Inspiring

Question

Merging Projects in RoboHelp 2020 - how many levels is possible?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 30, 2022
7 replies
457 views

Hi,

I need to create projects with a homepage, a bridge page that allow to access the projects. I need to devide my projects into 2 smaller ones due to the amount of content and different target audience.

Is is possible to merge projects in 3 levels:

- a parent project

- child project

- "sub-child" project

assume the child project can't be a parent projet for another child project? 🙂

so should I go with the option 1 parent page > many child pages?

Second thing, the parent project should contain any content (possibly will break in the merged output) - how to prepare the parent project to set the access (links) to child projects? Should if be 1 html file with the whole design for the homepage?

Thanks much for all tips

This topic has been closed for replies.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

@Angelikas It's difficult to work out where you are going wrong. Zip up the top level folder that contains your parent project and your child projects. See the Contact page on my site and send the zip as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the project direct.

It may be a few days but I will look at it when I can.

________________________________________________________

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

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Amebr

Community Expert

Some things to check until Peter is back.

Have you added the child projects to the Parent table of contents using Insert Child Project?

Have you generated the parent project, then generated each child into the applicable folder under mergedProjects?

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Sorry I am not following what you want to do.

There may be a delay in my reply when you have explained.

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AngelikasAuthor

Inspiring

I started with creating 1 project, it will be a child project in the future but until creatig a parent one and the rest of the projects I want to use:

- 1 project

- 4 ToCs

Can I have access to 4 ToCs in one place of my project or should the content of ToCs be shared separately for the end user (by providing URLs). Hope this make sense now.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

If the project will be a child but for now is a standalone you must generate it to somewhere outside of mergedProjects. There can be as many TOCs as you like but you can only select one when you generate.

It seems an odd question so maybe I am still not following what you are trying to achieve. Do say if I am not.

________________________________________________________
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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Welcome to My Help - Make that the parent with a TOC that points to five children, Projects 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. It can have a topic just saying welcome but avoiding links. The user will see the child projects in the TOC so no links are needed.
Project 1 will be a child project with two sections in the TOC, not two sub-projects.
Project 2 will be a child project with three sections in the TOC, not three sub-projects.
Project 3 will be a child project with its own topics.
Project 4 will be a child project with three sections in the TOC, not three sub-projects. One of the sections will have two indented sections.
Project 5 will be a child project with its own topics.

I would be giving that a trial as the structure is just a parent and five child projects. I think that will work and avoid all the complexities with what you have described.

You can easily trial that by copying the child projects in my demo so that you have five child projects in all.

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AngelikasAuthor

Inspiring

Hi, once again thank you @Peter Grainge for a comprehensive answer to my complicated question.

I have another question.

There is a possiblity of publishing one ToC in a project at time. Can I have all ToCs accessible in the Project output, having only one project with multiple ToCs?

Or is this something available only for projects and its childs?

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

In RoboHelp 2020 an output is controlled by the TOC so could you not just create two different TOCs to save the work in splitting your project into many projects?
Why do you need to go to a third level? I think this is the first time I have seen anyone wanting to do that in twenty odd years! In theory it is possible but RoboHelp wasn't designed to work that way so I would expect issues. Particularly in the search.
Why does the parent have to have content and links to child projects? The blank parent that I recommend on my site would open to a default topic that can be in any project. Think of that project as big brother or sister rather than the parent. The user will have no way of knowing whether it is the parent or any other project.
To cater for two different merges you will need two two TOCs in the main project. You have to generate everything in the merge and two presets generating to different folders and using different TOCs will allow that.

________________________________________________________

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AngelikasAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you so much, for your reply, Peter.

I see the point with 2 ToC I haven't considered that, because my one project has much content, so I was advised before to use on project for my existing one.

Here's the screenshot of my structure, the number of my projects will grow. I still hope RoboHelp is the right choice to build the help system consisting of helpsites (projects) for many products. I can reduce number of levels an direct from the welcome home page into the project for teacher and project for students as child projects. The key is to gather all my projects under one bridge page and provide the customers with the access to them.