A few questions on search keywords...

All- Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Some good ideas here.

I should step back and describe the general problem I'm trying to solve...

I'm creating WebHelp for my company's software products. There is a main product, and several "module" products, each with their own versioning! Customers can potentially have different combinations of product versions. For example:

• Customer One might have main_product_v_10, sub_product_A_v_2.3, and sub_product_B_v_1.0, whereas...
• Customer Two might have main_product_v_10.1, sub_product_A_v_2.2, and sub_product_B_v_1.1.

Some topics (like installation, release notes, etc.) are very product+version dependent. Others (the majority) don't really change over time, and would apply to all customers' set of products.

One requirement is that all topics are potentially available one search interface. However, another requirement is that customers should to be able to perform searches in such a way that topics that are NOT relevant to them are excluded from search hits. For example, if customer Two searches for 'installation sub_product_A', I don't want them to have to look at hits for installation instructions for each version.

To help customers exclude irrelevant version-specific topics from their searches, I thought I would add abbreviated keywords to the product/version-specific topics, and then provide search instructions in their use. For example, to ensure that customers find instructions that just apply to sub_product B_v_1.1, they could do a search for, say "spB1.1". Then all topics that include spB1.1 as a keyword would be returned. I'd also like customers to be able to search across all topics that 1) Apply only to their software set 2) Apply to all customers (non-product/version specific) and 3) does NOT apply (only) to product/versions that the customer doesn't own. (Point #3 relates to my interest in a default keyword, such as "common". Rick's last idea using master pages looks interesting.)

Use case: Customer Two wants to search for the string "customization" in all topics that apply to his/her set of software. The search would be therefor be something like: customization AND ("main10.1" "subA2.2" "subB1.1" common)

Thanks again!

-Kurt

Hi Kurt

Hopefully my colleagues Willam and Peter won't mind my offering a bit of a different take here...

You asked:

Is there a way an end-user (a reader of the WebHelp) can specify keywords in the search query (something perhaps like "kwd:installation"), such that only topics with the keyword "installation" are returned?

There is this really cool feature that RoboHelp offers. Basically, this feature allows you to anticipate and define the keywords you think users may choose to use when looking for information. Essentially, the way it works is this. You define the keyword, then you choose to associate topics of interest with the keyword. After you generate the help and make it available to the end user community, when they are looking for the information, they begin typing the keyword they are looking for and BOOM! Automagickally, the output sets about wildly trying to match existing keywords to what they are typing. It's quite amazing really. For example, perhaps they are looking for "installation". As they type the I and the N and the S, the list of keywords scrolls and adapts. Quite often, the user sees the keyword they want before fully typing it out. They click and see all the topics associated with this keyword. Oh, the name of this feature is the "Index".

You also asked:

Is there a way to search across all topics that have NO keyword (eg, "kwd:"")?

That would be known as the typical "Search" RoboHelp offers.

And lastly you asked:

Is there a way to configure RH such that when an author creates a new topic, a default keyword, or set of keywords, is added automatically to the search Keyword field for the topic?

My esteemed colleague Peter answered that quite well. If you are wanting the topic keywords field completed.

But there is a similar approach you might consider. That approach would involve creating a Master Page. You would then add the keywords you want to the Body area of the Master Page. Then when you create topics that use the Master Page, whatever is in the body text of the Master Page is copied to the new topic and is searchable.

Cheers... Rick

As far as I know, 3 x no. But perhaps I've overlooked something.

Kind regards,

Willam