Remote help and Web-based delivery of help content

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Overview of Remote help and Web-based delivery of help content

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Most of the Rational ® products are Built on Eclipse™ (http://www.eclipse.org). The Rational web-based products that are built on  the Jazz technology platform (jazz.net) may also support remote help and web-based delivery of help content. With Eclipse 3.3 and later versions, you can retrieve content not only from plug-ins that are installed with the local instance of your product, but also from one or more remote servers that run help in information center mode, where the information center is on Eclipse 3.3 or later versions.  If your product is configured to use Rational’s web-based delivery of help (where you can either access help content from a remote information center or download help into a local information center), you can access help from any information center and download help from any  information center that supports Web-based delivery.  To see if your product is configured to use Web-based delivery of help, verify you have a Help >Local Help Updater command or see Technote 1319958: Web-based delivery of help content in Rational products.

If your product is built on Eclipse 3.3 and later versions, you can access other information centers by changing preferences. To change preferences, click Window > Preferences. The more remote information centers that you include in your help system, the more likely you are to have performance issues when you display help topics.

With Web-based delivery of help content-enabled products, you have three options for accessing help content:

1. Remote help accesses help content from the Web. This method provides the smallest installation footprint and ensures that you have access to the most current information.

Figure 1 – Remote help

2. Local help downloads help content to your computer so that you can work without an Internet connection.

Figure 2 - Local Help - Set up

3. Enterprise help accesses help content from your corporate intranet servers.

If your product runs on Eclipse 3.3 or higher, you can add remote help contents to your product help content. To add a remote information center, take the following steps:

1. Click Window > Preferences. 
2. Expand the Help entry and click Content. 
3. In the Content window, click Add.
4. In the Add new infocenter window, type the Name, Host, and Path of the remote information center to add. Use the default port.

You can follow this procedure to add several remote information centers to your product.

If your product supports Web-based delivery of help content, you can download help content for your product and other products by using the Local Help Updater by following these steps:

1. Verify that your product is  configured for local help by following these steps:

a. Click Window > Preferences. 

You should see Local enabled as follows:

c. If Local is disabled, click Enable and then click OK.

2. Add help content to the local help by following these steps:

a. With your product open, click Help > Local Help Updater.

The Updater site opens in a separate browser window, which lists the information centers that are configured for download.

The Available Features list will populate a list of the help content that is available for download. Depending on your network connection speed, this might take a few minutes.

The help content downloads and installs. A progress bar opens and tracks the status of the download. When the download is complete, the Updater will restart the information center.

e. Open the help in the product by clicking Help > Help Contents.

The help that you selected is installed on your system. The help content will be automatically updated from the IBM.com information center(s) each time you start the application and an Internet connection is available.

If your product supports Web-based delivery of help content, you can download help content for your product and other products by using the Local Help Updater.   To update an enterprise help information center, the administrator must log in to the server that hosts the information center.

1. If the enterprise help is not on the enterprise server, install and start it following the instructions in the Install Manager IBM Knowledge Center: http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSDV2W_1.3.0/com.ibm.im.articles.doc/topics/t_setup_intrnet_help_content.htm
2. Add help content to the enterprise help. To update an enterprise help information center, the administrator must log in to the server that hosts the information center and follow the “downloading help content to your local help” instructions.

Once the enterprise server is set up as described in “Downloading help content to your enterprise help, you can access the help content in the enterprise information center. You will need to know the following information:

• Enterprise host
• Enterprise help path
• Enterprise port

1. Click Window > Preferences. 
2. Expand the Help entry and click Content. 
3. In the Content window, click Add. In the Add new infocenter window, type the Name, Host, Path, and Port of the enterprise information center to add.  For example, if the enterprise information center URL is: idbuild3.myserver.com:8888/RFThelp/index.jsp, the values to add this information are:

More information can be found in your product's install information.