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Expand NAV Help Server Content
jpaetzold
Member Posts: 1
Hello everyone,
we want to expand the NAV help server content.
At first we have install the NAV help server. Then we open the help server path: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\DynamicsNAV90Help\help\de-DE
and found alot HTML files.
I know how to edit these and I understand the file naming convention. But I think, if i do that, the maintainability in the long run is not given.
How do you do this? Do you have any idea to do it?
How Microsoft manages the Help? - I do not think that Microsoft will make it manually.
I am happy about every answer.
Best regards
Jan
we want to expand the NAV help server content.
At first we have install the NAV help server. Then we open the help server path: C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\DynamicsNAV90Help\help\de-DE
and found alot HTML files.
I know how to edit these and I understand the file naming convention. But I think, if i do that, the maintainability in the long run is not given.
How do you do this? Do you have any idea to do it?
How Microsoft manages the Help? - I do not think that Microsoft will make it manually.
I am happy about every answer.
Best regards
Jan
0
Answers
We use a tool we built ourselves, based on thoughts and descriptions found in this blog:
http://www.hougaard.com/user-documentation-of-a-nav-solution/
Jan
Could you in short pseudo steps what your tool does?
Anyway: we roughly do the following:
1. In a separate database we have a table containing all object types and object id's that could possibly have help texts. ( tables, fields(!), pages, reports, etc. ); there is a version number too, so when an object is modified we add the new version as a new record in the table.
2. In the table is also a BLOB field that contains the help text; we use a format called 'MarkDown' which can later automatically be transformed to HTML. The help-writer can edit the blob content using an external editor called MarkDownPad (just 'bing' it)
3. When all help is ok we transform all MarkDown texts for the current version to HTML, using an external tool called Pandoc ('bing' that too). This also applies a template to add (e.g.) styling and 'general' links. [Pandoc can also transform to formats like ePub, docx (Word), pdf, and many others, if you need that]
4. There is also help that is not directly linked to a NAV object, we use a separate table for that, and use the same steps 1-2-3 as above. This type of help is also optionally added to the Table of Contents (toc.xml) file.