Robohelp 2022 - Filter button not showing on Output (Frameless Oceanic)

[JenniR_12]

I am having an issue where the Filter opitions are not showing on my Frameless Oceanic Output.  It all looks right in the skin editor, but once I generate and view, it's gone.  See screenshots below.  First screenshot shows the Filter option in the skin editor and the 2nd screenshot shows the actual output where Filter is missing.  oes anyone know why or how to correct this?

[Peter Grainge]

Have you selected the filter in the preset? 

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

[JenniR_12]

Hi Peter.  I think so.  I can see it showing in the preset.  Is there a specific place (that I'm not finding) to tell the Filter option to show up?  It's showing up in the livepreview on the preset.  (screenshot 1 in my OP).  

[JenniR_12]

It's not showing on the topic page either on the output but IS showing on the live preview in the preset.  It's just missing.  The Favorites and Share options are showing on both the preset and the output.  Just the filter is missing.

[Peter Grainge]

That's not the preset. That's the template editor.

________________________________________________________

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

[JenniR_12]

Sorry.  I got my terminology mixed up.  I guess I'm not seeing an option in the preset for the filter to show up in the output.  I'm obvioulsy missing something very important.  What does that filter option in the output do?  I just figured if you clicked on it from output, you could set criteria for more specific search results.  That is utlimately what I'm trying to do.  Set this up so users are not getting such broad info returned on their searches.  I have had multiple users ask me about this and that's when I noticed that the filter options were just gone.  I also just figured if it's showing up in the live preview that means it is set correctly and will show up in the output.  Why would the live preview show me something different than the Output is going to give me?  I thought that was the whole point of the Live Preview.

[Peter Grainge]

It's late here so I'll have to look in the morning. I'm not at a RoboHelp machine. 

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

[JenniR_12]

Thanks, Peter.  🙂

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Have you fooled around with the size of the page in the browser? I find that some responsive elements appear & disappear at different screen sizes - you can simulate a lot of that by grabbing a corner and expanding/contracting the topic.

[JenniR_12]

I haven't even looked at the size of the page in the browser (mainly bc I'm not sure how to do that).  Are you saying that if I click on a corner of the web page and try to drag it bigger or smaller, different things show up?  I've tried and nothing happens when I try to drag it.  My mouse pointer doesn't change.

[Peter Grainge]

The point of the preview is to show you what can be in your output. What is actually in your output is down to what you set up.

Filtering doesn't just happen by magic. You have to tell RoboHelp what the filters need to do, which topics to exclude. It's described in RH2022 Dynamic Content Filtering (grainge.org), As well as the topic, there is a link to Matt Sullivan's webinar on the subject. 

Once you have set up the filtering, you select it in the preset. It's a dropdown because you might have different filter sets for different outputs.

________________________________________________________

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

[WoutJacobs]

The dynamic content filter in RH2022.3.93 is very finnicky in my opinion, so I'm not sure if JenniR_12 will actually get the desired result.

I could only somewhat get the dynamic content filter to work after tagging all 1722 topics in the project (as a test). I wonder if other users also experience the same struggles?

[JC @ Salient]

I thought I was seeing a the same thing but it turns out that it was a problem with my build expression that was causing none of the topics with the tags to be included in the output.

[JenniR_12]

Ok.  So, I didn't put 2 and 2 together, obviously.  I thought that the when the filter button or icon is selected, the options would be "built-in", I guess.  But, now that I think about it, I guess it makes sense that we have to set it up.  I haven't sat down to look at the dynamic filtering yet because I havne't had the time as of yet.  Maybe I can ask a different question as it relates to the searches in Robohelp.  As it stands right now, I have many users complaining about the "broadness" of the searches.  Is Dynamic Filtering and Microcontent what I need to set up in order for those seaches to be more precise or at  the very minimum, be narrowed down a great deal?  Or, is there something esle that needs to be set up or configured in order for those searches to actually be helpful?  Thanks everyone in advance.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

What do they mean by "broadness"? Too many results? Not relevant results?

[JenniR_12]

I would say that I have gotten complaints for both reasons.  Too many results and it takes too long to find what they need and relevance also.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

So part of that is how you've got content structured and made relevant. From the RH help - 

Ranking of search results

RoboHelp ranks search results based on their relevance. For example, if a word appears in the title of a topic, its rank is higher than the word in the topic keyword list. A topic with the word appearing in heading 1 ranks higher than the word appearing in heading 2 and is displayed first in the search results.

Part of it also setting up synonyms for the terms users are looking for; another part is educating them to make better search strings for phrases and boolean operators (RH by default uses OR logical operators, but you can force it use AND or NOT operators too).

[JenniR_12]

That's really helpful, Jeff.  Thank you.  

[JenniR_12]

Hi Peter.  ON the Live Preview, I thought that it provided us a real time idea of what our edits to the different parts and pieces that make up the webpage will actually look like as we are making the edits.  For example, I make a change to the background color of one of the containers on my homepage,  Live Preview updates  the color to what I just set and now shows me what my edit looks like.  If I then make another color change, the Live Preview reflects the change I just made.  Is that an incorrect interpretation of Live Preview on my part?

[Peter Grainge]

@WoutJacobs The only time you should need to tag all topics is where there are no topics that are to appear regardless of filter. If a topic is tagged, it will appear or not based on the filter applied, untagged topics will always appear.

________________________________________________________

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

[JenniR_12]

Another quetion or concern that has popped into my head throughout this entire first project is that in my situation, I know basically ZERO about the content on this particular user guide.  I am the "chosen" one to take all of the information given to me and set it up in Robohelp.  Is it accurate to say that it's going to be difficult for me to set up the dynaic content filters considering I don't know anything about the content?  If that makes sense.  (so basically, I'm  creating a user guide on topics I know absolutely nothing about with terminology I know nothing about, etc.).

[WoutJacobs]

That is correct Peter, unfortunately the users want to have everything to be 'filterable'. This is especially the case since tagged and filtered topics do not show up in the search results, which is what my audience really wants.

Untagged topics always show up, which clogs the search results horrendously.

[Peter Grainge]

This is especially the case since tagged and filtered topics do not show up in the search results

If a filter is applied, the search only works on the topics not filtered out. In other words, all topics with the right filter or no tag.

How are you expecting it to work?

________________________________________________________

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

[WoutJacobs]

I believe the old RH dynamic content filter worked the way I'd envisioned - only the filter options you selected were displayed in the output / considered in search.

[Peter Grainge]

Not to my knowledge but would this work? Apply a new tag to topics that are not tagged at the moment,. Then add that option to the filters. Say the topics are menus and you have say Indian, Chinese and European, they are obvious filters. With currently untagged apply another filter called say All Cuisines, your currently untagged topics. That way users could search just their top cuisine and then add the other topics (the prviously untagged stuff) if they so choose.

________________________________________________________

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