Estimate for importing RoboHelp projects into Flare

[Dennetti]

Hi. I have two projects in RoboHelp 2017 that need to be imported into Flare, and need to estimate how long this will take. The main project has 1000 Help topics, and the other one has 100. I have little experience of Flare, but will be doing a 3-day course to get familiar with it. I plan to test the import process quite heavily before doing it for real. I have used RoboHelp for several years. Could anyone give me some advice on how long this process will take please, for both the 'testing' and 'live' phases? I understand that problems are likely, and I that I should expect it take several weeks to get used to using Flare. I understand it is tricky to come up with numbers, but if you could give me a rough guide, from your own experience, perhaps, then that would be really useful.
Thanks very much,
Mark

[Psider]

I've only tested, rather than doing it live, recently, and only with RH11, but Flare does a pretty good job with the import. The actual import for projects about half the size of your main takes only minutes (I never timed, but not enough for me to get frustrated - if it did, there was something wrong with the import and I had to start again.)

Probably a few days to test your import, make sure you have all the import and css settings tweaked appropriately and figure out if there is content or formatting that needs tidying in your RH projects. I'd suggest getting the RH project as clean as possible first. I've had most trouble with lists, so you'll probably want to check that (and I couldn't say how multi-level lists import as I've only used plain lists). I remember I had problems in the past with the lists importing as paragraphs, but that might be less of a problem with RH11+ but it might depend on how old your projects are - if they've migrated all the way from say RH6/7 then the older coding might cause some grief.

If you have a merged setup, you'll probably need to develop regex scripts (in say TextCrawler for a nice preview mode) to fix any links between the child projects (and parent if you didn't keep the parent an empty placeholder). And you'll probably want a couple of days of testing for the merged setup to make sure you understand the differences and have everything in the right place so that you can create the links easily going forward.

If you're going with the provided layouts then you should be pretty much right to go, but if you need to customise a layout beyond the colour and font etc provided in the editor, maybe a week to develop depending on your skills?

If I think of anything else I'll post back.

[Psider]

Oh, and given you're very new to Flare, maybe budget a couple of extra days to those estimates, just because it takes a while to find your way around and unlearn everything you *know* is true from RH.

[Dennetti]

Thanks very much for your comments. Its good to hear from someone who has tried this process. We don't have merged projects, which should make things simpler. I will try a test run at some point, but this information will help me provide a reasonable estimate of how long it will take. I'd appreciate any other advice that you think might be useful.
Cheers
Mark

[Dennetti]

Forgot to say that the HTML5 layout I am using has been customised to change the colours and icons, so I guess I will need to budget for applying these settings in Flare. Would you expect this to be quite tricky?
Thanks

[ChoccieMuffin]

Speaking just from general Flare experience rather than doing what you're after, but your timings may depend on what sort of output you want from Flare. I suggest you take a look at all the templates that are available for the different outputs to find something that's most suitable. When you find something you like, have a play in Flare with the template and look at any instructions or help for that output before you get yourself tangled in your own, more complicated, project. Getting a bit of familiarity with the template in Flare should really help speed you along once you get your own stuff in there as you'll be more likely to spot the things that you need to edit in order to get the colours and icons that you want. (You may even be able to set up the template with your icons and colours before importing, which will also help with speed.)

Good luck, and please do report how you get on, as it may well help others in the same position.

[Dennetti]

Thanks very much for the advice. Not sure yet exactly when we are going ahead with this, but I will certainly post my impressions on the forum. Might even have a couple of questions

[Psider]

Yeah, what ChoccieMuffin said is what I was getting at. I assumed HTML5.

And the first option is that one of the available layouts meets your needs except for changing to your branded colour and logo. Then it's pretty simple to use the dialog box to change those values and off you go.

The second is that you find an existing layout that is close, then you have fairly advanced html and css to make the layout changes you need (possibly a developer, rather than you).

[Dennetti]

I see, thanks for comment.