Classic to RH22 Project Overhaul Help.

[29622732d8xs]

Good morning, 

I'm not even sure where to start honestly and I'm hoping you may be able to provide some advice.  Adobe has provided support previously and advised that the way our project structure is set up is not the way it was meant to work at all.  Here's the story.   We build internal KBs for our customer service department based on each client and plan.  We work with Medical health insurance so each plan will have it's own benefit structure like cost of copay for dr. visit etc. and plan materials.  The vast majority of the content is internal processes that are the same across the board.  These were literally all set up and pages copied into every project.  (lots of projects).  In 2015, we designated one plan as a "parent" for these internal processes, hyperlinked to the parent project, and set up external content search for the children plans so the search function would pull the topics that did not live withing the project anymore.  We are at a crossroad of trying to migrate to html 5 from web help pro and the loss of external content search.  Search is a major function and we for sure have more than 200 separate projects running.  I'm not even sure where to start. We don't know what we don't know.  My initial though is to create one mother ship and have all of the content live here so that external content search doesn't even need to exist.   Here are my hurdles.   We work with multiple clients which have multiple individual and employer plans.  For example,  Client 1 may has 4  plans, client 2 has 150 plans, client 3 has 10 plans etc.   Each of those clients cannot see eachothers content contractually.  I was working on creating one mother ship TOC for our internal departments so they can see all content but then a way for there to be a TOC for client one that has all of the plan options available, Client 2 with all plan options, etc.  Then when the plan is selected, the conditions are set up to view only the content for the plan they select (benefits etc. that are individual to the plan) and processes that all plans will see. Do I need to create a separate TOC for each plan or Client, or can I have just one big TOC with filters?  Do I set up an output for each client, or do I need to set up an output for every single plan.  Or is there some magical solution for external content search to work and I can avoid this mothership entirely.  It will be a huge effort . I'm fairly certain between all clients we have more than 300 URLs at this point all separate projects.  Help, I'm drowning....

[Peter Grainge]

To put it not too politely, that sounds like one unholy mess from the way you describe it. Some paragraphs in your post would have helped digest it. 🙂

My first thought was merged help where you have a parent project and any number of child projects. The way I advocate using it sets up a virtually empty parent project that links to one or more child projects. You can also have multiple parents with different combinations of children. To say for sure that is the right answer would require someone with the necessary expertise to do a complete analysis of your content.

Merged Help (grainge.org)

Another way the use of conditional build tags and conditional expressions in one project. There you would apply tags to content (topics or text in a topic) and then create expressions to generate an output specific to each client. On balance I think that would be better than merged help as you would be able to set up the TOC(s) so that they are better for each customer. In a merge the TOCs for each project follow each other whereas this way they will be more logical for each client. Again you are going to need a lot of analyis.

RH2022 Single Sourcing. Tags and Expressions (grainge.org)

Note the video link at the end. The link will also show Dynamic Content Filtering. That is not something you will want as each client would be able to see the content unique to other clients.

Using single sourcing though would generate unique outputs.

The thing that bothers me here is the sheer size of that project.

Then there is an aspect you haven't touched on. You are talking about responsive HTML5 help. That is fine but Adobe are focussing all their development on Frameless outputs. HTML5 is more difficult to customise whereas Frameless has many more options built in. You also need to consider where the help will sit. If it is on a webserver, frameless is definitely the way to go. If it is on an end user's machine, frameless has a little flicker each time you change from topic to topic. Generate the supplied About RoboHelp sample project with a frameless output and view it locally to see what I mean.

RoboHelp creates two copies of the samples on installation. 

• The copy to use is put in My RoboHelp Projects in the Documents folder that Windows creates in your profile.
• Another copy goes into Program Files and should never be run from there as Windows will block some of the functionality.  The idea of the copy in Program Files is that it is a clean back up if you need to replace the copy in Documents.

Overall there is a serious amount of work ahead of you and I wonder if you are going to need a RoboHelp consultant alongside you. If you feel you do, let me know what part of the world you are in and I will see if there is someone I can suggest.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[29622732d8xs]

I definitely agree and thank you for the info regarding HTML5 vs Frameless. I'll definitely mention that to the team.  I just want to avoid repeating same processes and work arounds. I'd like to follow best RH practices and learn how to do this right.  Yes, please, if you do have any RH consultants, that would be great and I'll pass it along to upper management who handles budget etc. 

[Lightextinc]

Hi: My name is Beth Gerber and I am the owner of Lightext, Inc., a company specializing in RoboHelp conversions, consulting and training. Our specialty is in upgrading clients to current versions of the software and organizing the content and layout(s) to be streamlined and appropriate for the organization and end user.  I was referred by Peter Grainge, a long time colleague and fellow consultant.  I'd love to discuss your use case to help you migrate towards a better overall solution.  Please contact me at beth@lightext.com (626-357-2017).  Lightext is a preferred Adobe Partner.  Looking forward to connecting with you.  www.lightext.com 

[29622732d8xs]

Have you found any RoboHelp consultants that may be of assistance?

[Peter Grainge]

Have you told me what part of the world you are in? 🙂

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[29622732d8xs]

My apologies.  You hadn't asked.  I'm in the U.S.  

[Peter Grainge]

See the last paragraph in this post. 🙂

I'll ask some people I know to look at this thread and respond if they are interested.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Hi @29622732d8xs 

Your post is marked with a correct answer; did you get everything you needed?

My name is Matt Sullivan, and @Peter Grainge  let me know you might be looking for help.

I'm happy to discuss what you need in your content overhaul, and with the amount of content you're managing, it's likely that a helping hand will prove quite beneficial.

If you're not yet familiar with condition tags and dynamic filtering, you may want to check out the two webinars on these topics I did for Adobe recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeFP8VY62Zs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPAeL0KTxe8&list=PLJL3v-Ayk9rQblT7RHTx3ooh60sFph9h8&index=2

I'll also be presenting a webinar on Merged Help next month.

See https://robohelp-essentials-merged-help.meetus.adobeevents.com/ for details. 

-Matt Sullivan

Tech Comm Tools

[29622732d8xs]

Good morning Matt, 

We would love to work with you on our overhaul. I actually did watch and sent your Part 1 video to my team and we all joined your part 2 Dynamic Filters course live.  I'll also pass along the Merged Help course information to my team as well.  What might be the best way for my manager to reach out to you to discuss the details and set up a meeting?  He is not in the community page as of yet. 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Shoot Matt & Beth private messages & you can connect offline with them.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Wow, what a mess! Did you have a clear plan getting into all this with RH to begin with?

I'm still unclear as to what you actually "ship" to your clients - is it a "custom" site (tailored to each client's content) or one help site with filtering/dynamic content based on who they are & what they have? Were you using merged help at all?

[29622732d8xs]

Did we? No.. haha.. We walked into this with no kowledge and were trained this way unfortunately.   We need to learn the right way.  We do not know what we do not know with limited training. We basically learned as we did. What works now, isn't likely best practice, and moving forward isn't going to work.  It's forcing us to completely rethink options and research different features.

Our knowledge is limited.   When I say mothership, I mean just one project to house all of the content for all clients and then the external content isn't even an issue.  Obviously, it seems like any option is going to require overhaul of everything.  We have never utilized merged help or conditions and expressions.  I'm literally trying to learn everything I possibly can. I just don't know what would work best for us.  I'm just creating a test project at the moment and importing some client topics and seeing what works and how it works.  Looking up all info I can from grainge.org, signing up for as many courses and videos etc. as I can.  I already viewed Part 1 and 2 of Matt's dynamic content filtering, and I've just come across the merged help hours after I posted this honestly.  

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Oops, sorry for repeating what you wrote in this post...there's a lot in this thread to wade through.

[Amebr]

@Peter Chater Have you tried resource linking to a separate Robohelp project? I'm wondering if all the client projects could use this feature to grab all the common topics from the "mothership" project? If it works, then at least all the existing projects could remain intact, and, theoretically, fixing the links and toc entries could be done with a find/replace?

[29622732d8xs]

I'm not familiar with this but I'll start poking around and see if this might be something that would work.  If this allows the existing projects to remain and just linking to change, this would certainly beat importing all topics into a new project and creating conditions/expressions and hundreds of outputs.  Thank you for the input.  I'll check into this.  

[Amebr]

Good luck! 

I'm not sure this function works the same as it did in Classic, and i didn't use it much even then, but figure it might get your current setup working and give you time to plan a restructure.

[Peter Grainge]

It doesn't work the same as in Classic. In Classic you linked a particular item, in the new UI you link a folder and everything in it. The target folder does not refresh if something else gets added. RoboHelp has its own copy of that folder.

Think about that for a while and you will realise why I didn't originally include it.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Peter Grainge]

I guess it could work but the potential problem is that you change something in the mother project that is also used in two projects where the change is only appropriate in one. It should show in the second as out of sync and you should investigate whether or not to refresh and change it in the second as well or leave it as is.

Without checking, I'm not sure you can check which projects anything is used in.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Peter Grainge]

I have reached out to three and I know one at least will be responding to you.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[paulh11705604]

You wrote "Adobe has provided support previously and advised that the way our project structure is set up is not the way it was meant to work at all." and I had to chuckle. One of the changes I don't like in the latest version is that if you link to a Word file on a network drive, that Word file is automatically copied to your local C: drive whereas in RH 2015, that didn't happen. When I worked with Adobe, I was advised that I wan't using the linked Word file functionality in, basically, not the way it was meant to work so I relate to your situation.

You wrote "We are at a crossroad of trying to migrate to html 5 from web help pro and the loss of external content search" above, but I don't understand why you have to change your output from HTML 5 in the first place. I realize you are upgrading from Classic to RH 2022 and it may seem like the right time to evaluate your design, especially since it was last designed in 2015. However, in my experience, I have had more success in conversion / upgrade projects with getting to where you are now with the new version as a Phase I of the project and then redesigning the structure as a Phase II of the project. I wonder if trying to split the upgrade and the redesign into two distinct phases would help you out.

[Amebr]

@paulh11705604 Webhelp pro output does not exist in New UI, so switching from webhelp output to HTML5 is mandatory in this case.