I'm hoping that since you were successful with RS 8, you can help us figure something out. Basically, we're evaulated version 8, but still trying to publish our version 7 robohelp projects. It did take some IT folks with Tomcat experience to get everything setup, but it appears to be working. We were able to publish our version 7 WebHelp Pro project to the server (after some touch and go trying to figure out exactly what the server string had to be, etc.

What we cannot figure out is the URL that we are supposed to use to view the webhelp? That's the main thing. But we also get a message on the Troubleshooting tab that "No default project has been defined" along with the date. But we don't see the project in the list on the Projects tab.

Thanks in advance for any help. (P.S. We are trying to launch this as part of our pilot on Friday so need to figure this out ASAP!)

-Kristen

Thank you, Tulika, for taking the time to help us! Attached are the latest log files. Please let me know if you need other specific ones (we had about 10 of them, but I can only attach 3). I appreciate your help.

-Kristen

They are attached. Thanks so much!

Hi again,

Yes, I was pretty confident that was the case, regarding special characters and spaces. Adobe help also apparently attributed our errors to having hyperlinks to documents in Lotus Notes databases. I have done that for years with great success. I can't believe that would cause the issue unless for some reason, the length of the URL is now an issue? (LN links are 12 miles long!).

So basically, here's the low down. Apparently we can publish the test projects (e.g., clownfish schoo) to the server and launch it using the standard URL (which I think is something like <Server>/RoboHelp/Server/Prj=<project name>) There is some "redirect" action that converts the URL to what looks like gibberish, but it pulls up the project homepage.

When we publish our project, it does not show up in the RoboServer Admin tool and we cannot access it via that URL convention. It does attempt some redirect thing and then just displays a blank page (not even an error or "topic cannot be found" page).

We can't figure out what the heck is going on. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! (BTW, just to remind, we are publishing RH 7 projects to the RoboServer 8 trial version for testing).

-Kristen

Thank you so much! I'm assuming this is a patch for RoboServer not RoboHelp? I'm also assuming I can download this from the Adobe site...and am off to look for it. But if my assumptions are wrong, please let me know.

Thanks again. I'll update the posting with the results and any lessons learned.

-Kristen

Thank you so much. I did finally figure that out (in my befuddled brain). I just added to the post, however, as we now have another question. I will also ask my IT contact to get me those log files.

Thanks again!

-Kristen

Hi Tulika,

I believe we have everything setup correctly, but having trouble coming up with the correct syntax to publish the merged subprojects to the server. This is what we thought:

<servername>:<port>/robohelp/Server/<masterprojectname>/mergedProjects /<subprojectname>

Can you confirm if this is correct? We are able to publish all of the master and subprojects to the server at the root, but not in that hierarchy.

Thank you!

-Kristen

Thank you so much for all your help, Tulika and Peter.

We were pleased and amazed that we actually got everything published to our RS 8 server on Friday afternoon. Should I start a new discussion to post the steps we took?

It was a bit different than the way we have done it in the past, and I couldn't believe that now RoboHelp is "smart" enough to recognize the child projects and publish them into the appropriate subfolders automatically. But here is a brief recap of what we did (sort of a cross between Peter and Tulika's methodologies). Let me know if there's an even better way, but this definately works.

1) We have three authors using RH7 client. We set up all their folders to be the exact same on their local drives, and they are checking project files in and out of Source Control as needed. These are the "child" or subprojects. Everyone created new folder at the root of their "My RoboHelp Projects" folder called "Generated". This is where we point their local output to go (versus SSL...but maybe we should not have not changed that?).

2) We created a "parent" or master project, which only contains a home page and one TOC Book, into which all but 1 of the subproject placeholders were created (these are "work instructions" by different subject area). The remaining subproject placeholder was placed at the root of the TOC, following the book, as it contains "generic" content that is applicable to all subjects areas (e.g., forms, related documents, release notes, etc).

3) We published the master project as WebHelp Pro to the RS 8 server (server name syntax: <server>:<port>/Robohelp/Server). When we view the project using the RoboHelp Server Web Admin utility, we see only the home page. However, logging onto to the server using Remote Desktop, and viewing the folder structure, we can see that a subfolder was created called "mergedProjects", with subfolders beneath that for each of the children projects as defined in the parent project's TOC. At this point, however, these subfolders are empty.

4) We published all the subprojects as WebHelp Pro to the RS8 server using the same server string as above (we were not able to point them into the mergedProjects\subproject folder as we did when publishing WebHelp to the RH5 server). At this point, we now see that there are folders for each of the subprojects at the same level as the parent project on the server.

5) We re-publish the parent project exactly as we did in step 3. However, now we can see in the output pod, that files are being copied to the mergedProjects\subfolders. Indeed, if we watch the progress on the server, we see the files being populated in the mergedProjects\subproject folders. RoboHelp actually "knows" now that those files need to be there. Amazing!

6) When we go to "view project" using the server utility again, the master still doesn't show the content of the child projects. However if we enter the following URL in Internet Explorer, we see our master project with all the child content, organized in the TOC just as expected. The path is: http://<server>:<port>/robohelp/robo/server/general/projects/<masterproject>/ <startpage.htm>. This would be the shortcut we distribute to our users or link to from other applications/help systems.

7) So now, our workflow will be that the authors will continue to work on their individual projects. They will generate locally and view the output to do their own QA, etc. Then they will publish to the server. Either daily or as needed, our "robocop" (who is responsible for the master project and coordinating everyone else's efforts), will publish the master project to capture and post all the changes made to the subprojects.

Overall, I'm really happy with the new RS 8 server and very happy to be able to report a success story. We've been using the trial version for 2 weeks now, and unlike RS7, it has not crashed or had to be rebooted once! We already got the approval to purchase the upgrade. We will continue using RH7 client for now, as they only recently upgraded from V5.

Again, that's to everyone for their help and support.

-Kristen

Thanks John, and you're welcome! No, we didn't follow the re-direct steps, as we actually wanted to display the default page of the master project as our home page. We did follow the folder structure though, to make the linking between projects easier. The only hitch we've noticed lately is that our CPD files seem to be getting corrupt more often. It may be just because we've been making a lot of last minute changes and publishing a lot. But it's pretty easy to identify the problem...the project hangs when opening. Also, noticed a weird thing were subfolders are being created based on corrupted topics...or something like that. Still investigating that one. But otherwise, we're making great progress!

Would love to hear if you come up with any other suggestions or tips.

Thanks to all. This forum is great!

-Kristen

Hello

I am completely new to RoboHelp 8 and RoboHelp Server 8.  I have been looking for training and documentation but everything seems to point to RoboHelp 7.  I have checked the links provided with the software and I've found only one on-line training for RoboHelp 8.  Most of the link on the website and within the software bring me to RH7 doucmentation.

So, my question is, is RH7 similar to RH8 that the trainings are interchangeable?  From what I can see in the forums that does not seem to be the case and there are many differences between the two versions, so this doesn't seem to hold true.

Any direction to training or documentation that would help me to get started using RH8 and RH8 server would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Karen

My question was directed to Tulika, and her answer up front on the Index.