filtered searching in merged projects

[faron47]

Hello All,
I have a merged WebHelp Plus project (it includes about 25 distinct help systems) that I need to enable filtered searching on. This filtering does not need to be at the topic level. I just want my users to be able to select a particular help project from the filtering list and search within that particular help file. I know it can be done because Madcap's own knowledge base is set up this way. And, unless I am missing the boat entirely, Flare's help system does not talk about this type of filtering.
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
faron.

[NorthEast]

Is the problem that...

a) you don't know how to set up search filters?

If so, all the information you need is in the help - http://www.madcapsoftware.com/support/w ... ilters.htm

b) you set up search filters, but they don't work when you merge your projects?

In this case, it's not something I've tried out before.

[faron47]

Hi,
Sorry it took so long to get back to this. Got involved in a few non-flare projects. Now I'm back on this one.
Judging by Dave's response, I didn't explain clearly what I want to do, so I'll try again.
I have a "master" project that only contains 1 topic (it's a Welcome Page).
I have over 20 distinct, separate, help projects of various sizes, that, at compile time, merge into my master project.
When I open my merged help and perform a general search, the search works fine. I can find information across all of the merged projects.
However, my development lead and my manager want our users to be able to search in any one of these 20 separate projects, if they so desire.
So I set up the search filter sets as described in the Flare Help, and placed concept keywords into the appropriate topics in the appropriate help projects, pointed to the search filter set in the target and built the merged project. When I select the particular help system I want to search in from the filtering list and enter a search term, I get the no topics found message in the Results pane.
Just for fun (I know, I am seriously deranged) I imported one of my help projects into the master project so that it was now an actual part of the master and not just merged to it, built and tried the filtered search again. This time it worked for the project I imported. Still wouldn't for the remaining 19 that I just merged with the master.
However, I don't really want to do this for all of the projects I am trying to merge. The resulting project would be huge, and just too unwieldy to work with, not to mention a nightmare to maintain and update.
Oh, I almost forgot--I also tried the WebHelp Plus scenario (from the Flare Help) of building the master and then the "slave" projects and putting them in the MCPreview/Automerge folder. No dice.

So, my Madcap friends, am I stuck with no filtering available as the merged project is presently constituted, or the ugly-big-honking-project option that I don't want to even think about if at all possible? I want to enjoy my weekend after all, and maybe even get a little sleep in the bargain.
Thank you for your kind attention.
faron.

[NorthEast]

Ok, thanks for the info, unfortunately this isn't something I've tried before.

Has anyone used search filters in merged projects and got it working?

[kashby]

I have been working on something very similar to what you are doing. I have a single topic WebHelp Plus project that serves as the front end to a knowledge base containing several help systems and other third-party content. I have loaded the output files from the other help systems (also in WebHelp plus) into the AutoMerge folder--this populates the TOC and merges the systems together.

The only thing that may differ is what I have done with my search filters. I have defined individual filters for each of the minor help systems, but they don't show up in the master project when I drop the output files into the AutoMerge folder. However, because I created a "master level" filter that contains a combined list of all filters defined in the other help systems, this filter list appears to be able to recognize and sort the content appropriately.

The downside is that I have to tweak the master list any time I need to add, edit, or delete filters. This is not a huge problem, except that re-publishing the master level project overwrites lots of other files. I plan to keep poking around to see if I can get the filter list to autopopulate based on new content added to the system, but I'm not sure a solution exists.

[kashby]

I did some additional testing on filters. What still seems to work for me is a master filter list in the top-level project. In my case, I have a single topic project to use as an interface. Since this topic contains only a splash screen (i.e., no content to which to assign concept entries), I had to trick the system to create my filters.

Simply put, I added a temporary paragraph containing the names all of the concept entries needed for the project. I marked each name as a concept entry, activating the tags in the help system. Then I saved the topic.

The next step was to open my search filters from Project, Advanced, MY_Search_Filter. Because the concept entries now existed in the project, I could define them in the filter list. After creating and saving the list, I returned to the topic where I placed my temporary paragraph containing the names of the concept entries. I deleted the temporary paragraph and saved the topic. This returned the topic to its original state.

The result of this process is a filtered search list that refers to nothing in the top-level project. However, when you combine your subproject outputs into the top-level project, the filters work across all subsystems. You must have concept entries defined in your subprojects for this to work correctly--and filters defined in these subprojects are ignored, so don't forget to account for everything in the top-level filter list.

[faron47]

kashby,
Thanks for all your help. A master filter list! Wow! I would never have thought of that. I'm going to try it. If it works for me you've saved me a ton of work. I'll let you know how it goes.

[kashby]

I found something else that might help--an easier way to merge search filter lists.

If you open your master list in notepad, you see something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CatapultSearchFilterSet>
<SearchFilter
Name="Cows"
Comment=""
Concepts="Cows" />
<SearchFilter
Name="Pigs"
Comment=""
Concepts="Pigs" />
<SearchFilter
Name="Birds, Chickens"
Comment=""
Concepts="Chickens;Birds" />
</CatapultSearchFilterSet>

If you open one of your other lists, you can copy your filters into the main list and combine them easily. Each filter entry looks like this:

<SearchFilter
Name="Cats"
Comment=""
Concepts="Cats" />


When you save the combined master list, the filtered search list updates automatically in Flare. Because I had my filtered search list open in Flare when I did this, I saw the new entries appear. In the end, you get a sweet merged filtered search list.

[HyDraGon]

I am looking to perform the exact same concept of search filters where each filter is for a separate project. The issue I have is that the project contains lots of PDFs, DOCs and XLSs etc which have been added directly to the TOC and thus do not have an HTM file to add my concept too. Thus does anyone have any ideas on how to include these files in my search filter.

[crdmerge]

Searching on non-XHTML files is only supported in WebHelp Plus output (the output discussed in this thread's original post), or in Flare 8 HTML5 output.


Good luck,
Leon

[HyDraGon]

That is correct and I am using Webhelp Plus. Webhelp Plus allows searching in non-xhtml which is great, it also allows search filters to be applied, problem is I need the search filters to work with the non-xhtml docs as well as the html docs.