Same Topic - Two Names

[Adrian Durand]

Hi All,

I don't know if there is a solution for this, but any advice would be welcome...

Current Scenario:
I have a CSH project for Webhelp where the developers call the topic name when the operator clicks on the help icon.
This works perfectly in the standard software, but the project managers have now started to rename sme of the screens, and the help system does not know the new name, so does not display the relevant topic.

E.g.

Current Name = Screen 1
New Name = NewScreen 1
Help File Topic Name = Screen 1.htm

In the standard system the help is displayed for Screen 1, but not for NewScreen 1.

Is there a way I could set an alias up so that if NewScreen 1 is called, then the Screen 1 help would be displayed?

Using the Alias file is not an option unfortunately, and the Help system is common to multiple clients and is hosted on an IIS Server.

Any thoughts would be very helpful.

Regards

Adrian

[carolynmwallace]

Silly question: is there a reason you can't rename the topic to match the new screen name?

If you can't rename the topic, you could create two topics that reference the same text using a snippet. So you would end up with Screen 1.htm and NewScreen 1.htm, but you would only have to update the text in the one snippet they both share.

[Adrian Durand]

Hi,

There is a reason, and that is that the screen is only named NewScreen 1 for a particualr client, all of the other clients know the screen as Screen 1.
Therefore, I would have to have a specific help file for one client, which is a lot more administration.

The main problem is that the call to the help system is in software that is common to all clients, amd the help system is also common to all clients, with no method of identifying where the call to the help system has come from.

What I would like to achieve is that the same page is displayed (i.e. Screen 1) irrespective of which page is called (Screen 1 or NewScreen 1)

Thanks

Adrian

[KevinDAmery]

You say you can't use an alias file: why is that? (Maybe it isn't as intractable as it looks.)

[Adrian Durand]

Hi Kevin,

The call from the developers is to the page name, not an ID, else I would have implemented the Alias.
Also I cannot set-up an Alias with two names

i.e.
Name Alias Id
Screen 1 Screen 1
New Screen 1 Screen 1

AFAIK, the ALias Id has to be numeric, ok possible feature request, but not in time to resolve my problem.

Adrian

[LTinker68]

The call from the developers is to the page name, not an ID, else I would have implemented the Alias

If your page name ("Screen 1.htm") has not changed, then your programmer can just call the same page name. What it sounds like you want to do is condition the content inside the topic. Create condition tags for both types of output (e.g., "Normal", "ClientA"). Then put content for both versions into the "Screen 1.htm" file, but apply the Normal condition to the text and images that relate to the normal output and apply the ClientA condition to the text and images that relate to that client's output. So it's the same file as far as the help project is contained, but the content of that topic varies depending on which output you built.

[Adrian Durand]

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for the suggestion, but the help is not client specific, but the page names can be customised.

I'm trying to avoid a chenge by the developer, which would result in a new software release having to be issued to all of the clients, so thought I might be able to achieve a similar result from within Flare.

Oh well, back to the developers....

Thanks to all for the replies.

Adrian

[NorthEast]

I'm not sure I follow how your help calls work from the application.

It sound like the screens are linked to the help using the topic filename, e.g. something like help_CSH.htm#Screen1.htm

So, how is the link to that topic filename set up?
What I don't follow is why NewScreen1 has a different help link to Screen1, it is obviously not fixed somewhere in the code for each screen. Is it being generated automatically, based on the screen's name, i.e. it expects to find a help topic with the same filename as the screen? If that is the case, then that's really a problem created by your developers.

Anyway, I would definitely recommend using aliases. In this situation you would just set up aliases of Screen1 and NewScreen1, and then link them both to the same topic. From your developers point of view, they just need to drop the .htm from the help call (e.g. help_CSH.htm#Screen1) It gives you much more flexibility and control (to you) over setting up the links.

[Adrian Durand]

Hi Dave,

To explain the problem,

Each screen in the application has a name comprised of the Window and Tab (e.g. WIndow = Receipt, Tab = Summary).
When the csh is called from the application, the developers are passing the Topic, Window and Tab names as the parameters
e.g. /Receiving/Receipt%20-%20Summary.htm

The problem has ocurred because the Window names can be customised from within the application, so "Receipt" gets renamed to "Inbound Receipt".
Therefore, when the csh call is generated, the link is:

/Receiving/Inbound%20Receipt%20-%20Summary.htm

As this topic does not exist within the Help system, the help topic is not displayed.

Unfortunately, the use of an alias file is not possible , so I was hoping to be able to find a method that would allow the help system to maintain multiple names for the same topic. I know this is aliases in another format, but is it possible without using an actual alias file, or could I have a blank topic that is used to re-direct the call to the actual help topic, and if so, how would this be implemented within Flare?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Adrian

[NorthEast]

As it stands, I'm not sure how you could handle that. As the system has been designed to refer to a specific filename then you're pretty much stuck with having to make sure that file exists.

If your developers can tweak the generated URL for the topic , I'd suggest they use the format:

help_CSH.htm#[Window]_[Tab]

e.g.

help_CSH.htm#Inbound_Receipt_Summary

(They'd need to substitute spaces with underscores, as you can't have spaces in identifier names.)

Then you'd need to set up an alias file with an entry for each form and tab name combination that the system can pass to the help. So you would have separate alias entries for both Receipt_Summary and Inbound_Receipt_Summary, but you could link both of these to the same topic if you wanted.