TOC automatically from File Tags or Conditional Text

[JoachimWeyl]

I am brand new to Flare so please help me along if I use the wrong terminology.

I would like Flare to automatically generate books (not sure about naming) as H1 level items in the TOC.

For instance with the default project I would like any new article added to Product A to be added to the TOC under the Product A book.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Copy Article 3
2) Change term concept Article to Article 4
3) this is the step I am missing
4) TOC now has Article 4 under the Product A book

[RamonS]

One option would be to open the ToC (or keep it open) and add the new topic right there. Right click on the book under which you want to add the new topic and select Add a new topic. That will insert it into the ToC under the book where you want it (and you can nudge it into the right spot as well) AND it will create a new topic file.
I hope this is what you were after, because in the example below you are making a copy of an existing topic file. There is no telling if you want that topic in the ToC or not, so I don't see a means to automate that. Adding it to the ToC is an extra step, but not that time consuming.

[JoachimWeyl]

I am still new to Flare but that sounds to me like you still need to do it as a one off each time. The concept I am talking about is to add a Product as a book, and whenever adding a new article to the product it would just show up in the TOC. Maybe I explained it wrong, let me try again.

1) This is the step I am missing (do something to either the TOC "Product A" book or the "Product A" folder)
a) or maybe add a "File Tag" or "Conditional Tag" to folder "Product A"
2) Copy "Article 3"
3) Change term concept Article to "Article 4"
4) TOC now has "Article 4" under the "Product A" book

[RamonS]

I don't think there a means to automagically add entries to the ToC. Case is that not all topics are to be included in the ToC. While that may be the case for you, it typically is not how it ends up. Flare does not automatically add topics to the ToC.

[JoachimWeyl]

Am I reading this correctly, you need to manually drag and drop for every item that ends up in the TOC? I must be misunderstanding, that can't be the case. Let me try to explain again.

All I want to be able to do is have the ToC Automated in some way so that I don't need to manually drag and drop or right click and create each topic, is that not possible?

[MattyQ]

...you need to manually drag and drop for every item...

You can multiselect in the Content Explorer or File List, and drag to the TOC that way, rather than doing each topic individually. In this way, you could add all the topics to the TOC simultaneously, and then rearrange them as desired.

So, to play this out logically, per the idea of using conditions or File Tags to create a TOC:

1. Apply the file tag or condition (file tag probably makes more sense) to each topic you want in the TOC.
2. In the File List, sort by that file tag.
3. Select all topics with that file tag, and drag them to the TOC Editor.
4. Rearrange the topics as appropriate.


I'm not saying this is the ideal way, but it feels like the closest to what you're describing you want to do.

[JoachimWeyl]

Thank you MattyQ,
Still not automated but at least a little more streamlined. I guess this will have to do for now.


Does anybody know how quickly change requests usually triaged?

[RamonS]

You mean feature requests that go to MadCap? The triage is likely to happen quickly, but that does not mean that a change request then becomes top priority. There are many other factors that come to play, one of them is how many users are requesting a specific change.