Help Screens

[dennisw]

In the screen properties I see help titles and help panels as properties.

How exactly does this work. Do you use regular *PNLGRP oblects from the iseries or do you create them in ProfoundUI.

How do you add a help button to your rich DDS screen?


I can't find any documentarion.

Thanks

[David]

This properties work with converted screens. So that help defined in *PNLGRP objects or DDS help records will continue to work after you convert a green screen to Profound UI.

We don't provide any facility for creating *PNLGRP or DDS help records -- only the runtime functionality necessary to select/display them based on these properties.

I wouldn't recommend using these sorts of things in a new application, although you could if you really wanted to for some reason. The properties are designed to be equivalent to the old green screen keywords and are used in a similar way.

For a new application, though, a much better approach is to put application help into HTML documents. Then you can use buttons/icons, etc., that the user can click on to launch help by simply opening a browser window to the desired document.

[kfritz]

Hi,

as David mentioned, HTML is a posibility. Myself, I'm using a WIKI (see example). This has the advantage of easy maintenance and provides a full documentation. For demo purposes i choose DOKUWIKI and installed it with the Zend-Server (free CE) on the i. But there are a lot another solutions (free/commercial) on the market.

By setting anchors, the desired informations can be retrieved directly, like a help panel does. A help button and a link (like "myHost:10088/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=docs:example#anchor") within PUI will open a window and shows the help text (by permissions, it's possible to maintain text/picture immediately). More than this, it works with legacy 5250 apps too. I think, this is a wonderful solution für systems/help documentation.

Btw. The panel help text can be transferred by a service program to the wiki.

Just my 5cts,
Karl

[David]

And a great 5cts they are, Karl.

That is an excellent idea, and I should have mentioned it myself! We do the same thing with our help/docs using a package called Confluence:

http://www.profoundlogic.com/docs

Using a Wiki for documentation is highly recommended as this gives you the ability to rapidly adjust the materials as new features are added or changes made. Most packages include editors that make it easy for anybody (without knowledge of HTML) to work with the content.

I'm not too crazy about the Confluence package, though. It runs on Java, and it seems to be quite resource-intensive for what it's doing. Although in terms of features and reliability its very good.

I'm sure there are more efficient packages that you could look at that do the same thing. These days there is a wealth of both free/open-source and well-priced commercial packages.

[kfritz]

Thanks David,

the main reason for choosing DOKUWIKI was its simplicity, the ability to run it on the i and no need of a database. All informations are stored in a simple text file. So its easy to transfer any help panels from the i to the Wiki. Furthermore in case of an emergency, this text file could be maintained by an editor like Wordpad, Notepad++ and so on. Before choosing, I tested several Wikis (Confluence too) but this one seemed to fulfill my needs closest.

But, its everybody's self decision which fits the best. Important, to know what options there are.

Karl