Customer-added help

[Guest]

Hi, Does anybody know if it is possible to let end customers add their own help topics to the Webhelp that you have created?

Thanks in advance,
Hanne

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Hanne and welcome to the RH community.

The answer is only if they have a RH licence that allows them to add topics to the project and publish it and I'm sure you wouldn't want that! Could you add a feedback link to your project that would allow you to see what is needed and add the content yourself, or is this something you don't want to have to do either?

[JainVivek]

You can enable end users to add their comments if you use RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR. Comments get appended to help topics and appear as part of the content.

[nandaktechwriter]

Hi Jain,

I want to provide the online help through Adobe AIR and also provide the help users (clients) to use the comments feature to comment about the help pages for their internal consumption. The help will be installed on the clients server and will be accessed by several operators through a client machine. This will not be an internet based help. Can you kindly let me know how to do this. I tried using the Enable Comments feature but it asks for the network server address for the comments to be synchronized. Assuming that I dont know the Clients server setup, I would want to deploy this help which will get installed with my product on their servers.

Regards,

Nandha

[Guest]

Hi Nandha,

I am sorry but I don't know anything about RoboHelp AIR.

I hope you find the answer elsewhere - good luck!

Regards, Hanne

[hmmsdk]

Hi,
you are absolutely right, I would not like to have customers interfere with my projects, and yes, I would much rather myself add the documentation they miss - I am just striving to convince Marketing about that - so thanks a lot for your reply (it helps :-))

Hanne

[Peter Grainge]

Hanne

As this is in the webhelp forum, you might hit the same issue with AIR as I did. For comments to work, the help has to be installed locally. Whilst users cannot add topics, you can set your webhelp up in such a way that configuring a javascript file will cause one link per topic to appear and that can point to whatever your customers want.

See Customising Help on my site.

As and when AIR can allow comments with a web only installation, that will be a better way to go.

[hmmsdk]

Hi all,

Thanks for all your input, ideas, interesting links, etc. I am really impressed with this forum and the short response time!
Regards, Hanne

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Hanne. Perhaps you could ask your Marketing Department to ensure that your clients enter the documentation that meets your style guide, is correctly indexed, is not verbose, etc, etc. Tell them to compare what the help would be like compared to what it is now and maybe that would suggest to them that this is a bad idea.

[MergeThis]

You could go with a low-tech solution like we did: we provide a Custom Help folder, with a link in the TOC, which contains one sample custom_help.htm. It contains instructions on how to use it and how to add more topics if they choose.

In addition, our installer is programmed to ignore this folder on version updates, so that they don't lose what they've done when they upgrade.

We also provide a feedback mailto: feature on all topic pages, which captures the topic name for their email message, if they wish to relay comments back to us.


Good luck,
Leon

[rinpa35]

Hi Leon,

What is the quickest way to provide "Send Feedback" links in each topic?  Is there a quick comprehensive way to do this

without manually adding links and text to each topic?

thanks,

Rachel

[MergeThis]

Quick? ha, ha, ha... You're such a kidder!

To provide the mailto function and pull the topic filename into the mail message, the stuff has to go into each topic, m-m-m-man-u-a-ll-y. This requires working in the HTML mode, rather than Design mode.

The only quickness you can realize is by using a very good find/replace tool, such as FAR.

If you're interested, send me email and I can respond with attachments that will help.

Good luck,

Leon

[Peter Grainge]

Leon

If it saves you time, there is something about this in Snippet 38 on my site.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[RoboWizard]

Hi all

Why not use a Topic Template/Master Page with the code in a footer? You would then simply and easily apply the Template or Master page across all topics.

What am I missing with this scenario?

Cheers... Rick

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[Guest]

just a thought - although certainly it's optimal to pass back the topic name in feedback email, there is a quick way to set up an email request for all or most topics. It sacrifices the topic name, but I mention it because rinpa35 doesn't specifically request that level of return in her question. (or, maybe she did - if so, I missed it and am butting in all willy-nilly)

I add a mailto link to the footer on templates used to create topics in my Help systems and our Knowledge Base. I add text asking for feedback, and to include the name of the topic in the message. Done deal. Updates automatically all topics attached to the template(s).

Onward and upward.

[RoboWizard]

Hi there

I've done E-Mail feedback links that grab information from the DOM using JavaScript. Fairly simple to do (it has to be for me).

Cheers... Rick

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[rinpa35]

Yes, just adding the mailto link with a request for topic name sounds like

easiest solution to me as well....

thanks,

Rachel

[RoboWizard]

Hi there

LOL, for you but not your user.

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[rinpa35]

True - but it could be a good interim solution while I examine other

options....

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

If you want to use a simple e-mail link, try creating a snippet/footer with the following text:

<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript1.2">
<!--
function feedback(){
    var MailTitle=document.title;
    return("mailto:your@email.com?SUBJECT="+MailTitle)
}
//-->
</script>
<p><a href="/feedback/" onClick="javascript:this.href=feedback();">Feedback</a></p>

This will sent the e-mail with the title of the page as subject. It might not be the prettiest solution, but it's quick and easy to create. Note that this is HTML (Robo7) syntax. If you use Robo8, change onClick to lowercase.

If you want a better function, I suggest you examine the possibility of creating a small form where users only have to enter their name/company and their remarks. Add other info like topic filename and title in hidden fields using javascript. Just google for this, there's lots of info around for these kinds of tricks.You will have to get creative 😉

Greet,

Willam

[Linux Rules]

You could also set up a customer/company Wiki and provide a link to it on each Help topic page.

Regards,
GEWB

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

WRT the Wiki, how does information come back from the Wiki to RoboHelp? Or does it come back? I would think at some point you would want to capture that information and pop it into the relevant help topics for others.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks