Can you isolate merged projects in Search?

[Maureen_G1]

I looked at the help for advanced search techniques and couldn't find this. We have multiple child projects, one for each department, and the departments only want to search through their own projects. They don't want search results for any of the others. As it is, when they search for a term, they pull up everything from every child project.

What do I need to do?

Thanks!

[Guest]

Hi
One way to do this is for each department to compile their own project only and then do a search on each child help file. Personally, I don't know of any way of doing a split search on a merged project.

[Maureen_G1]

Thanks. That's what I recalled about Robohelp. We've just now merged the projects because they need to be able to do cross-department searches too. I explained it was a trade off (pick the one you want and lose the other) and that we'd have to break into the code and program it ourselves if we wanted a split search. I just wanted to make sure. So now that's probably what we're going to do.

[Peter Grainge]

You cannot within RH.

If you replace the RH search with ZoomSearch, you can have as many searches as you want each covering whatever topics / projects you want.

ZoomSearch is described on my site.

[Maureen_G1]

I looked it over, and it seems nice, but it seems to only give you the option to EXCLUDE topics or files. That's a bigger chore than simply clicking a department name, for instance, and searching only within that child directory (that's how we'd program it). Each time they search, they have to list all the department names they DON'T want. Nobody will do that - there are too many departments.

I tried the demo and only asked for "Child 3" but got everything anyway. Perhaps it's because each directory references Child 3. If that's the case, I can't perform a valid test for this using that demo.

Or am I reading it wrong?

[matthewstevenpiro]

i have 3 projects that I publish with robo help and right now the search feature is only working with 2 of the projects. how can i make the search feature search against the 3rd project?

[Peter Grainge]

If you search on Child in Search All, you get three results, one from each project.

If you search on Child in Search in Child 1, you only get one result showing that search is limited to the topics in Child 1.

For each search you want, you point ZoomSearch to a child project and just tell it to create a search on what is in that branch. You can also filter out whole folders within that branch if required.

In your scenario you would have a search for each department so someone in Department F, would click that link and only get results from Department F topics. You would also have an All Departments search.

Is that clearer and in line with what you want?

[MergeThis]

If you use Zoom, you can assign separate projects/folders to Categories. Users can then choose one category or All for their searches.


Good luck,
Leon

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi matthewstevenpiro and welcome to the RH community. Can you start by telling us what your output is (e.g. webhelp, CHM) as it will help us give an accurate answer.

[matthewstevenpiro]

Hello & thanks!
I believe it's webhelp.

[HKabaker]

The WebHelp structure contains a search terms database for each project. The one in the master project directory refers only to the master project, not including the subprojects. When you search from the master project display, RH looks in all search database files. If you display multiple results as a files found dialog, you'll see where they are.

You can give the user an optional link to launch a specific project independently. The search will look in that project's files only.

Harvey

[Maureen_G1]

<<You can give the user an optional link to launch a specific project independently. The search will look in that project's files only.>>

Where do you place that link? Within each topic? And do you link to the start file in the mergedProjects folder to launch the child project? I'm not visualizing how this works to separate searches by child project...

[Maureen_G1]

<<You can give the user an optional link to launch a specific project independently. The search will look in that project's files only.>>

Where do you place that link? Within each topic? And do you link to the start file in the mergedProjects folder to launch the child project? I'm not visualizing how this works to separate searches by child project...

[matthewstevenpiro]

so if I'm understanding correctly...if I have 3 projects that all merge into 1 environment for my end users to browse through...and I'm having a problem with the search feature picking up any information from one of the projects...that setting that needs to be adjusted is WITHIN the project that is not currently able to be searched against and not necessarily the master project. do I have that right?

[HKabaker]

My compilation of release notes for more than a dozen releases over the past 7 years has a welcome page at the top level, explaining how it works.

Navigating from the pane at the left, the user sees a combined TOC and Index, while the Search function covers all releases. Clicking at the left opens something in the same topic pane.

A separate list on the welcome page repeats the highest-level TOC at the left. From here, each entry links to a subproject for a specific release, opening in a new window. The new TOC, Index and Search covers just that release. The master project remains open. The user has several options for exploring part or all of the material.

You need to handle this as an external link, where you specify the path. RH may report this as a broken link, but won't interfere with it.

Another approach is to have two TOC lines for each subproject. One is labeled something like, "Click here to open this all by itself." It links to a redirect page that opens the subproject in a new window.

If you don't see any value in giving your users optional access to a subproject by itself, it may not make much sense to do only to limit the search..

I hope this helps, but if it doesn't do what you need, . . . never mind.

Harvey

[Maureen_G1]

I created a link to the start file of the child project in the mergedProjects directory, and it worked! It's a little inelegant to point people to it that way instead of giving them some sort of option from the Search tab, but I'm not complaining at this point.

Thanks!

[RoboWizard]

Hi Maureen_G

While this doesn't help you at the moment, I would encourage you to submit a feature request to alert the development team to your need here. That is, having some form of a drop-down selector that allows scoping the search to a specific help section or project in a merged setup.

You may do this by clicking here and completing the form.

Sincerely... Rick

[HKabaker]

Mathew,

I now realize your problem is not the same as Maureen's.

As I have mentioned,
The WebHelp structure contains a search terms database for each project. The one in the master project directory refers only to the master project, not including the subprojects. When you search from the master project display, RH looks in all search database files.

If your search fails to pick up anything from a particular project, probably the search database is missing. Check the projects's directory to verify that these three folders are present:
whdata
whgdata
whxdata
(assuming you generated dhtml>java applet>plain html)
and that at least the first two contain more than three or four files.

These are not simply duplicates of folders and files with the same names in the other projects. (Once I deleted the "duplicates" in a child project. That project disappeared from the master TOC, index and search.)

The remedy is to regenerate WebHelp -- making sure the compile-search function is enabled -- and publish it again to its directory in the merged WebHelp package.

Harvey