The DITA Troubleshooting specialization is now available as a plug-in to the DITA Open Toolkit. The Troubleshooting specialization creates a new topic type that is well-suited for problem-solution information. This topic type is based on the generic DITA topic type, and is based on the OASIS DITA standard. The Troubleshooting specialization should be placed in the \plugins directory of the Open Toolkit. You should run ant -f integrator.xml on the command line from the toolkit root directory after unzipping the package. This will properly "integrate" the package.

You can find the Open Source contribution of the DITA Troubleshooting specialization on Source Forge here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=132728

Why use the DITA Troubleshooting specialization?

Users refer to troubleshooting information to understand a problem situation and to find out what they need to do to recover from, work around, or prevent a recurrence of a problem. Typically, troubleshooting information includes a description of the event that generated the problem, the symptoms, the environmental characteristics, the possible causes, and suggestions for recovery actions. The specialized troubleshooting topic contains tags and details to support strong troubleshooting information that will help users identify and recover from a particular problem. You can use the new troubleshooting topic for high-impact, critical problems that your users might experience. By providing this information, you will be increasing the quantity, quality, and consistency of troubleshooting information for your users, which is likely to result in increased user productivity, increased user satisfaction, and decreased maintenance costs to your organization for helping users solve problems.