Linking from TOC in WebHelp to external web pages?

[kivinen]

Hello, I am using my webhelp primarily on an intranet, and in our intranet, we have many source pages that contain master information (i.e. contact details which change frequently and updated frequently at source) and I can link to this topic using a regular hyperlink, but can I also create a TOC entry that when clicked opens into the main topic frame? If I create a link in the main topic frame, I can do it ok, but I want those external links in the toc to always be visible.

Maybe I have missed something, how to do this...any help is appreciated.

BR

Dave

[LTinker68]

I've never tried it, but theoretically you could enter the URL in the Basic tab of the TOC Properties screen. It'll probably throw an error during build time saying that it couldn't find the URL, but you can ignore that. Make sure you test it, though -- I'm assuming the TOC back end code is automatically set up to open the URL in the main topic window. If it doesn't do that automatically -- if it opens the destination in the navigation frame -- then this option won't work (obviously).

And make sure you condition out that TOC entry for print output.

[kashby]

I use this feature quite often. As kivinen stated, all you have to do is create a new TOC entry and specify the url in the Link field. I don't run into any issues unless the link doesn't work.

If opening a file that resides in another system (in my case, our "awesome" PDMLink system), I have to include a &forcedownload=true at the end of the link to download and open the file in its source application (Word, Excel, etc.).

The only downside about building links to content this way is that Flare doesn't allow you to search for TOC labels so you'll never turn it up in a search. I've griped about this before, but there hasn't been much interest from what I can tell.

[LTinker68]

If you want it to be searchable, why not create a topic in Flare with an intro paragraph that says something like "Click the link below to open the Projected Sales spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel" and then have the link do what you have the TOC set up to do? That way the users can still search the output for the relevant topic and have a brief description of what the file is that they're clicking on.

And if it's something they're just supposed to read and not edit, then you could possible insert an embed (object) statement in the topic instead of a link. I did that with a PDF file once so that it appeared in the topic without opening in another tab, window, or application. You'd have to modify the topic code manually, though, to add the embed statement.

[Sharpras]

Can someone show what your URL looks like? How do I use the &forcedownload=true code? I'm trying to open an Excel Spreadsheet—doesn't really matter if it is links from the TOC or a Topic. But when you say to enter a URL it is really just an explorer path, isn't it? Such as ../MySpreadsheet.xls.

Roger

[kashby]

LTinker68,
I like the idea of embedding files in a topic. In my situation, I link to 100's of controlled documents that must reside in another repository. All I have to work with is a link, not a freestanding file. The topic with a link in it is soemthing I considered, but the overhead was just too much.

Kivenen,

Here are some examples of links I'm using:

http://provopdm.grantprideco.cc/Windchi ... ent:211717
file://provornd/kb/autosearch/sop/FO-002_xxxxxxxxx.pdf

It's been a while since I had to use the &forcedownload=true code, but all I did was append it to the link.