Making a topic outline can help you determine how information will be categorized at the various levels within a topic. You can use a topic outline with the top-down or the bottom-up design approach, but it is particularly useful for the top-down approach. We recommend that every topic you build be developed as an outline first, so that you can understand the relationships between topics and subtopics, and organize them to be the most useful.
A topic outline helps you understand how information might be searched for by the people who use Verity search agents at your site. You can use a topic outline to fine-tune the information specified by topics and subtopics to pinpoint document selection. Try to do the following as you develop a topic outline:
Identify the specific areas of information people will use when performing searches.
Identify any related subtopics which may be grouped as children under a parent topic .
Consider the initial level of detail to be covered by your topic design.
Keep the scope of your topic outline relatively small to begin with. A smaller, simpler topic outline is easier to define, and you can always add additional information later. As you develop your topic outline, determine how many levels your topic design will include.
