Structured Aviation Authoring

The Problem

Storage, Search, and Collections

The first challenge was storage. Aviation documents stay active for years and must remain available for audits and retention checks. Traditional systems handled this through rigid folder hierarchies, which worked for compliance but made day-to-day use difficult. Through research with quality managers, safety officers, and technical writers, a pattern became clear: people needed more than one way to find information, sometimes by document type, sometimes by fleet, sometimes by date. The key insight was to separate compliance from organization.

Document type distribution in the system

Document types define the compliance framework for every class of document in the system. Each type, such as a Flight Operations Manual, MEL, Safety Bulletin, or Training Record, encodes the controls required by regulators: mandatory metadata fields like revision number, effective date, ATA chapter, and fleet applicability, along with rules for retention, permissions, and distribution.

Beyond metadata, document types include behavioral settings that determine how documents move through their lifecycle, defining who can edit, who can review and approve, and how distribution works once published. These properties cascade automatically to every document created under that type, ensuring consistency without additional setup. Each rule can be enforced or left flexible, allowing operators to choose whether document-level overrides are permitted, balancing strong compliance control with operational adaptability.

Configuring custom attributes that cascade from types to individual documents

Dynamic Views

Once compliance was embedded within document types, the next challenge was flexibility. Aviation teams organize information in many ways and traditional folder structures make this almost impossible without duplication. Dynamic views solve that problem. A single document can appear in multiple collections at once: the same Operations Manual might live in the A320 Fleet collection, the London Base collection, and the Q2 Regulatory Review collection simultaneously, all pointing to the same source.

Dynamic Views - Multiple organizational perspectives

Users can switch between folder view, document type view, and tag view, each offering a different lens on the same document set. This approach respects existing mental models from legacy systems where information was stored in folders and retrieved by habit, while adding the flexibility of modern filtering and relationships. The system adapts to how people think about their work rather than forcing them into one hierarchy.

Operational Control & Tracking

Organizing documents is only part of the challenge. The real work happens in the tasks, reviews, and decisions that keep documentation current and compliant. Quality managers need to know what's blocking publication. Training managers need to track who hasn't acknowledged new procedures. Safety officers need to see which documents are overdue for review. Every role has different priorities, but all require clear accountability.

Task Management and Action Tracking

Task Dashboard and Action Center

The system provides a central dashboard tailored to each user's responsibilities. Authors see their overdue amendments and pending reviews. Managers see documents awaiting approval, regulatory changes requiring response, and distribution acknowledgments filtered by role or fleet. Safety officers track scheduled review dates approaching for periodic recertification. Each task links directly to the document it references, and managers can drill down into specific teams or document types to identify bottlenecks.

This layer of accountability transforms the system from a document repository into an active compliance management tool, where work is visible, traceable, and measurable.

Creating Documents: Multiple Entry Points

Aviation teams rarely start from scratch, and they can't abandon decades of existing documentation overnight. Some documents are born in the system. Others migrate from legacy formats. Some need full conversion and remediation. Others just need to be distributed and tracked. The system had to accommodate all of these realities without forcing everyone into a single rigid workflow.

Import and Convert

Document import and conversion

Most operators have libraries of legacy PDFs representing years of regulatory compliance and operational knowledge. The import process parses these documents, extracts text, and maps formatting to structured elements like tables, figures, and headers. Imported documents often need remediation to fix formatting drift, align headings, and apply metadata, but the system handles bulk conversion while giving authors tools to refine structure incrementally. Parallel importing allows multiple documents to be processed simultaneously, making it feasible to transition entire manual sets over in weeks.

Upload PDF for Distribution

Upload PDF for distribution

Not every document needs full conversion. External procedures, manufacturer bulletins, or regulatory notices can be uploaded as PDFs, assigned metadata, and distributed through controlled channels without structural conversion. These documents remain static but gain version control, distribution tracking, and retention management, and can be organized alongside authored content, searched by metadata, and included in compliance audits.

Guided Structure Generation

AI document templates

The third creation path uses AI-generated templates. When starting a new document, the system proposes an outline built around regulatory requirements and aviation best practices, including control headers, revision history, tables of contents, and numbering schemes specific to the document type and operation. Authors can refine the structure before writing, with every change tracked for provenance. The result is a ready-to-edit framework that meets compliance standards from the first draft and helps teams move from legacy content to fully structured authoring over time.

Authoring Documents: From Draft to Publication

Once documents enter the system, they move through a controlled lifecycle: draft, amend, review, approve, publish. Each stage requires different tools, but the transition between them has to be seamless. Authors need precision without friction. Reviewers need context without clutter. Approvers need confidence without guesswork.

Structured authoring and editing

The editor handles the complexity of aviation manuals: documents that can run hundreds of pages with strict regulatory layouts, embedded metadata, and cross-referenced sections. Authors can write and reorganize content while the system maintains numbering schemes, updates cross-references, and enforces structural requirements automatically. Real-time collaboration allows multiple people to work on different sections simultaneously without version conflicts.

Variables keep documents accurate and consistent across the operation. Insert a variable once, like {operator_name} or {aircraft_type}, and it stays synchronized across the entire document. When operational data changes, every unpublished document updates automatically while published documents remain static to preserve historical accuracy.

Variables in Context

Smart Objects automate the regulatory front matter that authors shouldn't manage manually. Insert a Table of Contents and it generates from the document structure, updating when headings change. The List of Effective Pages recalculates when sections are added. The Record of Revisions appends new entries with date, author, and summary when revisions are published. These regulatory requirements update automatically, eliminating formatting errors and ensuring audit-ready documentation.

Smart Objects

The AI assistant provides real-time authoring support grounded in live operational data and aviation terminology. Authors use it to draft procedural sections, expand abbreviated notes, or ensure consistency across related manuals. All generated content is marked for provenance and remains fully editable, accelerating the work authors already know how to do without replacing their judgment.

AI-Assisted Authoring

Regulation links connect operational procedures directly to their governing standards. Authors embed live links to regulations like 14 CFR 121.542 instead of typing static references. When regulations change, the system flags affected documents and notifies their owners. During audits, these links provide instant traceability from procedure to regulatory authority, keeping documentation aligned with evolving compliance requirements.

Regulation Links

Making Amendments

When a published document needs revision, the author creates a new amendment from the current version. All changes are tracked automatically with additions highlighted in green, deletions shown in strikethrough, and modifications marked clearly. Version comparison runs continuously, allowing authors to switch between inline diff view and side-by-side comparison to see exactly what's changing and ensure edits don't have unintended consequences elsewhere in the document.

Visual diff and version comparison

Change requests feed directly into the amendment process. When a request has been logged against a published document, whether from an audit finding, operational feedback, or regulatory update, the author can reference it while drafting. The request provides context: what needs to change, why, and who requested it. Once the amendment addresses the request, the author marks it as resolved, creating a closed loop from issue identification to implementation.

Change requests in amendment context

Once complete, the amendment is routed through the review and approval workflow. When approved and published, the new version becomes active and the previous version is archived with full traceability.

Distribution and Accountability

Publishing and Targeted Distribution

Distribution tracking and acknowledgment

When an author publishes a document, the system finalizes the revision number, locks the content, generates the official PDF with regulatory formatting, and archives the previous version. The new version becomes active across the organization.

Publication isn't broadcast—it's targeted. A new operating procedure might apply only to flight crews on a specific fleet. A maintenance bulletin might be relevant only to engineers at certain bases. Distribution rules handle this targeting based on role, fleet, base, or custom groups. Authors can override defaults for specific documents, ensuring information reaches the right people without overwhelming them with irrelevant updates.

When published, recipients receive notifications through the platform, email, or mobile app with a direct link to the document and highlights of what changed.

Reflections

Building a browser-based word processor that handles hundreds of pages is technically demanding. Frameworks like ProseMirror and Slate handle basic editing but not pagination, layout recalculation, or consistent performance at scale. SmartDocs had to support aviation manuals that often run five to seven hundred pages with strict regulatory layouts, revision histories, and embedded compliance data.

Getting import, editing, and PDF formatting to match required constant balancing. A single document might contain hundreds of tables, figures, and lists, each needing to render predictably in the browser and export correctly to a paginated format. Parallel importing added complexity: operators needed to bring in large libraries of existing manuals simultaneously, with each import requiring remediation to align structure, metadata, and version control.

Browser environments have hard constraints. Memory handling, rendering stability, and performance bottlenecks appear quickly when hundreds of pages and live collaboration are involved. Designing for both power users and occasional contributors added another layer. Technical authors needed advanced features like conditional text and complex table controls, while reviewers needed simplified interfaces that didn't overwhelm them with authoring tools.

We delivered workflow value before perfection. With a company full of subject matter experts and an internal manual revisions team, we understood the pain points firsthand and could test every iteration in real conditions. By focusing on workflows that saved time and improved accuracy, we gave operators immediate value while refining the technical foundation over time.