Global Linking Existing Projects

[Steveman]

This may be a dumb question, but what's the best way to globally link projects that already exist?

By way of background I'm still a newbie user for Flare so I started out by making a Global Project to act as a template. When I developed new projects (essentially one project per manual) I used the Global Project as a project to base the new project from. But the projects are not linked in any way. Now if I need to make a change to a stylesheet for example, I need to make it everywhere as well as in the Global Project so it's up to date for the next time.

I know that true global linking will allow me to single source particularly the stylesheet stuff so I can make a change in the Global Project only. Now each of these projects is built individually (but at least based on a common template) can I now link them after the fact? Would it be a matter of creating an import file and importing the stylesheet for example into each one? I probably don't need to import topics or content as such, just things like conditions, snippets, stylesheet etc.

I'm sure it can all be done but obviously I'm worried about messing up what I already have.

[lacastle]

I don't think that's the intended use of global project linking. it is my impression that you would make 1 project with all your templates for topics, stylesheets, snippets, etc. and then connect/link new projects to the original. the new projects do not necessarily have their own stylesheets or snippets, and anytime you make a change to the original stylesheet, the child projects would get the update (i'm not sure if that's manual or automatic)

here's the Flare webhelp information about global project linking - http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... ishing.htm

it sounds like you were making all the templates and putting them in your C:/My Projects folder (or something like this), which is fine and works well. but this is not global project linking (i think).

[whunter]

I sometimes do as you described when I am developing something new and I don't want to keep going back to the Global project to make changes.

For example, say I am developing a new stylesheet to be used for training guides. I tweak the stylesheet in the relevant project until I am reasonably sure it is "done". I copy the stylesheet into the Global project, and then delete the stylesheet from the "child" project (leaving links intact). Then I use the Flare Project Import to import the stylesheet from the global project to the child project, and all future maintenance is done in the global project.

[Steveman]

Essentially what I'm saying is that I haven't set up my projects to be Globally linked, but I would now like them to be. I've read the stuff about Global Linking but it kind of implies that you set it up from the outset. I've set my projects up differently which worked at first when there was like roughly one, but now there's a few it's a pain to make updates separately.

So what I'd like to do is use Global Project linking but I'm not sure how to do that now that I've already set everything up. Do I import files from my existing Global Project and get rid of the individual master stylesheets in each project for example?

[whunter]

It is the same basic concept, you will just have to carefully double-check all your existing projects to make sure you haven't broken anything after you set up all the imports.

The Global project contains the items that you want to maintain globally, like stylesheets and your company logo. The Global project itself won't be "buildable", it will just be a collection of bits and pieces to import into your child projects.

In each child project, you set up the project import file and tell it what files you want to import from the global project. The tricky part here with existing projects is that the import won't overwrite the file if the file already exists as an unimported file in your child project (at least, it seemed that way in my experience). For example, if you have a stylesheet "online.css" in your global project, but the child project already contains an unimported file with that name, then it won't get overwritten and linked. So you will need to first delete the file in your child project (but when prompted, do NOT remove the links in other files), and then import the file from the global project. Once you have imported the file once, it is linked to the global project and will get updated whenever you do a new import (you can set it so that it auto-imports when you build output, for example).

Of course, if the global project CSS has a different name than the CSS in your child project, then you would have to reconfigure the child project to use the new CSS name after you import it, and then just delete the old CSS when you're done.

If someone else knows of a better way to do it then I would be interested to know that too.

[Steveman]

Thanks for that. I've created a Global Import File in my 'Global Project' so that when I use this as a basis for my next new project the import file is already there. I just did some testing and it works okay. Even the stylesheet seemed to update okay even though my test project already had the same one. I set the import file to always re-import when generating output as you suggested and that works good too. What I'll do now is go back and add this Import File to the existing projects.

So now if I need to make a change - usually to a stylesheet element - I can make it in the Global project and then the child projects should inherit the changes. As you say, I'll still check to make sure. But up until now I've gone into each project individually to make a font change.

Probably elementary stuff for those who have over 1,000 posts, but to me it's a huge day. It's not every day you get globally linked.

[heal]

Try the Import file option, it works fine in Flare 6 and 7!
Briefly the work procedure is as follows:
1. Create a global/master project. It is here you store the templates, for example, style sheet, glossary, master pages, variables, snippets, to apply on the other projects.
2. Open the project where you want the global linking. Remove the files for which you want to use global linking instead, for example, *.css, *.flvar, *.flglo.
3. In the Project Organizer > Imports, right-click and select Add Flare Project Import File.
4. In the properties window, select the files you want to include, for example, *.css, *.flvar, *.flglo.
5. Click Import (or Reimport f you have made changes).

Remember that each time you change the style sheet, glossary, varables, snippets settings in your global/master project, you need to reimport the links to your project.

In the Resources folder the linking should now look like this: