The Tamarind server consists of a configurable number of shared network folders that represent transformation steps. The intention is for authors to save source material in a "source" folder or one of its sub-folders.

Tamarind provides a new and simple way of transforming content to multiple target formats. It allows transformations to be configured according to a set of business rules that can be mapped to directory structures. For example, the marketing department may require different output formats to the engineering or support departments. Each department therefore creates its own subdirectory under the "source" processing folder and defines its own rules using the Tamarind Rules file, a set of processing instructions described in XML.

Tamarind watches the processing folders and initiates two tasks. The first causes the newly saved content to be automatically checked in to an underlying version control system. The second is to start a transformation chain. The transformation chain transforms the source material using a set of predefined rules and places the output into a mirrored folder path under another of the processing folders.

As an example, the marketing department may author content in MS Word. When this content is saved to the "\\Tamarind\source\Marketing" folder, the supplied rules invoke the Word to XML conversion tool, supplied as standard, and the resulting XML file appears in the "\\Tamarind\xml\Marketing" folder. Since the "\\Tamarind\xml" folder is one of the processing folders, the new XML file is then transformed according to the rules files in BOTH the "xml" folder and its sub-folder "Marketing", allowing complex rules to be built up by chaining processing together. In this example, the "xml" folder contains the company standard conversion of XML to an HTML format for viewing on the company intranet and a target output folder of "\\Server1\web-pub\Marketing" on the company intranet server. In addition, the Marketing department requires PDF versions of all these documents, so rules defined in the "\\Tamarind\xml\Marketing" folder also invoke XSLT to generate XSL-FO and thence PDF using a third party tool. The Engineering Department though do not require PDF generation, so their contributions, which they autor directly in XML onto the "\\Tamarind\xml\Engineering" folder only get transformed to intranet HTML according to the rules defined at the root. The Product Support Group however need their contributions to be transformed to HTML conforming to the Company website look-and-feel, so the rules specified in "\\Tamarind\xml\Support" add this capability, specifying a different set of XSLT transformations and a target directory on the company's extranet server.

With build-in conversion from Word to XML, automatic version control and powerful, extensible rules based transformation, Tamarind offers a way to automate the presentation of content so as to enforce business logic, reduce the risk of errors and save time.