Using a script to display product-specific content

[katew27494769]

Dear RH experts,

I'm creating an HTML5 Help system for a web-based software application that has two versions: Cloud and On-premise. The Help systems will have some shared content and some product-specific content. I could set conditions on the topics and generate two separate Help systems. But my developers would like a more elegant solution. They don't want duplicated content. Instead, they want a single output, and they want to use scripts and tags in topics to identify content that should be displayed or hidden dynamically, depending on the product version. The script would run when the Help system is launched, and the appropriate content would be displayed based on the tags.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Would this have any implications for Search? For example, would search results include items that are hidden based on tags and scripts?

Thank you!

-Kate

Environment:

RH 2015 on Windows 7

Content in FrameMaker

[Peter Grainge]

I'm not quite sure how it would work with Fm as your source but in RoboHelp with the use of Build Expressions and Tags you can create Dynamic Filtered Content. That is described in the Employee Care 3 topic with a small demo output. The Travel the Whirls demo has a more complex output.

That would create one output and users would have the option to filter content according to their requirements. I believe Willam van Weelden has already covered how your developers can call that help so that one of the filters is already applied. Note though that the user could then change the filter so that may not be quite what you want. It is, however, as near as you can get to what you want from one output without using RoboHelp Server. There I believe you can restrict topics in the way you want. That assumes your users can view the source from the same server and you are OK with the extra cost.

The search and so on would be based on the filters applied (or not) at the time of the search.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Willam_van_Weelden]

The FM output works the same as the RoboHelp output, so you're save with the Dynamic Filters. Just apply the tags in FM and set up the filter in the publishing pod.

Point your developer to this page for more info on calling the help and setting the filters: https://www.wvanweelden.eu/articles/context-sensitivity-responsive-and-multiscreen-html5

[Willam_van_Weelden · Accepted solution]

Just another thought: If you enable filters, you can HIDE the filter selector from the sidebar. That way, your readers won't be able to change the filter conditions themselves.

[katew27494769]

This is awesome! Exactly what I needed. Thank you so much

One last question: how do you hide the filter selector from the sidebar? We don't want users to change the filter.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

You set this in the Screen Layout settings. Find the Screen Layout and choose to edit it. In the section Basic settings, set Show Filter to false. The filter will be available in the output, but the filter selection is hidden.