Indexing - Subkeywords not displaying in Index Explorer

[ktre]

I am getting some unexpected results when trying to index in Flare.

Not all of the subkeywords that should appear under a given keyword are showing up in Index Explorer, even though the “missing” subkeywords do exist in the topics. For example, say I have a topic called “Custom Report” and a topic called “Daily Report”. The Custom Report topic has an index marker of “Reports:Custom” and the Daily Report topic has an index marker of “Reports:Daily”. When I look at the Index Explorer, only the Reports:Custom entry is listed (not the Reports:Daily), even though both of these entries do exist in the respective topics. This seems to happen sporadically, without any pattern that I can tell. Since I have noticed this, I’ve tried to “refresh” the display by opening / closing Index Explorer, opening / closing the project, rebooting my PC… but these subkeywords are still not displayed in Index Explorer. Another writer who uses Flare is able to see all the appropriate subkeywords in Index Explorer, even though on my PC I cannot see them.

Also, I have the “Auto complete index entries” option selected. But when entering a new index keyword in the Index Entry window, this does not always work as I expect. For example, say I have an existing index keyword of “Codes”. If I am entering a new index keyword in the Index Entry window that starts with the letters “co”, I would expect that my existing “codes” entry would show up in the list of existing keywords that appears as I type. This does not always happen. Some existing keywords show up as I type a new keyword, some do not.

Am I missing something obvious in some setting that I’ve somehow used when creating certain index entries that would make them behave this way? Anyone else experienced either of these or know what I might be missing?

Thanks!!

[KevinDAmery]

I have seen that before, although I haven't seen it in a while (that could be because I haven't done much indexing lately, though).

Are you accessing the content over a network, or is it locally on your system? If it's on a network, try copying the project locally and see if it makes a difference (network operation should work, but it's always possible there's a bug....)

Another thing you could try if that doesn't work is reinstalling your .NET 2.0 framework.

[ktre]

Thanks for the response!

I'm accessing the Flare project locally on my PC -- we have source control, so I work on the local copy on my C: drive and then check the files back in.

I did try your suggestion of reinstalling the .NET 2.0 framework, but no luck... the same things are still happening.

[doc_guy]

I'd say it isn't something obvious, so you should open a support request (assuming you have a maintenance agreement). You can see your support options at http://madcapsoftware.com/support.

Good luck!

[ktre]

I'll submit an email to support -- thanks!

When I hear anything back, I'll post another response.

[ktre]

Just thought I'd post an update! I've learned a TON from reading posts on this forum, so hopefully this might help someone else

I submitted an email to support, and here is what I heard back on this:

Both of these problems might have something to do with your Flare project not collecting index information correctly. Sometimes, when you open your Flare project or open the Index Explorer, you might get a progress window saying: "Computing Global Index". What it's doing is it's collecting the index information from all the topic files in your project, and store them into the Index Explorer. I would like you to try something:

1) Since the index information is kept in the Temp folder, I would like you to clean the temp folder and see if it helps. In Flare's toolbar, go to Build -> Clean Project. After cleaning the project, close your project. Reopen your project, and see if the index problem is solved.

2) If not, after you build your project, do all the indexes show up in the output?

I did the Build ->Clean Project, and that seemed to fix the issue of the subkeywords being "missing" from the Index Explorer. But the issue with the "Auto complete index entries" was / is continuing to happen. After another follow-up question, support responded with the following:

The clean project should be done once a day just to keep the temporary folder clean.

All operations regarding indexes in Flare are done in realtime. For example, when you open the Index Explorer and check the list of indexes, Flare will gather the information in the temporary folder, organize them, and list them out. Similar with the "Auto complete index entries", when you are inserting a new index entry, Flare has to look into the temporary folder, gather the information, and show you the previously inserted indexes that are similar to the alphabets that you are typing in. I believe this is a performance problem with Flare not gathering the indexing information quick enough. If you try it on a project with only 10 indexes, it should show up correctly.

I will enter that into the database as a performance bug.

[CJoppru]

We are having a similar problem in Flare. After we build our project, the index keyword is blank when both previewing and using the Search in the output HTML. When clicking on the blank box it does bring up the topic.

[Steve_SCL]

Me too.

I'm a new user of Flare so I don't know my way around it too well just yet, but this does not seem right. I have got Flare V4, and I'm building a new help project from scratch. I'm now trying to add an index, but the Index Explorer pane does not refresh when I add a new entry. I tried using the F5 key in the pane, but that cleared the Index all I see is a tiny icon with a blue dot and the helpful advice "(The index is empty)".

If I close the Index Explorer and then reopen it, suddenly all the entries are back in the list, but this is a rather tedious way to refresh the index when I'm adding lots of entries.
I tried the "Clean Project" tip above to delete the temporary files but that did not help.

I must confess that my project is on a shared network drive, but that doesn't seem to be such a sin to me. This seems to have been an issue with Flare for a while now. Does madcap accept that this might be a bug and if so, what are they doing about it? If it is not a bug, then what am I doing wrong?

[LTinker68]

I must confess that my project is on a shared network drive, but that doesn't seem to be such a sin to me. This seems to have been an issue with Flare for a while now.

This sounds like the same issue I've seen with adding new topics to a project when the project resides on a network drive. When you create the topic you see it in the XML Editor but it doesn't immediately show up in the Content Explorer pane. It does show up after a little while, but I tend to click on the Content folder then press F5 to see the new topic. Sounds like the index behaves the same way.

I reported that problem back with v1, I think, but if a lot of other people don't report the same issue then its priority to be fixed is pretty low. Make sure you submit a bug report to http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx.

In the meantime, if you can, move the project to your local computer. That's what I ended up doing, although part of that was because our LAN is awfully slow at times and that was getting annoying. I periodically make a backup of the project and save the backup to the shared drive so that it gets backed up.

[Steve_SCL]

Thanks Lisa. I have just reported this as a bug.