Single-sourcing

When we say “single-source”, we are actually talking about a single source of truth. Therefore, single-sourcing refers to the practice of creating content once and reuse it (content reuse) for multiple different contexts.

For example, the same piece of content in a CCMS, such as a topic about security or a boilerplate paragraph or a warning admonition, could be reused in many publications for different (but similar) product models being documented.

Another example is the reuse of images or text by referencing them rather than copying and pasting content into multiple topics. Using variable sets and filtering attributes also helps consolidate variations of information into one place.

Creating a single source of truth reduces the work of creating and updating content, which improves the consistency, accuracy, and quality of content over time.

Single sourcing is sometimes used as an umbrella term for both the reuse of content from one source for multiple contexts, as well as the use of it to publish the same content to multiple channels (multi-channel or omni-channel publishing). However, this has been the cause of some debate, and others prefer talking about “multi-purposing content” when referring to multi-channel publishing.