multiple outputs from one project: index and search question

[jbean]

I have 4 main products that I have in one Help project, from which I generate individual Helps and print versions, and one help with all products.

Everything seems to work smoothly except that when I generate help for one product, the on-line index includes entries for all products, and a search will bring up other topics as well.

I know you can tag a topic to not show up in a search or index but i would have to do re-tag everything manually every time i went from a full Help to individual helps. Is there an easier solution ?

Thanks

[doc_guy]

It isn't enough to just create separate TOCs for each output. You actually have to conditionalize the topics in the Content Explorer in order for the topics to not be included in a build. So if there are four separate outputs and you don't want certain topics to be in all outputs, you have to use conditions which you apply to the topics and then you set in the target.

If you don't conditionalize the topics, then all topics are included in an online build. This allows you to link to and include topics that don't appear in your TOC, but which you might want to appear in the index or search results.

So the solution here is to apply conditions to your topics for each of your outputs, and then set the conditions in the target settings. Then the index and search will only pull topics that are included in the conditionalized output.

[Paul Griffiths]

If I've understood you correctly, you need to create condition tags for each product (say, Product1, Product2, Product3, Product4) and condition your content accordingly. Everything that only applies to your first product gets tagged as Product1, and so on. Content that applies to all products can be left unconditioned. Then, edit each of your targets to exclude the unwanted products and include only the wanted one. Your "full Help" target would leave everything in, of course.

Update: Also, what Paul said.

[jbean]

yea everything i conditionalized. as i said, the output is fine except for the Index and search. even though a topics is not in the actual output, its index entries appear in the index and it the topic will show up in a search .....

[doc_guy]

If the topics appear in the index and search then you haven't conditionalized everything properly. Clean your project to ensure your build folders are all empty then re-generate. If your index and search are sill showing the topics, then you haven't done something right with conditions.

Here is what my content explorer folder looks like. If you don't see these color indicators, then conditions aren't set at the topic level:

[doc_guy]

Or, the other option is that you've conditionalized your topics, but you haven't set the conditions in the target.

Here is how one of my targets is set up: