IETM or Interactive Electronic Technical Manual is a portal or website to manage technical documentation. IETM compresses volumes of content as online pages. The content includes videos and sound as well depending on the domain and purpose. Users can locate information much faster than searching and retrieval of information from paper manuals. IETM is very common in aircraft and defense industries.

The functionality of IETM systems is broken down into six classes.

Class 1 – This IETM class follows the structure and format of a printed book, with indexes and table of contents that are hyperlinked into the content of the document.

Class 2 – This format includes more hyperlinks than Class I for figures, tables and content references. A hyperlinked PDF document is the typical example. The document would be marked up with XML.

Class 3 – In this the document is more structures following the logic of the content. Hyperlinking is done throughout the document. The document would be marked up with XML.

Class 4 – In this class, data to be stored in a relational database, obtaining benefits of data integrity and removal of data redundancy. Relationships in the content are presented as hyperlinks, are mapped directly to relations in the database schema.

Class 5 – In this the documentation is integrated with expert systems that may influence the display of content. Similar to Google search, where search results are improved based on analysis of large data sets of previous user queries and searches.

Class 6 – In this Dynamic multi-destination hyperlink system is used, includes system-oriented layers and troubleshooting, assembly and disassembly aspects.