Email Evaluation Template??

[LNT1]

I am testing RoboHelp 6 to see if it would be suitable for course authoring.

I am attempting to create a course evaluation topic that will allow the user, when they have completed the course, to email any questions or concerns to our training department.

I have created a topic that contains a form with a hidden field (Course Title), a multi-line text field (Email Evaluation) and a button (Send Email). When the email button is clicked, the text entered into the multi-line text field is copied into email, along with the Course Title (as the email subject line) and sent to the desired address.

It works very well, however as we currently have developed 50+ courses with more and more being designed daily, I was wondering if it was possible to set up some sort of template for this feature. Instead of having to create this topic over and over again in each course (project), can it be set up to be reusuable? The hidden field is the only field that will change - hence, I cannot set it up as a template, because it needs to be able to read the different course names.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Lisa

[MergeThis]

See Peter Grainge's tutorial on using text or a graphic within each topic for comments.

Instead of:
'This page might help: '

we use:
'[Enter comments here] \n\nMy comments apply to this page: '

That seems to be a better guide for the user instead of having to guess that they should place their cursor after the link before they start typing. (The \n\n indicates two new lines.)


Good luck,
Leon

[LNT1]

The actual setup that I have works really well - I guess the problem is that we have a couple of staff members that are not familiar with any type of programming or code. I would like to be able to set that topic up as a template for others to use in their projects, without having to create it from scratch. They would only need to insert it into their project. Almost like a design time control or active x control.

Thanks for your help.

[HWHomberg]

quote:

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Originally posted by: LNT1
They would only need to insert it into their project.

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By this I'm guessing that they do know how to insert the topic into the project with RoboHelp.

If this is true, then the next guess is that once your "template" topic is in their RoboHelp project, they don't know how to modify the "template" topic HTML code that would generate the correct information in the email.

Would they be willing to at least open the appropriate evaluation topic(s) in Notepad and do a search-and-replace?

Set up your "template" topic in such a way that all occurrences of the Course Title in the email's subject line are some unique variable instead of the actual course title, e.g. "TrainingCourseTitle".

Then have them insert your "template" topic into their project. At this point, their generated email's subject line for that project is "TrainingCourseTitle". Have them generate the project as usual.

Then once they're in the right file in Notepad, just have them do a Replace All for occurrences of "TrainingCourseTitle" with the actual course title.

If they're intimidated by going into HTML code, then maybe they can use ReplaceEm.

Insert the topic as usual, and then then have ReplaceEm look in the .HTML file(s) in the appropriate directories for whatever your email evaluation topic(s) are, and tell it to replace occurrences of "TrainingCourseTitle" with the actual course name. Then repeat that for the other projects.

That way they won't have to mess with the code.

Get ReplaceEm here:
http://www.boolean.ca/replace/

[LNT1]

Well, since you asked - I don't know how they would insert the template into their project. How would I get that template to be shared?

Once the template is inserted - the only change that needs to be made is that the course name would have to be changed in a hidden field - so simple, that they would not need a search and replace in HTML.

My original thought was that I might be able to click on my topic page, (which would contain the hidden field with the course name) and insert the email fields. When the email button is sent, it would automatically read the hidden field on the page....I have programmed in Lotus Notes for the past four years, hence the progamming approach!

If I have my topic saved, how do I set it up to be accessible to others for their use?

Thanks for your help!

Lisa

[MergeThis]

Create one or more templates (.htt files) and have everyone import them into their projects. See the RH Help (Topics - Topic templates - Creating topic templates).


Good luck,
Leon