We set up each new Acrolinx instance in partnership with you, our customer. You can always contact your customer success manager for help or further consulting. But if you’ve forgotten a detail, or want to get an overview of the steps, then this walkthrough is for you!
Acrolinx helps you produce great content that aligns with your goals and brand. Sign in to Acrolinx to capture your company's style preferences and set up Acrolinx for your team. Your writers can then use the Sidebar in their preferred authoring environment to check the quality of their content.
Acrolinx Integrations make it possible for writers to access the Sidebar in a range of authoring tools. If they sign in to Acrolinx in one of these tools, they'll get the Sidebar in return. When they run a check from the Sidebar, Acrolinx processes and reads their content. Then, it feeds the Sidebar with the outcome. You’ll get your results in colored cards.
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What’s the point of software if nobody uses it? You’ll need to let Acrolinx know who will be working with it. Add your users so they can get started with the Sidebar or manage aspects of your company style.
Not everyone will need to access or work with all features. Writers, for example, usually only interact with the Sidebar. That’s why you can define roles and privileges in the user management section.
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Don’t worry, you can always change roles and privileges later if people's responsibilities change.
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Acrolinx is about your terminology, style, and tone. It might be that you only work with one type of content, or that you have various content types in various languages. No matter what, Acrolinx has you covered!
You can use the available tools to customize Acrolinx checking for your needs. The guidance package has all the guidelines that your writers need to follow. The terminology section lets you add and manage company-specific terms. And finally, the style guides section lets you set writing guidance based on a particular type of content or audience.
When you first start working with Acrolinx, you'll receive a guidance package. Your guidance package includes standard writing guidance, but customizations are always available if you need them. After we've set up your guidance, you can still make adjustments to it in the style guides section.
Once Acrolinx sets up your guidance package, you might want to compile company-specific terms for your team. With terminology, you can add these terms to Acrolinx and define how to handle them in a check.
You can import terminology files in CSV, ACTIF, OLIF, or any custom XML-based terminology exchange format, like TBX or SDL MultiTerm XML. If you regularly transfer terms between different terminology databases, you’ll want to read The Term Transfer Tool Explained.
You can then configure and manage your terms. To sort and organize your terms, use term status, term entries and head terms, and domains. Domains, for example, play a functional role in the Acrolinx. You can later add one or more domains to your style guides when you configure the Terminology goal. This way, your writers will get the terminology guidance they need.
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If you don’t have terms yet, you can skip this and set up your style guides right away. You can always add terms later and build up your own terminology database.
To tell Acrolinx what type of guidance you want for a particular type of content, add a style guide. Style guides consist of one or more goals. A goal is an aspect of a language that you want Acrolinx to focus on, and Acrolinx comes with a range of goals for different content needs.
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All goals come with specific presets. In many cases, you can use the presets and get started right away
For example, Tone is a goal, and so is Consistency. Let’s say you manage blog posts and technical documentation. Those two types of content need different types of guidance. So, you’d create a style guide for blog posts (maybe with a focus on tone) and a separate style guide for technical documentation (maybe with a focus on consistency).
To make sure the right style rules are available in the Sidebar, assign style guides to specific writers or teams. For example, you might want technical writers to check with a style guide for technical content. Your marketing team, however, might need style guides for marketing content like blog posts or company announcements.
Can't find the right preset or want to fine-tune a certain guideline? We’ve got you covered. There are several options to fine-tune your goals. If you need special guidelines, you can contact Acrolinx Support. They’ll help you create custom guidelines and add them to an updated guidance package.
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Use our Reporting API to track how your content impacts your business, and see where you’ve made improvements.
You can use Acrolinx Reporting data to fine-tune your guidance and set up new style guides. For example, find terms that are in your content but not in your terminology or identify recurring issues.
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