MadCap Software Forums

I was wondering if there was a way to force the Search to point to a specific topic when users search for certain terms? Am I missing something elementary?

For example, we have some UI features that are mentioned all over the documentation, but are explained in one place. As it stands, when a user searches for a term like "lookup button," they get hundreds of results. But only one of those topics actually explains what the lookup button is and how to use it.

It would be really nice if I could force the Search to point to one and only one topic for each of these commonly used terms that have a single definition topic. If that's not possible, it would be good to force the primary topic to the top of the list. (Which gives me an idea: could I seed the primary topic with a bunch of occurrences of the target word and format it so it's invisible on-screen? Hmmm.)

Yes, I know I could turn those terms into Glossary popups. However, I'm not a big fan of doing that for something that users will only need to look up once, but are scattered liberally all over the place. I'm worried that I might end up with topics that are a morass of links, which I think makes the topic harder to read and use.

royj wrote:I was wondering if there was a way to force the Search to point to a specific topic when users search for certain terms? Am I missing something elementary?

Yes, I know I could turn those terms into Glossary popups. However, I'm not a big fan of doing that for something that users will only need to look up once, but are scattered liberally all over the place. I'm worried that I might end up with topics that are a morass of links, which I think makes the topic harder to read and use.

Well done on testing your topic results accuracy. Brilliant!

There is no direct solution, but here are a few options...

How to improve search

OPTION ONE
Have you indexed your topics yet? You should give this a shot and report back. With a good sprinkling of Index keywords, things might improve, these are the
hidden' keywords you talk about, not to mention it makes your printed output look super good. Users, from research, usualy browse from your index, then they try your search system.

OPTION TWO
Reduce the number of possible topic results substantially by excluding topics (i.e. topics in a specific folder) from search. That means they won't be included or searched by the help system.

i bet you thought it was going to be 'to do x, click y'.

I seem to recall that for Webhelp at least, Flare will leverage your Index terms for search in some way. Doesn't work in CHM, apparently, which is why I don't concern myself with it much, but you might want to try it out.

let us know how it works out.

Was called in to assist a manager who completely relied on the See Also links in the topic and the HTML Help index completely. never even looked at the toc to search.

forfear wrote:let us know how it works out.

Was called in to assist a manager who completely relied on the See Also links in the topic and the HTML Help index completely. never even looked at the toc to search.

Ah, yes - pointy-haired boss land. Been there, wore out the t-shirt.

Use search filters.