Merged Webhelp projects the way to go?

[LuckyClover]

We will be developing WebHelp for two of our Web-based applications. Two different authors will be working on the projects, and the projects will have different completion dates. Build tags will be applied to each project's topics, to account for the following scenarios:
1. Users have Product A installed, and will acccess Product A Help only.
2. Users have Product A and Product B components installed, and will access Product A Help with certain Product B topics integrated.
3. Users have Product B installed, and will access Product B Help only.
After the separate Help projects are build, one would be merged with the other, and the final output of the merged Help would be controlled using the build tags. To test all of this, I created two sample Help systems, complete with the product-specific skin, build tags, etc., and I merged the Help for Product B into the Help for Product A (A is the master Help file). The result is that when I open the book for Product B, a whole new Webpage is launched (a new page with the navigation and contents panes)--I thought the topics would continue to be visible in one project. Also, I see from the discussion forum that there is really no way to hide books unless you add code to the source. There will be many books from the Help for Product B that should be hidden. Am I approaching this all wrong? Thanks for your help.

[Peter Grainge]

What you getting wrong is using build tags instead of the merged projects capabilities.

Regenerate all your help without using any build tags. You should then have a structure like this:

Parent
...mergedProjects
......Child1
......Child2
......Child3

Make a couple of copies of that. If you are following the method on my site, Child1 will be something all users need but delete the whole Child2 folder from one of your copies. Then open the help and you will find you have a working copy with everything but Child2 topics, no TOC for it, none of the index entries etc.

So you create the whole merge. The developers deliver the parent, child1 (if using my method) and such other children as required by the particular installation. They can deliver all and then apply a wrong name to folders they don't want shown, or some similar method.

On the way the help is opening, sounds like you are linking to the startpage of the target instead of pointing the TOC of the parent to the xpj of the project to be merged.

Take a look at the Merged WebHelp topic on my site.