ClickHelp User Manual
Release Notes: March 2015
This ClickHelp update adds Web Help output support with Index and Search functions, nice improvements of the Restricted Access functionality, REST API with user and project management functions, SSL support for custom domains, and much more!
New Features
- New export format is now available - Web Help.
- Web Help can be shipped with your product and viewed from local file system and/or hosted on your own web server.
- Nice navigation with URLs changing when you switch from one article to another.
- Index tab with quick search and popups support (for keywords associated with multiple topics).
- Search tab with our own super-fast client-side JavaScript search engine implemented as a simplified version of our patented Full-Text Search algorithm.
- All your branding preserved: if you have branding set up for your portal, it will be applied to Web Help as well: logo, favicon, styles for TOC, Search, main menu header, etc.
- It is now possible to create custom roles for Power Readers. Roles specify a set of access permissions - which Restricted publication are visible to the Power Reader and which are not. Just like Author roles, only a single Power Reader role can be applied to a Power Reader. Unlike Author roles, Power Reader roles are optional. You can still choose the [No Role] option and define all Power Reader permissions on the per-user basis like you did before.
- Power Reader permissions editor changed. You can select a role for a Power Reader, and also define the user-level permissions if required. Role and user permissions add up.
- Publication permissions editor changed. Now, you can select both users and roles which will be allowed to access Restricted publications from the Publish Project wizard or from a Publication settings page.
- REST API implemented with the functions below.
- Create Power Reader and assign a Power Readers role.
- Enable/disable a Power Reader.
- Change a Power Reader role.
- Change a Power Reader e-mail address.
- Get Power Reader profile information (name, e-mail, role, enabled/disabled state, etc.).
- Change the visibility of an existing publication.
- Export a publication and upload the resulting exported file into your ClickHelp File Storage, or to the specified FTP server.
- It is now possible to use HTTPS for custom domain names - just get an SSL certificate for your custom domain, and you can use it in your portal settings.
- Optionally, you can force HTTPS connections for all users, whether they are logged in or not.
- Domain Mapping logic changed: if a custom domain name is specified in your portal settings, both authors and readers will use this new name. Requests to your original *.clickhelp.co domain will be redirected to the new domain name.
- The Domain Mapping settings page usability has been improved.
- New "Normal (no spacing)" style added to the list of standard styles in WYSIWYG topic editor. This style allows removing paragraph spacing via converting paragraphs to tags.
- In the Insert Image dialog, the latest selected upload folder is now preserved after the first use. This makes it simpler to insert multiple images one by one.
- Added context help links to each Topic Properties editor page.
- Added the Help dropdown with context help items to the Review tab of the WYSIWYG editor. The topics refer to teamwork.
- The "Customize this header for readers" link is no longer displayed when editing a publication. Customization is still possible from the publication settings.
- Review notes now contain ordinal numbers and user first name and last name (instead of logins).
- The Search page jas been redesigned to provide better UI experience.
- Added the "Search Entire Portal..." link to the search box dropdown to allow portal-wide search for project-specific pages. This helps to make things clear when searching on the Projects or Articles pages.
- A warning popup is now displayed in the header when an author is viewing a publication. This helps to avoid confusion between publications and projects. The warning contains information on the publication creation date as well as a link to quickly switch the parent project.
- A warning popup with useful links is now displayed for anonymous users in trial portals. This helps getting started with the product easier.
- The "Exclude topics in the Draft status from the publication" publishing option has been changed to "Publish topics in the Ready status only". This makes it easier to publish only Ready topics, and exclude Draft or Under Review topics.
- Security improvement: if a wrong password is specified for an account 10 times in a row during 30 minutes, the account gets disabled automatically. If a valid password is specified, the counter is reset.
- The Current Project item of the main menu is now available on the Project Settings page.
- It is now possible to specify a project Language in the project settings. This affects the CHM output language and provides better Full-Text Search indexing.
- In the names of the sitemap files, the publication URLs are now used instead of internal IDs. This helps to avoid 404 errors produced by web crawlers after a new publication version goes live in the Update mode.
- Changed the style of project name and article title inplace editors to make their behavior more obvious.
- If you click the Create Variable button in the Variables editor when the editor is in the editing mode, the current variable is saved and a new one is created.
- Added a link to ClickHelp Tutorial in the Help menu.
Web Help
Power Reader Roles
API
Domain Mapping
Topic Editor
Search
Other Improvements
Fixed Issues
- The publishing process now properly handles long project names (longer than 76 characters).
- Project images and other files are now copied correctly to the publication folder when publishing in the Update mode.
- Links in publications no longer get broken when publishing in the Update mode.
- Fixed an issue with deep TOC hierarchies causing the "Cannot extract article: ... The resulting file path is too long" error when exporting to HTML files.
- Full-Text Search now works correctly in localized CHM outputs (did not work correctly for languages other than English previously).
- TOC nodes text no longer gets broken and replaced with '?' chars for localized CHM outputs (was replaced for languages other than English previously).
- If you delete the entire topic content and then swith to the HTML mode without saving changes, the "Saving..." message will no longer hang in the editor's header and the next save operation you perform will not fail with the "Cannot call method 'split' of undefined" JavaScript error.
- Extra empty lines are no longer inserted before and after an image when you insert a centered image.
- When a style is applied to the entire content of a paragraph, the markup is now updated correctly.
- If you invoke Storage file selector for the second time from the Insert Image dialog, image thumbnails no longer disappear in the file selector.
- When an info/warning box is inserted in a topic located in an imported project, the info/warning icons are now displayed (were broken image links previously).
- Power Readers are no longer present in the Assigned To / Owner drop-downs.
- Fixed the "Could not find a part of the path '...Scripts\Article.js'" error which occurs when exporting a publication having no script files specified.
- Fixed an issue with collapsed TOC label disappearing which caused some "Where is my TOC?" confusion.
- When publishing a project having multiple style or script files with the same name (e.g. "style.css"), but in different folders, this no longer leads to registering the same style file multiple times. Instead, the copies are now renamed automatically in order to guarantee they are unique.
- TOC heading style is now applied correctly when exporting publications to a printed format. Previously, the default style was used.
- The application no longer errors out when a logged in user opens the Login page.
- An error no longer occurs when you try to delete a style or a script file used by a project or by the global branding mechanism.
- Anchor links to the current topic which are supposed to be opened in new window are now opened correctly (were opened in the same window before).
- The Entire Portal (Global Settings) option no longer disappears from the selection dropdown on the Project Settings page after saving changes.