“Where is our resident Word expert?”
Our documentation team are often asked all sorts of questions. Mostly they relate to spelling, grammar, style and layout. We are even seen as the experts on most Adobe products. Therefore when someone wanders over and asks, “Where’s our resident Word expert?” it really shouldn’t send a shiver up our spine.
RoboHelp 9 to SharePoint: OK but did you spot anything else?
Yesterday my post centered on the first RoboHelp 9 sneak peek video released by Adobe. Focusing on the new review work flow, it seems to have generated a lot of excitement in the technical communications industry. Although the video centered largely on the Acrobat.com cloud, a lot of people were more interested in the ability to use Microsoft SharePoint as their portal for the review files.
As a reaction to this, Senior Product Evangelist for the Adobe Technical Communications Suite, RJ Jacquez, today updated his blog post to bring RoboHelp users up to date with some other new functionality available in Adobe RoboHelp 9. If you look on his blog post, you’ll now find a second short video which describes how in Adobe RoboHelp 9 you can publish your WebHelp output directly from your project to your Microsoft SharePoint site. It is well worth a second look.
Eagle eyed viewers of RJ’s video may notice the following when looking at the Adobe RoboHelp 9 user interface:
- The WebHelp Single Source Layout dialog looks different. In RoboHelp 9 the options have been reorganized so that like minded options are grouped together. This was not always the case in previous versions.
- RJ uses a “Save & Generate” button. This new button negates the need to save the SSL properties and then click “Generate” to generate the output. It does both in one hit.
These may be small things but will make my life a whole lot easier and hopefully yours as well. What is more, these changes were made as a result of interaction with actual front line RoboHelp users on the product’s beta test team.
Note: A previous blog post of mine highlighted some of the issues with publishing output to SharePoint in previous versions of RoboHelp. I’m glad to see these no longer apply.
Microsoft Word 2010 Support in RoboHelp versions
As someone with a relationship with Adobe that is closer than a mere software provider to user, I am maybe more aware than some about the work going on behind the scenes in that company. This week it certainly seems like things are being ratcheted up a gear or two. Yesterday I blogged about Adobe’s FrameMaker 10 sneak peek. It is doing the rounds in preparation for that product’s release, whenever that will be. Now comes news from Adobe about support for Microsoft Word 2010 in another of its flagship technical communication products, Adobe RoboHelp.
A script to count on
Every now and again on the RoboHelp forums, questions arise relating to finding out how many words exist inside a project. Perhaps this is to provide management with a progress report, although in my mind typing mere words is only part of the story. Maybe it is to get a localisation quote. Then again, it could be just out of a sense of curiosity.
Whatever the reason, past RoboHelp releases had no way to get a word count directly from your RoboHelp project. The solution was to use RoboHelp’s Printed documentation single source layout to produce a MS Word file. You could then use that application’s word count functionality to get the required figure.
My thanks should go to Rick Stone (aka The RoboWizard) for responding to just one forum post recently that reminded me that in RoboHelp 8, there is a method of achieving this directly from a RoboHelp project. RoboHelp 8 comes with a set of scripts that can be run to perform a specific task.
To run the script:
- Open your RoboHelp project with the Output View pod displayed. If you run the script with the Output View pod closed, the script still runs in the background but you have to display the pod to see the results.
- Click Tools > Scripts > Word Count. Alternatively you can run the script from the Script Explorer pod.
The results are displayed in the Output View pod with a breakdown of the word count per topic and snippet. A total word count is also given at the end.
You may notice that certain RoboHelp project files (e.g. variables, TOCs and Indexes) are not included in the word count. If you want these to be included, it may be able to edit the script to do so. However I make no claim to have achieved this.
Policy and Procedure Documentation from RoboHelp to SharePoint
A short while ago Adobe ran a couple of webinars on how RoboHelp can be used to produce policy and procedure documentation. To some this may seem a strange departure from a Technical Writer’s traditional world of online help, user guides and release documentation. However anyone who has used RoboHelp will know it can be applied to any number of purposes.
Take a recent project of ours to document our quality management system procedure. Our company is externally audited twice a year so all our procedures must be documented so that we can prove to the auditors that they work and that we follow them. The documentation process is no different. It has initiation, planning, execution, review and closing phases with inputs and outputs from each. We were also using the company’s Microsoft SharePoint portal to store all these processes. As RoboHelp experts, we spurned the opportunity to use Microsoft Word to produce the output.
Writing the procedures was easy. We are very familiar with RoboHelp so adding links between topics, adding index keywords and setting up the search was a breeze. As each project phrase had inputs (normally a completed form/spreadsheet) we were able to inserting baggage files to templates ready to be completed. We even added direct links to other locations on our SharePoint site to relevant information (e.g. our Documentation Style Guide).
As for publishing the content into SharePoint, this was also straightforward. We used WebHelp output therefore it was more or less a case of changing the single source layout properties to publish to the desired location. Here is what we did.
- Navigate to the WebHelp Publish – WebHelp dialog in the WebHelp single source layout properties.
- Click New to display the Edit Destination dialog.
- Enter a Descriptive Name for the SharePoint site.
- Select the File System connection protocol.
Note: We found this to be the easiest option to transfer the file to the SharePoint site but you may wish to use FTP or HTTP. - Specify the Destination Path to your SharePoint site (see below).
- Click OK.
The destination path needs to include a directory into which the WebHelp output is to be placed. This directory need not be created at this stage as you are prompted to do so once you complete the process. Take the path below.
\\sharepointweb\Root\products\edservices\QMSProcs\DocQMS
The output is being placed in a directory called “DocQMS” that sits within a directory called “QMSProcs”. This also contains processes from other departments and teams. On finishing the set-up of the publish settings the following dialog is displayed.
With the path created and the WebHelp single source layout set-up as required, you are ready to publish your output. After publishing the output close RoboHelp and enter your SharePoint site. Once there, navigate to the page of the site where the link to the WebHelp output is to be placed.
- Click New > New Item. The New Item dialog is displayed.
- In the URL field, specify the file path of the RoboHelp project’s WebHelp output. For example:
- Enter a Description for the item.
- Click OK.
file://sharepointweb/Root/products/edservices/QMSProcs/DocQMS/DocQMS.htm
The link to the RoboHelp output has now been added and is launched whenever the link is clicked.
Note: Microsoft SharePoint is a highly customisable application. Therefore some of the user interface items mentioned above may not be different at your site. I also do not claim to be a SharePoint expert. If you have any additional information that may prove useful to others, please post it as a comment.
