Hi all,
I'm fairly new to Flare's HTML output so apologies if this question is facile or has been answered a million times ( I did search before posting, honest...).
My company is looking to migrate our current Robohelp WebHelp into our clients-only website (password-protected and with no external crawling allowed). I'm planning to create a new project using the Top Nav skin.
The powers that be are very keen that the new help integrate as seamlessly as possible with the existing site. As such, I'm looking for a search solution that will return results from both the project itself and the site in which it sits, so that we can search the project from the site and (ideally) vice versa.
Does anyone have any experience of setting this up? If so, what search tools did you use?
The site is currently undergoing a refit, so we have some scope to introduce new technologies if required. Hosting locations for the help haven't yet been decided - we can host it in the same location as the site if needed.
Thanks,
Andy
Integrated site and project search
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andywalton7
- Jr. Propeller Head
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GregStenhouse
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Re: Integrated site and project search
The easiest solution is a search box in the app that captures the text input and sends it to the help system's search page in a new tab. Perhaps by default the search box searches the site, and there is an adjacent checkbox that says "Search Help" or similar. This won't be integrated with the site search though, i.e. help results and site results won't appear in the same list.
If you want an integrated search, as you have mentioned you'll need a separate tool. Our enterprise search tool uses ElasticSearch, and I have some experience using that to index Flare HTML5 files and display results alongside other search results on a web page. The indexing engine sits on the same server as the help files, so has access to parse the local HTML files. There is no easy way I have found to use the Flare SearchPhrase_chunk files, so whatever tool you use needs to be capable of crawling the generated or local HTML files.
As for searching the site from help, not impossible but you would need to heavily customise the help system and that may be either impractical, or mean you are hamstrung with future Flare updates.
If you want an integrated search, as you have mentioned you'll need a separate tool. Our enterprise search tool uses ElasticSearch, and I have some experience using that to index Flare HTML5 files and display results alongside other search results on a web page. The indexing engine sits on the same server as the help files, so has access to parse the local HTML files. There is no easy way I have found to use the Flare SearchPhrase_chunk files, so whatever tool you use needs to be capable of crawling the generated or local HTML files.
As for searching the site from help, not impossible but you would need to heavily customise the help system and that may be either impractical, or mean you are hamstrung with future Flare updates.
Re: Integrated site and project search
What are you using to create the site's search, and could that also index pages from the help too?
If so, then maybe the code for the site's search could be embedded in your Flare help Flare output too.
Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) could index the whole site, but of course it would have to be publicly searchable - and you said it was clients-only, so presumably that's not an option?
If so, then maybe the code for the site's search could be embedded in your Flare help Flare output too.
Google Custom Search Engine (GCSE) could index the whole site, but of course it would have to be publicly searchable - and you said it was clients-only, so presumably that's not an option?