Ranking Results for Search not working

[MeWrite]

We have just installed a trial version of RoboHelp Server 8. I have published 2 test projects in FlashHelp Pro using RH8. When we test the search results feature, the results display in the order the topic is found in the TOC instead of H1, Keywords, H2/H3, etc.

I have looked high and low to find a setting that may be dictating this, but have found none. Is there something I'm missing?

Oh and since I like to eat my cake too, is there a way to display a percentage of the result (i.e., topic one 80% meets search criteria, topic two 65% meets search criteria)?

[johndaigle]

Hi, MeWrite

There are a couple of suggestions. Here is a thread that may answer general WebHelp search questions. I'm following that with search features specific to RoboHelp Server 8:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/1934925#1934925

There are two kinds of search in Robohelp Server 8. Client Side and Server Side. By default, Server Side is installed. To see the search features I think you are preferring, you would want to switch to Client Side (basically the search index is created on your machine before it is published vs. having the server to the search indexing.)

The way you change to "client side" is to edit a simple text file in a folder where RoboHelp Server 8 is installed on the server machine (not your authoring machine). The filename is robohelp_server.properties and can be found along this path on the server.

Tips:

1. Stop the Tomcat Server before you edit the property file. You can do that by using this app
   C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\bin\tomcat6w.exe
   
2. Open the file in Notepad (Run as Administrator if using Windows Vista or Windows 7)
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp Server 8\WEB-INF\robohelp_server.properties
3. Look for the lines (toward the bottom) that look like this:

#reindex = false

reindex = true

Put a # mark in front of the true line to comment it out and then delete the # mark in front of the false line. Save it, restart Tomcat, re-generate and republish your project to the server.

You should now be able to see more features like Search Context, etc. Unfortunately neither method will show percentages at this time. There are tradeoffs in client side an server side. It takes some experimenting to determine which mode works for your situation.

Thanks
John Daigle

Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

www.showmethedemo.com

[MeWrite]

John -- thank you for your reply. I did read the post that you referred to, but that's not how this is working. Neither Server nor Client side search is ranking the results correctly, well at least I don't think so.

Server Side Search

When I search on Activities I get the following results in this order (all topics are in the TOC)

1. Notepad Overview - word in text only.

2. Empower Main Screen Layout - H3, H4, text

3. Editing Activities - Topic Title, File Name, H1, text

4. Adding Activities - Topic Title, File Name, H1, text

5. Activities Overview - Topic Title, File Name, H1, text

The items above are in the TOC in this order from top to bottom: 2, 1, 5, 4, 3.

Client Side Search

When I search on Activities I get: "No Topics Found".

Other topics I search on seem to display. The results don't display in TOC order, however, they also don't display based on the rank as defined in the Help or the Post you recommended.

Neither search works if I enter keywords in quotes. Nothing happens at all when I use quotes. At the moment, none of the Actitives topics have keywords.

Slight tangent:  I am using, or trying to, FlashHelp Pro. Although the Online Help states I can select substring search and context results, there are no options on the layout screen to select this nor on the Window options. I see this if I setup the FlashHelp layout, but the client really wants the reports and other features that Pro offers so I need to get Pro to work as it should.

RoboHelp Admin Info

When I log into the Administrative side of RoboServer the Settings page displays Database and Search options when setup for Server Side search. When setup for Client Side Search, the Sever option disappears. If we stick with Server Side searching, what does it mean by "rescan search engine"?

Is it possible that something wasn't selected correctly during the RoboServer Install? The IT department sits in a totally different state that I'm in and I don't know what the defaults are during the install process as I'm not there and we are doing this all via email.

PS: Not to throw another wrench into this issue, but....we are not using an Index. This is the first time I have created Online Help without an Index. Is this having some sort of impact on the search functionality that I am unaware of?

Regards,

Cindy

[Guest]

Any insight on this? I am having the same problem. Results not ordering properly. Results not showing up at all properly.

Thanks.

JC

[MeWrite]

JC -- what layout are you using? My IT guy found an article about a year ago

on the forums that said that the FlashHelp output would not rank searches

correctly. We were trying to us FlashHelp Pro, so same concept.  It wouldn't

rank. I produced a WebHelp Pro layout and sure enough the search results

rank.

So my conclusion is that you cannot get the results to rank in FlashHelp for

some reason, which I find odd because as far as I know the only difference

is the skin (one's animated, the other isn't), but I guess there is more to

it than that.

As far as I can tell, there's still no solution to this issue.

Thanks for asking. I forgot to update that post because I figured it out

literally as I was walking out the door to fly home.

Regards,

CJ