Creating and displaying more detailed application Help

About this task

In a complex application, an "About Database" document and a "Using Database" might not provide enough documentation. To provide detailed documentation for an application, design a Help form as part of the database and display documents created with that form in a Help view. The following steps describe one way to achieve this.

Parent topic: Completing an application and managing design changes
Related concepts:
Creating context-sensitive Help for an application
Related tasks:
Writing Help for fields
Creating "Using This Application"and "About This Application" documents

To create a Help form

Procedure

  1. Create a new form called "Help" and create fields for Help content.
  2. Choose Design - Form Properties.

    In the Name box, type a name and alias for the form (for example, Main Topic | Interview). For more information on naming a form, press F1 on the Form Info tab.

  3. Select "Event: Window Title" and enter "Help" as the window title text in the formula window.
  4. Save and close the form.
  5. Choose Create - Help for each Help document.
  6. Click the form you're designing and choose Design - Form Properties.
  7. Deselect "Include in Menu."
  8. Click the form, and then save it.
  9. Create a view that displays the Help documents.

Results

Note: You can also create a separate Help database and open its documents from your application using @Command(OpenHelpDocument). To open documents from a Help database in a window that users can set to overlay other windows as they work, choose File - Application - Properties - Design for your database. Then, turn on "List in Database Catalog" and enter the category "NotesHelp."