RH 2022 - Renaming multiple files

One thing Robohelp can do is find and replace. So if the change is consistent for all the files - say, renaming MyProduct to NewCoolApp - then you could do a find and replace in the source code. You'd probably need a little a bit of regex (regular expression - kind of a fancy search with advanced wildcards) so you only changed the text inside links, but a developer should be able to help you write it. (Or maybe you definitely want every instance of the text changed, in which case you probably wouldn't need any regex.) Test on a copy of your project first to make sure it doesn't break anything in your real project. Once done you'd check for any further links that the search and replace didn't catch (e.g. toc entries, perhaps)

Or.

How about some quick maths as justification for a new tool your managers. Do a few files and time how long it takes. Multiply by the number of files for the estimated total time to make the changes.

Assuming you're making the same change to all file names (e.g. replacing a product name for example) then divide by 2. This is the estimated time to fix just the broken links in Robohelp, as the third party tool will do the rename in only a few seconds and for simplicity we'll say renaming takes the same time as fixing the broken links. (You could time each component more accurately if you wanted to, or say that renaming is 1/3 of the time, if that is your estimate of the effort required, but for simplicity I'm just going with 50%.)

Then you can do some more maths to estimate the cost to the business. Convert the estimated time to hours, then multiply by your cost per hour. Do for both the manual and automated estimates. Money can sometimes do wonders for software approvals 🙂