About RoboServer 9?

Report · Aug 14, 2015

We're considering upgrading from RH 9 to RH 2015.

Our primary output has for over a decade now, been CHM output. We'd like to do something new and fresh. I like the speed of a local help system. But we'd love to get the the analytics and user feedback and so on. So sounds like we'd need RoboServer.

Some questions.

1) Is RoboServer 9 really the latest RoboServer? That came out with RH 9 didn't it? Does this mean they haven't enhanced it any since the RH 9 days?

2) Does RoboServer 9 support RH 2015? Can I generate an output from RH 2015 and expect it to work just fine with RoboServer 9?

3) I read that the analytics only work on an a WebHelp output. Does this mean they work on local WebHelp output that resides on a user's machine? Or does the help content need to reside on a webserver for the analytics to work?

4) Anything else I should know?

Thanks in advance,

Jared

Report · Aug 14, 2015

Hi Jared

Hopefully John Daigle or others that are more familiar with RoboHelp Server than I will pop in to advise on this.

With RoboHelp Server, you acquire it from Adobe, then you give it to your IT folks to install on a web server. Then you must generate WebHelp Pro or FlashHelp Pro outputs and publish them to the RoboHelp Server. That's how the analytics work. I don't believe it's possible to locally install the WebHelp Pro or FlashHelp Pro outputs and gather usage data because all that would be tracked by the RoboHelp Server as it handles the requests and serves the files.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Aug 16, 2015

Hi, Jared

Basically, what Rick said

I would add that you can certainly use RoboHelp 2015 to publish to the RoboHelp Server 9 (using WebHelp Pro or FlashHelp Pro). The two benefits are the Analytics and the ability to publish to certain password-protected Areas and thus limit access to subsets of your audiences. However Rh Server 9 does not support the new Responsive HTML5 outputs at this time. There have been so many major technological changes during the past three years (HTML5 and Responsive) that Adobe development has been focused on these efforts vs. upgrading the server product. I look forward to hearing about upgrades to the server option in the future. (My thoughts, not anything official)

Thanks

John Daigle

Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

Evergreen, Colorado

www.showmethedemo.com

John Daigle
Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor
Newport, Oregon

Report · May 11, 2016

I think my question is close to what the original question was.

We just received free Robohelp Server 10. Do you see any problem upgrading to Robohelp Server 10?

System Attributes:

RoboHelp HTML V9.0

RoboSource Control 3.1

RoboHelp Server V9.0

WebHelp Pro 9.0.1.262

Windows 7

Apache Tomcat

Report · May 12, 2016

Hi. I don't see any problems upgrading from Rh Server 9 to Rh Server 10.

I'm not quite sure what you mean about the "Windows 7" part, however.

Do you mean your RoboHelp HTML V9.0 authoring client is on Windows 7 or you are wanting to put the RoboHelp Server 10 app on Win 7?

Normally, the Server app is installed on a web server-grade OS machine (with IIS, Apache, etc.) versus a desktop OS

Supported operating systems are:

Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit only)
Windows 10

You can find the official System Requirements here:

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/robohelp-server/pdfs/robohelpserver10-datash...

(in the column on the left hand side.)

That said, for trial or "kicking the tires" testing, I successfully installed all the server pieces on a Windows 7 Professional laptop and it runs fine (using the built-in Apache Derby database which is installed automatically. Access DB is no longer used.)

Adobe does not officially support a desktop install except for Windows 10. But, for demonstrating to clients, my Win 7 laptop runs great (YMMV), and the whole install process took me about a half hour. However, you would not want to put this in a "production" environment. Plus, you would probably want a more powerful Database like SQL Server or Oracle for serious deployment.