Is global search and project-level search possible?

[oceanclub]

We have an online help site which consists of multiple Flare projects being published to a site where you select the relevant online help to view via dropdown fields implemented on the site outside Flare. This allow the user to narrow their focus down to the product/module and version they want and means any search results are only from that select product and version. This reduces the number of hits that a global search would produce and also makes publishing easier.

_However_ we've been additionally asked for global search as well, since some users may not know which product or module their search term is linked to. Is there a way of implementing this in Flare, or has anyone done such a thing on a website? (Note our website is passworded so we can't rely on using open search engines).

Any hints or leads appreciated,

Paul

[zappy0]

I had a similar requirement. Readers often knew what they were searching for but did not know which document to find it in. I have a large number of Flare projects based on the HTML side nav. Users get into a specific document by going through a portal (also a side nav Flare project) and then clicking a link from an index page I created. The visitor can then search within that particular document. To enable a global search, I built a TOC in my main portal project with entries to each particular Flare project. To do that, you add a "new item" to the TOC. Then, on the properties for that new item, select the "Select Flare Project and Target (for runtime merging) and set the Link to the .flprj file for that project. As a side note, my projects have multiple output targets so I'm able to create several flavors of my portal - pretty awesome. When I build the portal, Flare gathers up all of the projects I have pointed to and places them in a Subsystems directory. Thus, all of my documentation ends up in the single Portal project's output that I can deploy as a single website (I use a standard website and haven't moved to Flare Central yet). I can point people to the portal or to an individual document within the portal by providing the full URL to it. Best of all, when a user does a search at the Portal, the search is across all of the documentation.

Thus, my portal has a side nav TOC that lists every document and expands to show every page, and my main index page (the home page) where a visitor can click into a particular document. The search is 100% provided by Flare.

To further refine the search capability, I used "Concepts". If you haven't used that yet, you can read more in the Flare documentation. In all of my projects, including the portal, I have created concepts named "API Reference Documents", "Application Online Help", "Implementation Reference Documents", "Installation Guides", and "Training Documents". In each project, I assigned each topic to one of those concepts. Now my readers can do a global search but select a Concept from the drop-down list (magically displayed next to the search box) to refine the results. I was able to build all of this thanks to several webinars that Madcap hosted where folks demonstrated how they incorporated these cool features.

[Nita Beck]

I want to verify something, zappy0. Is your output type Side Nav or Tripane?

Tripane output, which has a navigation pane (usually) at the left side, does support runtime merging by project and target, as you describe.

But, to the best of my knowledge, Side Nav output does not support runtime merging. That restriction is still covered in Flare’s documentation. (Scroll all the way to the bottom of the topic to see the relevant note.) https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... argets.htm.

[zappy0]

Oops! You're right Nita. I use a tripane skin. Thanks for correcting that.