Creating Help Topics

Article
02/20/2014

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Deciding on Help Content for Your Users

Microsoft Project allows you to create many custom solutions for users. But what if users want help with your custom features? Or what if you want your users to be able to look up information about using your organization's templates or filling in your organization's forms?

Whether you are documenting a new add-in or including topics specific to your organization, you can create your own Help content and distribute it to your users. When a user asks the AW a question about the custom feature, the new Help content is displayed in the AW search pane, along with other relevant Microsoft Project Help topics.

For example, users might need assistance with a Visual Basic® for Applications tool created by your Information Technology (IT) department. If you have also created custom Help content for this feature, users can type a question in the AW and find the answer without knowing that they're searching for customized Help.

Creating custom content for use with the Microsoft Project Help system involves three steps:

Create HTML-compatible Help files Custom Help topics can include HTML Help files that reside on a Web site, or compressed HTML (CHM) files that you distribute to users locally or over the network.

Create a new AW file The Microsoft Answer Wizard Builder helps you build your own AW files, which the AW uses to locate topics in response to users' queries.

Register your custom Help files To make your custom Help content available to users, you copy the new AW file and Help files to each user's computer and update each user's Windows registry. The next time a user asks the AW a question, your custom Help content becomes part of the answer.

Creating Custom Help Content

Your users will access your custom Help content through the AW, but before you create a custom AW file, you need to create HTML pages on a Web server, or you need to create CHM files that can be distributed to your users' computers or stored on a network server.

In either case, the Answer Wizard Builder analyzes the words contained in these files and creates an index that can be searched by the Answer Wizard when a user enters a question.

If you don't have any Help files, you can use HTML Help Workshop and the Answer Wizard Builder to create both custom Help topics and an AW file to go with them.

Determine Where to Start

Where you start the process of creating custom Help depends on what you have to start with. If you already have Help topics in WinHelp format, or CHM files, you can import them into HTML Help Workshop. If you have HTML Help topics already posted on a Web site, you can point the Answer Wizard Builder to the Web site.

Start with WinHelp If your WinHelp files don't require any editing, you can import them directly into HTML Help Workshop and then use HTML Help Workshop to create a CHM file from the separate WinHelp files. Then use the CHM file in the Answer Wizard Builder to create the AW file.

Start with HTML files If your Help content is currently on the Web, you can create an AW file by providing the Answer Wizard Builder with the URL to the Web site and the share location where the HTML files are hosted.

Start with compressed HTML files If your users do not have access to the Web, you can use HTML Help Workshop to create CHM files and store them either on the network or on individual users' computers. You can use your existing CHM files in the Answer Wizard Builder or, if they need editing, modify them first by using HTML Help Workshop.

Start from scratch If you don't have any existing content, you can create your own Help topics in HTML Help Workshop or in any other HTML authoring tool. Then just use the Answer Wizard Builder to create the AW file from the HTML or CHM Help content.

Choose a Type of Help File

The format you choose for your Help files also depends on where you plan to store the files and how often you need to update the content.

Advantages of using HTML Help

HTML Help files are stored on a Web server. They offer the following advantages over other methods:

You can update Help content directly on the Web server, without interrupting users.

No disk space is required on the client side.

If you already have a Web Help site, you can use its contents to create the custom AW file.

You don't have to register Web-based help on your client computers—it's ready to use right away.

If you use HTML Help files, however, users must have access to the Web, and you must maintain the Web server and site. In addition, users might experience slow response times when they submit queries.

Advantages of using compressed HTML Help

CHM files are stored on a network share or locally on users' computers. They offer the following advantages over other methods:

Users get faster results when the CHM file is stored locally.

A single CHM file can contain multiple HTML files, so the administrator has fewer files to keep track of.

Users don't need access to the Web.

If you use CHM Help files, however, you must redistribute them across the network or on each client computer when you update the content. You also have to register these files on each client computer before they can be used for the first time.

Making Custom Help Work Like Microsoft Project 2002 Help

You can build your custom Help to work as a stand-alone Help system, using your own styles and window definitions in HTML Help Workshop. If you want your custom Help to look like the Microsoft Project 2002 Help system, use CHM files with the Microsoft Project cascading style sheet, Proj10.css. Attach Proj10.css to your project, and use its styles when you create your Help text.

To select the correct style sheet automatically, based on the browser level, add the following code to the header in each HTML page:

<link rel=stylesheet href="../Proj10.css" type="text/css">

Adding Custom Help Content to the Answer Wizard

If you want your custom Help topics to work with Microsoft Project 2002 Help, make sure your Help is accessible through the AW. By using the Answer Wizard Builder, you can create an Answer Wizard Builder (AWB) project file to add your HTML Help topics to. The Answer Wizard Builder project produces a new AW file that is used like an index by the Microsoft Project Help system to locate applicable information for users' queries.

If you significantly change your custom HTML Help files by adding new topics or by renaming or deleting existing topics, you must create a new AW file to replace the old one. To create a new AW file, you can use the original AW project, or you can create a new project.

Create an Answer Wizard Builder Project

When you create an Answer Wizard Builder project, the Answer Wizard Builder indexes the HTML Help topics you specify. You can then assign user questions to each topic if you want.

To create an Answer Wizard Builder project

If you installed the Answer Wizard Builder to the default directory specified during setup, click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Answer Wizard Builder.

In the Create a New Answer Wizard Project Using box, click CHM File or Web Site.

Enter the path to the CHM file, or enter the URL of the Web site and the share name of the Web server (plus the path to a particular folder, if necessary) in the appropriate text box, and then click OK.

If you selected Web Site, add the Virtual directory alias (https://<URL>). The Virtual directory name is used by the Answer Wizard Builder as a dispatch string. The dispatch string is appended to the beginning of the HTML file name for the topics you select to be included in the AW file. This string must be the location of the files in the Web site where Help is going to be called by the AW.

The Answer Wizard Builder parses the CHM or HTML files and indexes the Help topics contained in them. When it is finished indexing the Help topics, the Answer Wizard Builder lists the file names of all the Help topics found at the location you specified.

Add User Questions

Although the Answer Wizard Builder indexes your Help topics, you can improve the searching power of the Answer Wizard by assigning user questions to each topic. Questions that most closely reflect the questions that real users will probably ask are more likely to help you improve the usefulness of your topics. For example, you might select a topic about setting up a network printer and assign a question such as "What is the path to our department printer?"

Adding user questions is optional. They are an additional search mechanism designed to enhance the AW, but are not required for the AW to function normally.

To add user questions

In the Answer Wizard Builder, after creating or opening a project, in the Topics box, select a topic.

In the Questions box, type a question for the topic, and then click Add.

Create a Custom Answer Wizard File

When you are finished entering user questions (if you choose to add them), you must compile an AW file from the Answer Wizard Builder project.

To build a new custom Answer Wizard file, in the Answer Wizard Builder, click the Build button.

Making Custom Help Content Accessible to Users

After you create custom Help content, you need to make your custom Help and Answer Wizard (AW) files accessible to your users by following these steps:

Determine whether you are going to store the custom Help files on each user's computer or on a network share.

Distribute the files to that location.

Update each user's Windows registry to point to the correct location.

After the AW file and CHM or HTML files are in the desired location, the Windows registry of each client computer must be updated to reflect the location of the AW file and CHM files.

Tips

You can store an AW file in any location as long as your users have access to the location. Storing the AW file on users' computers can improve access speed, especially if you have a congested network.

If you need to update the contents of an AW file after you've registered the file, just replace the file with an updated version. You don't need to register the file again, as long as you use the same file name.

If you have not yet deployed Microsoft Project 2002, you can use the Microsoft Project Custom Installation Wizard to include the custom Help and AW files in your client installation. The Microsoft Project Custom Installation Wizard also helps you update the registries for your client computers with paths to these new files.

If you have already deployed Microsoft Project 2002, you must edit the registries for your client computers.

Register a New Answer Wizard File Before Deploying Microsoft Project

If you haven't yet deployed Microsoft Project 2002, you can use the Microsoft Project Custom Installation Wizard to register the AW file. On the Add Registry Entries page of the Microsoft Project Custom Installation Wizard, add a new entry in the registry in one of the Answer Wizard subkeys.

Values for the new entry take the REG_SZ data type. Use a unique name for the entry name and use the path where the AW file resides, including the AW file name, as the value.

The Answer Wizard subkeys are stored in the following path in the Windows registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\MS Project\Answer Wizard

For example, if you create a new AW file called Plugins.aw for Microsoft Project and place it in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10 folder, you add a new entry called PluginsAW to the following subkey:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\MS Project\Answer Wizard

Then you assign the following path as its value:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\plugins.aw

Register a New Answer Wizard File After Deploying Microsoft Project

To register a new Answer Wizard file after deploying Microsoft Project, you need to edit the registries on the client computers manually.

Register a New CHM File

You can use the Custom Installation Wizard to register a new CHM file before you deploy Microsoft Project 2002, or you can register the CHM file manually after deployment. Either way, to register the CHM file, you create a new entry in the registry in the following subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\HTML Help

Values for the new entry take the REG_SZ data type. Use the CHM file name as the entry name and the path where the CHM file resides as the value. For example, if you create a new CHM file called Plugins.chm and place it in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10 folder, add a new entry called Plugins.chm and assign the following path as its value:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10