Linking doc from Sharepoint into RH project?

[Juliette Curtis]

Hello all:

I am using RH 10 and a Sharepoint installation that is part of Office 365.

My employer has a lot of little doc files in Sharepoint that contain useful information. I would like to link them from their Sharepoint location into a RoboHelp project that lives on my C drive.

Can this be done? I have tried but cannot work out how to select the Sharepoint document from RoboHelp.

Regards,
Juliette Curtis

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Juliette. Just so we are clear, are you asking whether you can link to the .DOC files in SharePoint or the other way around?

If you are linking from your project to SharePoint, this is possible as each .DOC file has a URL. Your issue though is whether your help file users have access to the SharePoint Repository. Provided they do, you are on a roll.

If however you are asking whether you can link from the .DOC files in SharePoint to your RoboHelp project, there are other considerations. I assume you are referring to the RH project output as linking to the RH source files would be pretty useless. If so, in theory I think you could link to the output but you'd need to know your PC's name, but your PC would need to be switched on in order for your users to access it. Either way it is probably not best to do this. You'd be better to place your output in another shared location (e.g. SharePoint) and link to that location.

What type of output are you generating? If we know this we can help further.

[Juliette Curtis]

Thank you for the reply.

I am linking from the project to Sharepoint. The output is doc and webhelp. Users will not have access to the Sharepoint site.

I'm not sure if we are talking about the same thing. I want to use the File > Link > Word Document function so the content of the doc is included in the output, not the hyperlink function.

[prhmusic2]

Juliette, did you find a solution to your question?

Thanks,

Paul Hanson

[TXTechWriter]

Our company decided not to link to the Word docs. Much easier to import them into your help file. That way you can update them when necessary.

[prhmusic2]

Oh - definitely agree that would be easier, but I can't do it for the new situation that came up the other day.

There is a Word document that was uploaded to one of our Sharepoint sites that is not being stored on any network drive - just the Sharepoint site. I wanted to link to the document because it contains content I do not own but that is relevant to my deliverable (disaster recovery documentation). If I converted it to HTML, I fear it wouldn't help me. While I can receive notifications when a new file has been uploaded, it would quickly turn into a hamster wheel of "new version uploaded > convert to HTML > publish > new version uploaded > etc" . While I don't really think there will be frequent updates, my mindset is that once a Word doc is converted to HTML, it is maintained in HTML. Any process that involves converting and reconverting and reconverting the same Word doc feels icky, although I know that is (essentially) what happens when a co-worker edits a Word document that is linked to my RoboHelp project.

Paul

[Captiv8r]

One way that I worked with Word documents long before RoboHelp offered the ability to link to them was to just add them as Baggage files and link to them from the TOC or topics. The only "updating" that ever needed to occur was to simply replace the Word document in Baggage when it changed and ensure it was copied to the server.

Cheers... Rick

[prhmusic2]

A lot of the documentation I need to include exists in other formats (Excel, Word, PDF, Visio) so the idea of adding them as Baggage files is a good one. Thanks for the tip.

Paul

[Willam_van_Weelden]

And if you want to link, I can think of 2 solutions:

• Link the SharePoint Library/Site as a disk to your local computer. It is then a network drive that you can use. Read more: https://nikpatel.net/2014/12/23/mapping-network-drive-for-office-365-and-sharepoint-online/
• Use OneDrive for business to sync the library to your local computer. You can then link the file locally, but it will be updated in SharePoint. Read more: Set up your computer to sync SharePoint files or OneDrive for Business files when you’re not using O... 

[prhmusic2]

William, thanks for the tip! I tried the first link and was successful (!!) but like any coin, there is a flipside. I just learned that the linked Word document has the following traits:

· Set up as a 2 column

· Only Normal style is used with manual formatting, which means no headings to create separate topics

· I don’t have “write” permission to the Sharepoint folder

· As it is now, the HTML output from RH looked horrendous (I know “garbage in, garbage out” is to blame)

I know the author. He is out of the office on a trip from Iowa City, IA, to Ghana, returning later this month. This will be tabled until his return.

Paul Hanson

My blog: http://prhmusic.blogspot.com<http://prhmusic.blogspot.com/>

Me Playing Drums: http://prhmusic.blogspot.com/p/videos-of-me-playing-drums.html

Twitter: @prhmusic

[TXTechWriter]

All Word or PDF docs are static and therefore are out of date as soon as they are printed. I convert all of these to HTML in RoboHelp and maintain them myself. Any updates are sent to me by the developers or I pull them out of JIRA. This process ensures that there are no out of date documents to confuse the user.