Creating Context Sensitive Help?

[acameron]

Hi -

We are in the process of converting all of our documentation from our current help (ScreenSteps) to Flare. In our software, we have a help menu item that will take you to the context sensitive help for that topic when clicked. Each different page in our software has the potential to point to a different help article. To accomplish that in ScreenSteps, this was put in the code for each page (the var helpTopic in purple below).

var borderControls = {};
var baseUrl = "/psdocumentation/";
var helpTopic = "MySettingsEditPreferences";
var viewAllOnlineHelp = "https://upland.screenstepslive.com/s/PowerSteering";
var psMenuItemId = "edit_prefs";

In ScreenSteps, all I had to do was use that exact "MySettingsEditPreferences as the tag on my article.

Our developers and I are having a hard time wrapping our heads around how to accomplish context sensitive help in Flare. I have provided them with the CSH guide, but it seems to be super complicated. Any ideas to simplify this process?

[GregStenhouse]

Add an Alias and header file in Flare (Project Advanced).
Add a new identifier to the Alias file.
Give it the Identifier you currently use, e.g. MySettingsEditPreferences, let Flare assign the Value, and assign the topic you want to link it to.

The developer then uses JavaScript or a URL to open the topic. For example, the URL method might look like:
http://www.yourserver.com/pathtohelp/De ... references

Instead of MySettingsEditPreferences the URL can also reference the value (e.g. 1000) - your developers could parse in your Flare header file if you want to semi-automate the process.