For a while now, I've been wondering how we can make this more widely available and perhaps add even more value to this great asset. Earlier in the year (if I remember correctly), I had heard that Apple had made iBooks Author a free app and decided to take that for a spin and see what I could do with it. And given the recent announcement of the Apple and IBM partnership, I figured why not!
To my surprise, it was very simple to take the work that Albert (and the rest of the PM team had done) and import it into iBooks Author and add some dynamic elements to it. As you may know, the Reviewer's Guide covers a lot of the functionality within IBM Connections, as well as our different integration points into ECM, Notes, Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, mobile, etc. Therefore, I thought that a good way to make the guide more dynamic would be to incorporate all the various demos directly into the book.
My experience with iBooks Author was pretty positive. It only took a few minutes to convert the Reviewer's Guide into iBook format. Then, it took me about 5-6 hours to reorganize the content into iBook chapters, add the demos and interactive screenshots, and publish it to the iTunes store. During the publishing process, I even discovered that iTunes Producer already integrates with Aspera, an IBM company for super fast file transfer.
Therefore, you now have a super easy way to get the Reviewer's Guide, access it offline, and even share with your peers. Go ahead and download the IBM Connections 5.0 Reviewer's Guide from the iBook Store and let me know what you think. I'm curious to know if this is valuable and if you would like to see more of these in the future.
PS. There's 1 page that didn't come out correctly, but I'll let you find it.