · Information delivery
Intelligent information
Also known as: smart information, intelligent content
German: Intelligente Information
In technical communication, intelligent information is technical documentation content enriched with metadata, so that systems can select and deliver the information that fits a specific product, use situation and user; it is the concept for which the iiRDS standard was developed.
- Information architecture
- Technical documentation
In one sentence
Intelligent information is technical documentation content enriched with metadata, so systems can deliver what fits a product, situation and user.
Example
A service technician scans a faulty drive and the service app shows only the troubleshooting topics for that drive variant, its current lifecycle phase and the technician's qualification.
How it applies
- The definition in iiRDS: The iiRDS specification defines intelligent information as technical documentation content enriched with metadata, and states that the intelligent part — the contextualization — is achieved by metadata, not by structured content. The iiRDS Consortium describes information as intelligent when it is specified to the exact use case and individualized for the person who needs it.
- Ingredients: Modular content — typically written as self-contained topics — plus a shared vocabulary for product, component, lifecycle phase, information type, audience and task, delivered together in a package such as an iiRDS package.
- Delivery: Content delivery portals, service apps and assistants use the metadata to filter and assemble content; the same topic can appear in a manual, a portal and a mobile app.
- Origin: iiRDS was started in 2016 by the tekom working group Information 4.0, which framed the shift from handbooks to small, context-specific units of information.
- AI and retrieval: For retrieval-augmented generation, metadata decide which content an answer may draw on — for exactly the product variant in question and with its release status — which is the same principle applied to a language model.
Intelligent information vs. structured content
Structured content has a defined internal form, for example XML following a schema. Intelligent information is about context: metadata that say which product, situation and user the content is for. A PDF manual with good metadata can be part of intelligent information delivery; a perfectly structured topic without metadata cannot be selected by context.