Is there a way to have security with help without buying Roboserver?

[Guest]

I'm on Robohelp 10, and I publish to Winhelp.  I have 11 different roles from which users can choose from a drop-down.  My managers would like to restrict access to certain of those roles to those people who are allowed to use certain functionality.  For example, my managers would like learning requestors to not be able to see the help and procedures for the system administrators.  We're willing to either set up usernames/passwords for all of our users (although that would be very cumbersome, involving hundreds of users) or tie access to the user's regular system log in that they use for everything else, which should automatically restrict their access in help (or so I would hope).  We do have Sharepoint, so if using Sharepoint security is an option, we would be willing to consider that.  Our preference is to use their existing access, as they already are broken into the same roles that the help I wrote for that system documents.

Is there any way to accomplish access control to certain roles WITHOUT having to buy Roboserver?

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Unless you have a typo or you plan on switching output formats, RoboHelp Server is a moot point here.

You stated you are producing WinHelp. That's a really old format and Microsoft would like to see it die a quiet death. But some folks still produce it. RoboHelp Server is designed to serve HTML files created by RoboHelp. So if you really are creating WinHelp and don't plan on switching things, then you can forget all about RoboHelp Server.

Assuming you did want to switch to WebHelp, you may place that on any web server you like. And your server admins can restrict all they like with permissions based on login or whatever that the users have. So from that standpoint, RoboHelp Server wouldn't be needed. It just gets a bit easier for you as the help author with RoboHelp Server as you would then gain a window or panel in RoboHelp, or maybe another small application you would launch that would allow you to configure the permissions for groups of folks. But I'm a bit out of my element here as I'm not a RoboHelp Server user. I'm like a fresh college graduate. I know the theory but haven't really experienced the real life work yet.

Hopefully Colum, or John Daigle will pop in to offer more.

Cheers... Rick

[Guest]

My mistake.  My computer was being re-imaged when I asked that question.  I am using WebHelp.

[RoboColum_n_]

Just to add that RoboHelp Server DOES allow you to publish your help to areas (directories) on a server and restrict access to specific users. However it requires someone to setup userids and passwords for the users to access a specific set of help. It would also require you to publish the help for each audience to its own server area. However from my reading of what you want, it sounds like a sledgehammer and nut scenario. I'd stick with Rick's suggestion.