Need Helpclass or other to pull/display RHTML from a server that's not public

[Kdale2]

We have SaaS programs where the external customer logs in through Okta to access the programs. Currently the RoboHelp-generated help files are embedded in the program, but we want to remove them and have the Help link go to our RoboHelp server (really could be any server) and pull our help file but change the URL that the customer sees and basically display it in the browser through our program. I know we can set up a service to do this and possibly use Okta, but we are looking for options and might do a quick and dirty way of using a helpclass embedded in the program to pull the help and rename the URL... Does anyone know of a helpclass already out there? What are my other options? I barely know what I'm talking about but I could point my IT people in the right direction if I knew what that was. LOL... The Okta integration that the RoboHelp server has isn't really for this either. We've been down that path. Thanks for any help.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

So your SaaS software is on a site that uses Okta to manage the logins, correct? Why not just put the help content on the same site and create a link to it from your software? What's the value in going to a server running RoboHelp Server if you're already managing access with Okta?

[Kdale2]

I have thought of doing that, but I think there was some type of issue (I'll have to go back and see what that was). I'll check again, but wanted to see if there was a way for us to do this with the RoboHelp server since we have it and there are other things we might want to use it for. Seeing what my options are. 

[Peter Grainge]

Please clarify. A Web server that hosts your RoboHelp output or a Web server on which the Adobe RoboHelp Server product has been installed? 

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

[Kdale2]

Currently we do have the RoboHelp Server software on its own server and we'd like to link to that help without making it public and without giving the exact URL in what the customer sees. And our apps are not on the Okta server, so that's why we can't just have it there. Thanks for your help. I know I'm not very clear as I'm not very IT-savvy

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I suspect you'd just force another login (not an Okta login credential) on the RoboHelp Server product if you made a link over to it. So there's not much advantage to that (from the user's point of view).

[Kdale2]

yeah, we don't want to force a login... We want the app to say "open this if it's coming from this application." We don't want to force a login. BUT if we could use the SSO from Okta, that would work but not sure how to do that with the help right now....or that might be a Phase 2 approach as I just need something fast for  now and that approach will require more IT help

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

What format are your help files in anyways? I suspect to hide the URL where they would be fetched from would require your programmers to create a frame within their application to fetch and display the content.
I understand your application isn't on the Okta server - but it's using Okta for SSO login purposes and has to be living on some web server; just adding HTML5 content to that same location in its own folder & linking to it from with the application would be the easiest method for your developers.
ps - if you think your help is secret; it's probably not - your competition probably already knows what's in it. 

[Kdale2]

Help files are published as responsive HTML. According to my IT person for us "Okta is just a service in the cloud somewhere that allows applications that subscribe to it to have multiple Active Directory servers that we do not own made available to us for authentication." So we just use it for authentication to get into our application on a different server. 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

So have they tested sticking your HTML5 in a folder on the same server where your software is located & making a link to it from within your application? 

[Kdale2]

So, I will see if the product owner is open to us putting the files on the product server without them being imbedded and if they are ok with us having that type of write access to publish to that folder at any time, etc... That's an option that I'll present. I wanted to see if there was a way to keep them on our RH server to use the reporting options there and so forth so that's why we were looking for creative ways to do that. Thanks

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Not at all sure what you mean by "without them being imbedded" - if they are on the same server as the application (or even in a sub-folder within the application) isn't that embedded enough??

[Kdale2]

We don't want them to be part of the build... We want to be able to push out help file changes anytime we want and so they don't have to wait on us to create their build. I'm just not sure they'll want us pushing to their server like that, but we'll see. I also wanted to try to use the RH server for it's reporting capabilities and so forth.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Well, you've got a few options - nobody on these forums is a RH Server expert, so I'm not sure how SSO can be managed with it but maybe installing it on the application server is an option. Most places publish their content to some internal location where the dev build process comes through (on whatever schedule it runs) and sweeps it up for publishing to the web server. Then you don't care about access to the web server - they control all that.

[Kdale2]

yeah right now, they do pull our help but just when they create their build. We wanted it separate so we can update it in between builds and the customer gets that updated version immediately. To  have the RH server software on their server, we'd have to get muliple copies and that won't fly... so we might have to figure  out this class thing or just give up on the RH server options. Thanks for your help. If we figure out the helpclass option, I'll share it.

[Amebr]

I would try contacting the Robohelp support people as I figure they'll have a better idea about Robohelp Server SSO integrations than us writers. 🙂  

See the following page for support contact options. The email address is recommended as it goes to a dedicated Robohelp team rather than generic support.
https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp

[Amebr]

Although.... I just remembered that many years ago at a previous job we supported multiple versions of a very modular product. The developers wrote a bit of code in the application that grabbed the specific version numbers of all the modules the client had installed, then located the correct versions of each module on the server, and presented it to the client as a correctly set up merged help product.

e.g.

Server file system was like the following and the module help wasn't installed in correct merged help sub folders at all:

Base product

-v1

-v1.1

-v2

-v2.1

Module 1

-v1

-v2

-v2.1

-v2.2

Module 2

-v1

Clients saw a URL like the following, even though that wasn't where it was installed, or even in a correct merged setup.

www.company.com/product/help.htm

It was a custom solution though, not anything prewritten. And probably far more complicated than what you want. But it suggests what you want can be done - it didn't take my developers that long to write it either, from memory. (possibly it used symlinks? I'm not sure though - it was a long time ago)

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

@Amebr was this post supposed to go with https://community.adobe.com/t5/robohelp-discussions/how-do-i-get-csh-string-to-use-dynamic-filter-in... ?

[Amebr]

No I meant to reply here. 🙂

[Kdale2]

yeah, I think they will definately have to write code, but wondered if there was something already out there. I did reach out to Adobe before but unfortunately the RH Server does not actually do what we thought. It's honestly a little misleading when it says it has SSO. It does, but only for the admin level. It doesn't send tokens or do anything like that.