Fonto Roadmap: 2024 and into the future 

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At Fonto, our mission is to continuously improve the experience for everyone who works with structured content—whether they’re authors, reviewers, editors, or developers. As we look to the rest of this year and next, our roadmap outlines the exciting features, enhancements, and performance improvements we’re working on, while staying responsive to the needs of our partners and customers. 

With four releases each year, we aim to deliver updates that not only streamline workflows for end users but also provide developers with the tools and flexibility they need to create seamless integrations and custom solutions. From significant upgrades to Fonto Editor and Fonto Review to new developer tooling in Fonto Output, we’re excited to share what’s in store for 2024 and beyond. 

Fonto Editor

Expected Release: Q3 2024
Fonto Version: 8.10

Fonto Editor stays our flagship solution for all your structured content needs, and we’re committed to making it better with every release. This year, you’ll see continued improvements in performance, bug fixes, and new features to enhance your experience. 

One of our major focus points is a complete rewrite of the Find & Replace engine. This update will deliver a noticeable speed boost and address long-standing issues with search and replace functionality, improving both performance and accuracy. 

For all you great developers out there, we’re introducing optional batch CMS endpoints to help reduce system load. This enhancement allows smarter document processing and task scheduling, ensuring Fonto Editor performance remains strong, even in demanding environments. 

And because we care about all our users, we’re actively working to improve accessibility across Fonto. With improved support for both screen readers and keyboard-only navigation, we’re striving towards making our interface as accessible as possible. We’re also preparing for upcoming European regulations, and while we’re not fully compliant just yet, we’re doing everything we can to be as soon as we can. 

Fonto Output

Expected Release: End of 2024
Fonto Version: 8.11

We’re thrilled to introduce Fonto Output by the end of 2024, a product designed with developers in mind. It includes easy-to-use configuration tools, complete documentation, and a future-proof API that’s ready to handle whatever challenges come next. 

Starting in 2025, we’ll continue adding features based on customer feedback. Two early items on our radar include: 

• Redlined documents, which will highlight changes between versions and combine the best of Fonto Document History and Fonto Output. 
• Comment integration, enabling you to include comments directly in output documents, making collaboration even easier. 

We’re really looking forward to seeing how Fonto Output will be used, and we’re excited to learn from your feedback to make it even better! 

Fonto Integrated Authoring Platform (IAP)

Empowering Multi-Lingual Collaboration and Translation 

Expected Release: End of 2024
Fonto Version: 8.11

We’re laying the groundwork for multi-lingual content creation. As of this release, authors and reviewers can work together in any language, with strongly improved support for IME (Input Method Editors) and right-to-left (RTL) languages. Our goal is to support the way global teams work together by integrating advanced translation systems, making localization efforts more efficient. 

The Fonto IAP UI you are used to will display the source language components alongside their translations, this will allow users to easily find every translation available for specific components and also request new translations and keep track of whether they have been added or not. 

Next to this we’re starting on enabling the integration with AI in the IAP solution. Customers will be able to bring their own AI model and connect it allowing authors and template designers to consult it and have assistance in writing and rewriting content. 

Smarter Workflows, Deeper Insights, and Enhanced Outputs 

Expected Release: Throughout 2025
Fonto Version: 8.12, 8.13 and beyond 

As we move into 2025, our focus shifts to deeper integration and enhanced collaboration: 

• AI Tasks: Template designers will be able to pre-define AI prompt for components in the template. With these AI-powered tasks, an author can start a component with content generated by the AI. The author will of course be in full control of the generated content and can update it as much as desired. 
• Translation Requests: Authors and reviewers will be able to request translations directly within Fonto, streamlining multilingual workflows. We’ll integrate with RWS Trados to manage and execute these requests efficiently in the 8.12 release. On the longer term, APIs will be defined, via which any translation management system can be connected to the Fonto Integrated Authoring Platform.  
• Alert & Compare: Users will be notified of added content or data updates and will have the ability to compare it with existing content. This ensures transparency and helps teams keep up to date with the latest content additions. 
• Reason for Change: Users will no longer just see what has changed, but why—providing essential context for decisions and creating an easier way of understanding how content has been developing. 
• Red-lined Outputs: To further facilitate external reviews, we’re introducing the ability to generate red-lined documents, offering clear visibility into tracked changes and ensuring smoother collaboration with external stakeholders. 
• SPL, ePI & FHIR Outputs: For those needing specialized formats, we’re rolling out SDK support for output in XML and JSON, including formats like SPL, ePI, and FHIR—making regulatory submissions and integrations even easier. 
• Data Product API: Our new Data Product API will allow teams to extract all content, metadata, comments, and tasks, making it easier to create valuable data insights. 

Fonto Review

Expected Release: Q2 2025
Fonto Version: 8.13

One of the most requested features for Fonto Review has been the ability to leave structured suggestions—not just text changes. We’re excited to introduce Suggestion Mode, which will enable users to make changes within a Fonto Editor-like environment. Now, edits involving paragraphs, lists, tables, and other structural elements can be tracked as suggestions, giving teams more flexibility without losing track of who made what changes. 

Fonto Document History

Expected Release: Q2 2025
Fonto Version: 8.13

Historically, Fonto Review and Fonto Document History have existed as separate products with only limited integration, leaving room for improvement in how users navigate and review content. To enhance this, we’re introducing the ability to leave comments directly on changes in Fonto Document History. This will help reviewers focus on what’s been updated without needing to manually search through the content. 

Looking forward, this update lays the foundation for even more improvements, such as linking changes to the original comments that prompted them, offering users a clear view of both what changed and why. 

Fonto Content Quality

Expected Release: Ongoing
Fonto Version: N/a

Driven by feedback from our customers, we aim to keep improving our Fonto Content Quality experience for everyday use. While it may not be the centerpiece of our current roadmap, we’re always keen on extending our API surface wherever we feel it’s needed to ensure easy integration into your structured content workflow. 

Additionally, we’re actively exploring the potential of AI to boost content quality even further. AI has proven its ability to analyze and optimize content, and we see it as a natural fit within our solutions to help authors and reviewers produce top-tier content. This research is deeply tied into the ongoing development of our Fonto Integrated Authoring Platform (IAP), where we believe we can pioneer and lead the way in building an AI-enabled content platform. 

Further Shaping Tomorrow: Turbocharged Workflows and AI-Powered Innovation 

Expected Release: 2025 and beyond
Fonto Version: Unknown

As we look ahead to 2024 and beyond, we are not just delivering great updates to our products – we are shaping the future of structured content! With each release, we are raising the bar to both smooth user experience and top-notch performance. From turbocharged workflows to helpful AI additions, we are striving to equip you and your teams with the tools they need to create great content. 

But we are just getting started. AI is already transforming content creation as it is today, and we are stoked to bring these game changing innovations directly into your hands. Whether you are looking to streamline translation, supercharge collaboration efforts or tap into new insights, Fonto’s roadmap is all about empowering you to do it the way you want to do it. 

We are thrilled to have you with us on our journey and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for us and what we can create together. Let’s keep pushing the boundaries of structured content – one release at a time! 

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