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csmystic
Participant
March 18, 2010
Question

Unique output for multiple customers

  • March 18, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 445 views

One more for everyone this morning!  (RoboHelp 8.0.2.208, FlashHelp Output).  I don't think there is a way to do this, but I figured I'd ask: My project files contain many topics for an online user manual for many different customers.  Our product is customized for each customer, so while some general features of the user manual are uniform throughout, I'm using a lot of conditional build tags on the topics for each customer's unique features, and have several TOCs, one for each customer.  To the best of my current knowledge, every time I make a change to the user manual, I need to generate a new build for every customer, and push the changes to every customer.  As our list of customers grows, this maintenance is going to become a full time position.  Is there any way to generate an inclusive build that lives on our server, and point each customer to their specific TOC/Conditional Build Tagged Contents?  Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!  Thank you!


Chris

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2 replies

Willam van Weelden
Willam van Weelden
Inspiring
March 18, 2010

Hi,

You can create multiple single-source layouts (also multiple FlashHelp layouts), each with a different TOC/CBT/UDV specification. You can then easily use a batch command to generate/publish all your different layouts at once. (You can do this from RoboHelp, but you can also use a .bat file/the cmd.)

In RH7, the batch function is in the File menu. I don't know where it's hidden in RH8.

As for publishing to your customers, do you use Online Help, or do you deliver the files? In the first case, you can use the publishing function to publish directly after generating.

If you send zips to your customers, perhaps a developer can write you a script to quickly zip each build and put the files in the directory you use for publishing.

Greet,

Willam

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RoboColum_n_
RoboColum_n_
Legend
March 18, 2010

Hi Chris.

It strikes me that you may be able to do this by duplicating the single source layout. Then you can change the properties of each one to a specific set of conditional build tags and output path. You can even use the Batch Generate feature to create all the outputs at the same time. I have a blog post on this which may prove useful.

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