Global Project Linking: max # (sanity-wise) diff projects?

[tberry]

I am hoping to find a way to do a sort of userID-driven Help system, in which only the Help topics (including TOC, Index, Search) appropriate for that type of user would be displayed. Currently I have one big Help system, and every user who logs on sees everything, so the lowest-level users are getting hundreds of Help topics about advanced Admin stuff.

I am experimenting now with Global Project Linking to see if it will work... don't want to even look at conditions 'cause my matrix is too big. Plus I'm just skeered of conditions. Honestly.

I have a little over 1000 Help topics and images. Unfortunately, our product defines 14 differnt types (Personas) of users. There is a heirarchy: the master project would be the one with all Help topics; this Help system would be for the Admin level users. Then the next project would be for the next-down-the-tier users, and would have a subset (about 80%) of all the topics. Then so on down the line to the user type with the fewest privileges and access to only a few UI panels, with this last (14th) project having only about 20 Help topics. i.e. the majority of the topics exist in *all* projects, just fewer and fewer as the privileges of the user type diminishes.

Hope that made sense.

So my question is, before I go much further testing this, do you all see any limit to how many projects can use GPL with and not go nuts (like I would I tried to use conditions)?

Again, just to be clear.. i dont want the lower-level user seeing allof the Admin Helptopics, but I sure dont want to duplicte the majority of the topics over and over. So it seems that GPL is perfect, since a single Help topic can be used/shared across multiple projects, and I only have to maintain one single file. Yay!

What am I missing?

thanks!

[lacastle]

i can't comment on the global project linking, but this is how other people have had to make webhelp for multiple user roles - http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... 63&p=50097 - sorry that the answer there is conditions. they're not so scary once you get to know them.

and welcome to the forums! there are a lot of good topic threads about conditions if you end up going that direction.

[tberry]

Thanks so much Laura for the link and warm welcome. Ok, I'll have to look again at conditions (gulp). Did once with a single-sourcing effort; 'bout did me in. ;-/

But I am still hoping someone will save me by saying that Global Project Linking is the way to go!

tana

[NorthEast]

There seems to be two solutions: (a) have 14 different outputs, which would mean the software linking to your help would have to determine which help to open based on the user, (b) have one output and restrict access to certain topics at the server level.

(a) If you want to produce 14 separate outputs, then it'd be much easier to keep the files in a single project and use conditions.

I'm not sure why you've focussed on Global project linking, as I'm fairly sure it wouldn't have any benefits in your scenario.
Were you thinking of having 14 separate projects, and then having numerous (up to 13) import files in each project? It would be pretty tedious to have to edit topics and build help in 14 separate projects, and complicated to set up all the import files. It would also have some issues like not being able to set up links/xrefs between topics from different projects (it's possible by hand, but it'd be a tedious and error-prone).

Using conditions isn't that complicated, you'd need a separate condition for each user type (14), which you would apply to the appropriate topics. It may be easier to group the topics in folders, and just apply the condition to the folder.
You'd need a separate target for each output, and in the target you would exclude the conditions for those topics (user types) you don't require; e.g. the lowest level would exclude the conditions for the top 13 levels.

(b) The other post mentioned restricting access to certain areas of the help; but that's still not a complete solution. Your users would be able to see all the other topics in the TOC, search results, and also links to folders. It would just mean that when you tried to open a restricted topic by clicking a link in the TOC/search/hyperlink then the topic wouldn't display - which isn't very good for the user.

[Eric Lachance]

Hi Tana,

You may want to look at the following topic:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... 75&t=11182

I'm currently evaluating the necessity of generating multiple webhelp outputs from the same project by using tags that are named after a user role (Customer vs Manager vs Operator vs Administrator) and the example project in the topic above (scroll down to the second download link, MultipleOutputs.zip) works well for this. You basically create one condition tag, one target and one destination for each of your user "roles". Each of your topics/elements that can only be accessed by certain roles should be tagged as such (so your administrative topics have the "Administrator" condition tag). Once this is done, it's a simple matter of going through each of the targets and "excluding" the tags that this role does not have access to, so Users exclude almost everything, and Administrators most likely exclude nothing.

This method works as-is if your roles are more or less an extension of one another (a Supervisor has the same rights as a User but has extra stuff, a Manager has the same rights as a Supervisor but with more stuff still, and so on). If that's not the case, you may have to re-think the condition tags based on what's logical for you.

As for Global Project Linking, I'm really not sure that will actually help you. GPL is more for multiple manuals that share a limited number of topics, not for one project with multiple outputs that contain different parts of the same project.

As someone who started off with Flare only 6 months ago I can guarantee you that this whole single-sourcing flare stuff will eventually come naturally to you, but the learning curve is odd; you'll figure out one key information which will open the door to a new way of seeing your project. More like a learning stair than learning curve

[tberry]

Thanks Dave and Eric for your replies, much appreciated. The good news is that we have decided to start out with just 5 different User roles/types, thus just need 5 diff projects or outputs; we are going to lump all the admins together and do similar grouping for all 14 roles in order to whittle it down to 5.

So that simplifies it somewhat. Pshew.

Dave, I agree that in your division of the two approaches (a) would be the way to go. But applying 14 sets of condition tags (well, now 5) to the majority of over 1000 files sounds way scary to me. Scarier than creating and managing 13 Import files (now 4). However, I will confess that today I experienced some serious flakiness with the first Import file I created. Your idea of applying the tags at folder level can't work for me because the Help system is organized based on tasks... so a single folder contains all of the topics about completing related tasks. For example, the topic "Viewing Your VMs" is in the folder called "Managing VMs." So are the topics "Creating a VM," "Stopping a VM," and "Rolling Back a VM." But the first topic is the only one a low-level user can do, while an admin can do all. See what I mean? So I have to apply tags at the topic level. And one topic might have 4 tags, while another has 3, and another 2, etc. Yikes.

Eric, last week I read your post about using conditions (I remember it because I too originally thought you had to explicitly Inlcude files). Our roles are indeed an extension of one another... so the Admin (top-level user) should have access to all 1000 files, the next set of users prolly about half, and so on down til the lowest user role really only needs to access about ten Help files. My point is that the majority of the 1000 files would have to have all tags applied. That's a lot of Tags!!

However, you have all given me the courage to look again at using conditions. Thanks Laura for your inital gentle nudge in that direction. I spent today creating my dummy project using Global Project Linking, and still think they might do the trick for us, but tomorrow will be all about conditions. I'll make my coffee strong.

thanks!
tana

[NorthEast]

But the first topic is the only one a low-level user can do, while an admin can do all. See what I mean? So I have to apply tags at the topic level. And one topic might have 4 tags, while another has 3, and another 2, etc. Yikes.

Eric, last week I read your post about using conditions (I remember it because I too originally thought you had to explicitly Inlcude files). Our roles are indeed an extension of one another... so the Admin (top-level user) should have access to all 1000 files, the next set of users prolly about half, and so on down til the lowest user role really only needs to access about ten Help files. My point is that the majority of the 1000 files would have to have all tags applied. That's a lot of Tags!!

However, you have all given me the courage to look again at using conditions. Thanks Laura for your inital gentle nudge in that direction. I spent today creating my dummy project using Global Project Linking, and still think they might do the trick for us, but tomorrow will be all about conditions. I'll make my coffee strong. ;-)

I know you seem keen on GPL, but given your structure I'd definitely use conditions; this is exactly the sort of job they're designed for.

Yes, it means all (or the majority) of your topics would need a condition, but you would only need to apply one condition per topic.

For example, if a topic is only available to admins, then apply an Admin condition.

For the lowest-level target, you would set it to exclude the conditions for the 4 levels above it.
For the second-level target, you would exclude the conditions for the 3 levels above it.
And so on, up to the top-level admin target that would not exclude any conditions (and so contain all the topics).

[LTinker68]

Yes, it means all (or the majority) of your topics would need a condition, but you would only need to apply one condition per topic.

And you can apply the condition to multiple topics at the same time. You can do it either by turning on the "Show Files" icon at the top of the Content Explorer pane and selecting multiple files or by going to View > File List to view the topics as a list without folders so you can select multiple topics there, too.

[tberry]

Thanks again, all. I am deep into applying condition tags to a gazillion (slight exaggeration) topics, and now have a few questions about that process...will post new reply in a sec, but wanted to thank you all for replying to this posting.