Accessing topics from two different help projects

[dmarino55]

My company has two products and each has its own help project. For our support team, we need to create a target that contains topics from both help projects. What's the easiest way to do this?

Thanks, Donna

[Nita Beck]

Assuming that you want to keep them as separate projects, you could use Project Merging either to merge their output or to create a third project that will merge the targets from each project. Read more here: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... ojects.htm

If, however, you would like to combine these two projects into one and then have that project have three targets (Product A only, Product B only, and Product A and B), you could use Global Project Linking to do a one-time import to import the files from one of the projects into the other project. Thereafter, you'd have one big project. Read more here: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... _Files.htm

Without knowing more about your projects and your company's requirements, I can't say which approach is the better approach. You'll need to decide that. For example, if Product A and Product B don't have duplicate topics, then Project Merging is probably better and likely to be easier. If they do have duplicate topics, and you'd like to consolidate things so you have just one instance of a given topic to maintain, then having one big project is probably the better approach.

The moral of the story is to study up on Project Merging and Global Project Linking and then make an informed decision as to which approach achieves both your short-term and long-term goals.

HTH

[dmarino55]

Thanks, Nita. That's very helpful! I'll check out those topics.

The projects have only a few topics that are duplicated in both.

Assuming that you want to keep them as separate projects, you could use Project Merging either to merge their output or to create a third project that will merge the targets from each project. Read more here: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... ojects.htm

If, however, you would like to combine these two projects into one and then have that project have three targets (Product A only, Product B only, and Product A and B), you could use Global Project Linking to do a one-time import to import the files from one of the projects into the other project. Thereafter, you'd have one big project. Read more here: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... _Files.htm

Without knowing more about your projects and your company's requirements, I can't say which approach is the better approach. You'll need to decide that. For example, if Product A and Product B don't have duplicate topics, then Project Merging is probably better and likely to be easier. If they do have duplicate topics, and you'd like to consolidate things so you have just one instance of a given topic to maintain, then having one big project is probably the better approach.

The moral of the story is to study up on Project Merging and Global Project Linking and then make an informed decision as to which approach achieves both your short-term and long-term goals.

HTH