Is RoboHelp Server the solution for us?

[symmetricalMan]

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out whether RH Server is the solution for us. I've seen a few similar posts in the forums, but none that really answer my specific questions. I'm hoping for feedback from someone with experience in RH Server, who is perhaps in a similar situation to us.

We are a software development company, creating desktop software for PCs. We have three main applications, and approximately 20,000 users. I am the company's (only) Tech Writer.

Currently I provide documentation (user guides) to our clients in the form of the good ol' CHM file. I develop these in RH8. Each of our applications is bundled with an installed CHM file which users access by pressing F1. I'm sure you're all familiar with this process. Our users run our software on their own systems, completely independent of us - there's no connection to us whatsoever. However, they all have Internet access, as it's a requirement for them to be able to use certain functionality within our applications. Hold that thought.

I also write Knowledge Base Articles in MS Word, as PDFs, which users access via our web site. Internal to our organisation, I provide KBAs and other such material for our Technical Support staff. These aren't available/accessible to the public. I write these in Word because they need to be sent around to a team of reviewers from time-to-time, and whilstI'm the only person with RH installed, everyone has Word.

What I'm hoping to achieve with RH Server is this:

• Do away with the old CHM files that our users have. They're just awful. I'm hoping that in future, when our users press F1 from within our applications, they will be taken to a corresponding page on a web site or AIR page similar to what the Adobe Help looks like when we access it from RoboHelp. Forgive my ignorance if I've used incorrect terminology. That way they'll always be reading the latest Help content, live, online, instead of what I wrote last time we sent a product update out. I imagine our programmers will have to edit the functionality behind the action of our users pressing F1 in our applications. Has anyone done this? Are there any issues we should be aware of? What happens if our users don't currently have Internet access, for example - is it possible to call a local version of the Help instead, if this is detected? Has anyone done this with a similar number of users to us? We could well have 100s of users trying to access the system simultaneously.
  
  
• Gather feedback from users. From what I understand, we'll be able to use RH Server to see which Help topic/content is being viewed, and also receive feedback from users. Can anyone give me feedback on their experiences with this? Any tips/hints/issues I need to be aware of? Is it possible for us to determine which users accessed which content? Remember, the idea is that users should be able to access this content by pressing F1 - I don't want them to have to sign in every time they need to access our Help system - it should be seamless to them. So, I'm wondering how it would be possible to track user usage without making them sign in. This is important to us because some of our content is region-specific, and it would be handy to know if users from those regions are actually accessing the Help content that relates to them.
  
  
• Host our internal documentation on the same server as our public documentation. Is it possible to host all of our internal, private documentation on the same RH Server, making it available to our Tech Support team (and other internal teams) only? I imagine we could do this by password-protecting it, but I want to ensure that the public don't even know it exists. ...and our Tech Support people would not be impressed with having to sign in every time they wanted to access their Knowledge Base. Any tips here regarding locking down / restricting access to content?

A quick note about collaboration:

Currently, although the Help menus are developed in RH, the KBAs and other PDF documents are written in MS Word. I send them around to a team of reviewers who add their comments/edits and send them back to me. From what I understand, this is something I can do with RH10 - export PDFs and send them around for review, combining the results later, at which time I give them a final review before publishing. Have I understood this correctly? Does RH Server play a part in this process? Can I use RH Server's feedback capabilities as a mechanism for my review team to make edits/comments? I guess I'm trying to get an understanding of how sophisticated the RH Server feedback system is. If I can use RH Server to have the team read/review documents, it'll save me having to manage a bunch of Word documents that I email them. It'll also minimise the chance that a redundant document gets distributed by mistake - something that can occur because people use their locally-saved documents I emailed them earlier, instead of the finals.

Thank you.

[johndaigle]

Hi, symmetricalMan

Let's see if I can tackle some of these "inline". There are a lot of moving parts to your system (you're a busy guy!)

I only have time for a few of these. Perhaps Colum McAndrew and others will chime it with their experiences.

>>they will be taken to a corresponding page on a web site or AIR page similar to what the Adobe Help looks like when we access it from RoboHelp.

It would be WebHelp Pro in the scenario you mention (not AIR Help).

By "taken to a corresponding page" you are referring to Context Sensitive Help which RoboHelp Server does support (including your F1 scenario).

>>What happens if our users don't currently have Internet access, for example - is it possible to call a local version of the Help instead, if this is detected?

Hmm. You could either package a plain WebHelp (not Pro) output and distribute for access on a share drive. The detection thing would be up to your developers. Come to think of it, AIR Help does have a potential alternative here which might be worth looking into. Obviously, there would be two systems to maintain. I'm not up to date on it, but you'll find info here in the online help: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/robohtml/WS81F63111-6ACF-4a02-B2B2-461FEBFA8093.html

>>.we'll be able to use RH Server to see which Help topic/content is being viewed, and also receive feedback from users.

Actually, the "feedback" is anonymous (no names are collected.) You can however, create "Areas" and analyze the traffic on topics according to sub-sets of your users.

The feedback is not direct from the users. In other words, RoboHelp Server (at least for now) does not support Commenting (as AIR Help does). So Feedback Reports are derived from the end-users "surfing" your site and collecting their search terms verbatim to get an idea of what they are searching for in order to improve your content.

>>So, I'm wondering how it would be possible to track user usage without making them sign in.

RH Server Sites do not have to be "Protected" by authentication. It is your choice. You can have some sites (called Areas) that are authenticated and some sites that are not authenticated, all on the same RH Server. RoboHelp Server uses a database and can authenticate users (by setting up protected "Areas".) However, my networking knowledge is limited and you would have to ask someone else about "persistent logins" etc.

>>content is region-specific, and it would be handy to know if users from those regions are actually accessing the Help content that relates to them.

Yes, you can do this. This is where RoboHelp Server can be used to create "Areas" for different content to be delivered to different audiences.

>>Is it possible to host all of our internal, private documentation on the same RH Server,

Yes you can. However the Tech Support sign in scenario question would have to be answered by someone else. It's hard to know from where I sit.

>>RH10 - export PDFs and send them around for review, combining the results later, at which time I give them a final review before publishing

Yes, this workflow would seem to work for you. However, RoboHelp Server plays no role in this review one way or the other. There are many alternatives for sharing the PDF which is described in the documentation.

See #6 on this page:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/robohtml/WS1b49059a33f77726-2db1c75912bc47baaf8-7ffb.html

You should also download the Adobe RoboHelp Server Reviewer's Guide which also has videos embedded.

http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/robohelp/9/AdobeRoboHelpServer9_ReviewersGuide.pdf

Hope this helps

John Daigle

Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

Evergreen, Colorado

www.showmethedemo.com

Twitter: @hypertexas

[symmetricalMan]

Many thanks, John. Much appreciated.

[RoboColum_n_]

As John has pointed out you'd need to generate WebHelp Pro output in order to publish to the RoboHelp Server application. This is more or less the same as WebHelp output but with a few minor differences in the way you setup the Single Source Layout. We use F1 Help here and it works very well. We also update out help in real time making it very easy for users to access the help directly after we publish it and more importantly withiut our users having to do anything.

Some of our users do not have internet access. In this case we deliver an offline version of our help that is installed as part of the client application. We used to deliver CHMs that were installed as part of the application to the user's hard drive. Now we devliver WebHelp that is installed on the client's application server. Our application requires this setup. This may not be an option for you but you could deliver WebHelp and install it locally. The disadvantage of this is that any updates you make are not available but as most users would have internet access this is not a big problem for us.

John has touched on the concept of protected areas. These require a logon to access the help. If you have hundreds of users you could spend a lot of your time maintaining a list of users and passwords if you adpot this approach. You sound like you have a lot on your plate so I wouldn't recommend this approach unless you could train and persuade someone to look after this for you. This would require you giving them full Admin rights to the RoboHelp Server application though which is potentially dangerous!

IMHO one of the drawbacks of RoboHelp Server is that the feedback reports do only part of the job. Yes they do show page hits, including a useful report on pages accessed by F1, but they do not say whether they are the same user. Some of the reports allow you to filter on IP addresses which can be useful if you know these. It would be really cool if the reports provided the same level of detail as Google Analytics, but they don't 😞

As for your internal documentation you could host these in a seperate area (or possibly context). This maybe a case where the use of a protected area would prove useful but again someone would have to maintain userids / passwords. If your Tech Support peeps don't want to login, a seperate context is the way I'd go personally.

Finally RoboHelp 10 does allow reviewing of RoboHelp topics. You have to have Acrobat pro installed (this comes as part of the Adobe Tech Comm Suite if you buy this). You create a PDF from your RoboHelp output which can be shared with colleagues. This can be via SharePoint if you have this. The reviewer opens the PDF and adds comments, etc using the free Adobe Reader application. When they have finished you simply import those back in and accept / reject as required. This workflow works well but in my experience a major limitation is the reviewers unfamiliarity with Acrobat. They just hate it! If you can win them over at your end, you may have a chance with this. Either way you can still author in RoboHelp and output to Microsoft Word for the review. It just means you'll have to manually apply any comments to your RoboHelp topics.

I think that is everything. If I have forgotten anything, or you need any clarification on what I've offered, please post back.

[symmetricalMan]

Excellent.. Thanks very much.