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Examples of in-product (web application) documents created with Tridion Documents?

Ryan Shubert

Hello,

We are looking to make our documentation content available through our web-applications rather than in PDFs or external HTML pages. Ideally the customer/reader using a web-application will be able to see relevant/featured content directly in the application without being redirected to external HTML sites (or PDFs). I'm interested to know about how others are doing this with Tridion Docs and if examples of solutions are available that can be shared. We plan to continue single-sourcing our content and will continue to deliver stand alone PDF  files and HTML to our existing support/documentation portals but we want the added ability of customers to locate content in-app as well.

Thanks!
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  • I'm not sure this is 100% what you are looking for, but I'll send it just in case. We have this write up on how to create Context-Sensitive Help (to link to the appropriate Help topic from inside the app):

    Adding Context-sensitive Help
    There are two steps involved in adding context-sensitive Help in a product using a SuiteHelp Help system.

    1 Add one resource ID to each DITA topic that is identified for context-sensitive help.
    The resource ID values should be in uppercase.
    For each topic assigned to a page, window, or other UI element in your application, add a resource ID to the <prolog> element by placing your insertion point just before the </prolog> end tag and inserting a <resourceid> element. In the <id> attribute of the <resourceid/>, enter the value in uppercase letters. For example: MYRESOURCEID.
    -Tip: For concept, reference, and task topics, the <prolog> element comes after the <abstract> element and before the <conbody>, <refbody>, and <taskbody> elements, respectively. However, for the glossary topic (<glossentry> element), the <prolog> element comes after the </glossdef> end tag and before the </glossentry> end tag.


    2 Provide the product developers with the list of resource IDs.
    They will use them in the appropriate areas of the product’s user interface to link to the specific topics. The links are created by appending the resource ID as a context parameter to the Help URL.
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  • in reply to Elizabeth Gschwind

    Hello Elizabeth,

    Thanks for this information. You mentioned a SuiteHelp Help system. Is the end deliverable produced for this a stand-alone HTML file or some other deliverable? Is this SuiteHelp content styled and rendered within the original web-app (or is hosted elsewhere)?

    We currently maintain a mapping file in our web-app that had unique identifiers for each dialog box that points to the corresponding HTML topic (by GUID). However the downside of this approach is the HTML topic lives outside of the web-app so when a user clicks the help a new web browser window opens with the corresponding documentation (additionally the styling of the HTML is not consistent with the UI of the web-app). We're curious if others who have solved this problem or if SDL solutions are out there.

    Regards,
    Ryan
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  • in reply to Ryan Shubert

    In Today's SDL Customer Group Monthly meeting JSON was mentioned as a possible solution for the use case I'm interested in. I'm going to investigate this further and curious if others are using JSON as a solution for in-product help. I'm assuming the Technical Writer would still be updating the DITA topics with unique resource IDs to allow the web applications windows/dialog box map to specific topics. I'm going to explore more about JSON but any details others can share would be appreciated. Thanks!
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  • in reply to Ryan Shubert

    Hi Ryan,

    Suite Help support was retired a few years ago. A powerful, low-cost tool in use by many customers is oXygen XML Web Help. It's easy to configure and support:

    https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_webhelp.html

    JSON is a popular output format for delivery to external delivery or tablet applications. As you may have heard, it takes a bit more configuration work for support, expecially on your delivery channel.

    Chip
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