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In RoboHelp 11 can you point the External Search at an existing index from another application? i.e. SharePoint or a Content Management/version control tool? The project I'm working on has other supporting doc's that I don't want to have to link to, but instead include them in search. I'll have them listed in an appendix but I don't want the users to have to dig through a ton of doc's to find what they're looking for. I'm hoping I can present this project and if the user searches for a function that isn't listed, that we can pull the information from an existing document.
Thanks for your help!
Jeff
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This is the second post about the same thing, no? Please limit posting to one reference about any issue. If you are curious as to why that's a bad thing, please click the link below and all will be explained. Thanks!
Cheers... Rick
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Ahhh, just saw your note in the other thread.
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I Deleted the other post... Hopefully someone will know how to do this. The documents repository is indexed so it should be possible to add that index to search. I just am not sure if that's the case or if so, how to accomplish this.
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I may have a different solution. Let me read the thread in the morning and
reply then.
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Hi there
In the mean time as you wait for Peter's possible approach, I'll fill in what I know (or believe to be true).
When you configure External Content Search, you simply program one or more keywords the end user may enter to locate the resource. There is no way I'm aware of for the External Content Search to look at perhaps the start page of a web site or even just a document and search through the document or crawl the site. The only terms that will be found are what you (the RoboHelp author) choose to program.
I know you said you have documents but don't want to link to them. But one possibility you have is to simply add the documents as Baggage files in RoboHelp. And when you add baggage, the built in search feature of RoboHelp is able to perform searches inside these files. Then again, you cannot simply point to a folder to make this happen. It will add to the overhead created when generating the outptut.
It will be interesting to see what Peter proposes. I have my own guess as to what it will be, but I'll wait and see what he offers tomorrow.
Cheers... Rick
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Hi Rick,
I don't need it to crawl the documents/page's etc. as they are already indexed by another search engine and stored in a standard .HHK file. I have permissions to the search index file that contains that information. What I'd like to do is add that index file in RH so when it searches it's index, if the users term is not found, it can scan the additional index file.
It would be nice if I could add a URL/file path to the search scope within RH so it could crawl them, but I doubt that's the case. That could lead to a lot of performance and security issues.
Thanks for your help!
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Hmmm, have you tried inserting the reference via an Index Placeholder?
Once you click it, you should see a dialog allowing you to point at another HHK file.
The HHK file will need to be part of the RoboHelp project. What you can do is to create a new HHK by right-clicking the Index folder and choosing New. Then enable the option to copy and point at your existing HHK.
Cheers... Rick
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That's great! That seems very much like what I was looking for!!
Thank you so much for your help. I'll definitely give it a shot and let you know how it goes!!
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This isn't what you asked for but it may provide what you want. Rick has probably guessed that I am going to suggest taking a look at ZoomSearch which is described on my site.
It is an alternative to using RoboHelp's own search and has an important option for you. In addition to providing a search button that searches your project, you can provide other buttons that search other sources of information. That could include a bunch of Word docs, PDF files and other HTML files that are not part of your project.
Each time you update your project you would need to update the search of it as it will not be done automatically as with Rh's own search. Also each time you update any of the target files you would need to update those searches. What you would be doing though is giving your users buttons to search specific areas according to how you configure things.
As I said, it isn't what you were seeking and you will have to decide if the additional work is justified by the control it gives you.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
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Happy to know my psychic abilities are spot on this week!
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Thank you Peter, I'll be looking forward to that!