I'm hoping someone might have thoughts / strategies to handle the following set of requirements:
We have large number of Policy paragraphs that are referenced in multiple places.
These are styled as drop-downs
We need to be able to link to them (either through bookmarks or some other way)
We need the process to insert new instances and link to them to not be overly technical
To maintain version control / consistency, we need these to be snippets
My current thought:
1. Create snippet and name file, eg abcde1234.flsnp
2. Insert bookmark before DropDown title using name of file, eg abcde1234.flsnp
3. Tell authors when inserting cross-links to snippets, that they have to manually add the name of the snippet as the bookmark target (as they won't see the bookmark inside the snippet in authoring view)
I'm not quite able to visualise how you're using these policy paragraphs.
As I understand it, a bookmark should have a unique name or identifier, so that when you insert a cross-reference to the bookmark, it only has one place to go. So I don't see that including a bookmark in a snippet and then using that snippet in several places is going to work, as your x-ref won't be able to identify which of the various identical bookmarks it is meant to jump to.
Instead, you might need to insert your bookmarks in the topic where the snippet is included, and expand the bookmark's name. For example, if you have a topic about the working from home policy, in which you want to include a snippet about connectivity, you might have something like this:
Working_from_home.htm - topic which contains lots of different snippets.
Working_in_the_office.htm - a different topic that contains some of the same snippets as the first topic.
Connectivity.flsnp - the snippet, formatted as a drop-down, used in lots of places.
In your topic, you might have lots of snippets, and in front of each snippet you might have a bookmark that is made up of the topic name plus the snippet name, so rather than the bookmark just being called ""Connectivity", it would be called "Working_from_home_Connectivity".
In a different policy, for example your "Working_in_the_office.htm" policy, where that same snippet is included you would insert a bookmark called "Working_in_the_office_Connectivity".
That way, your authors can put a x-ref to the specific instance of the snippet.
How does that sound?
Any other suggestions from the Flare Hive Mind?
You don't have to go that far, as the bookmark name only has to be unique in an individual topic.
So you can have links to the same bookmark name "connectivity" in different topics, Office.htm#connectivity and Home.htm#connectivity.
Putting a bookmark in the snippet would technically work and build ok.
However, it's problematic because you have to insert the xref's bookmark manually in text mode (i.e. add #bookmark), since Flare doesn't show bookmarks in snippets when you set up the xref.
So I guess it depends if that manual process is ok?
There's no real alternative, other than putting the bookmark in the topic, outside the snippet.
So the topic could contain the dropdown and the bookmark, and the snippet only contains the content inside the dropdown body.
@ChoccieMuffin - Yeah I was a little hung up on the unique bookmark thing as it's mentioned in the Flare manuals, but I've done it before without issue.
@Dave - I think we'll be more comfortable with people having to manually add the Xref bookmark than potentially ending up with inconsistent title / drop down headers etc.
Seems like I'll continue along the original path and just include it in our training materials (might lodge a request with madcap to have bookmarks visible inside snippets too, lol)