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Inserting Concept Links into Topics

A Help control is a link (usually inserted at the bottom of a topic) that lets users open other topics that have some kind of a connection with the current topic. There are three types of Help controls that you can use in Flare:

• Concept Link This is a navigation link that lets users open topics that you've determined are related to the current topic. It is similar to the Related Topics link. However, whereas you associate a Related Topics link with specific individual topics (usually for a one-time use), you associate a concept link with a group of topics (to be re-used in different topics). One great benefit of this type of link is that, if you later want to add or delete topics from the group, you only need to do so in one place and the changes are applied to every topic containing that concept link.

  example

  Let's say you are developing a Help system for an employee time-reporting software application. You might have a group of related topics (e.g., Creating a Time Sheet, Changing a Time Sheet, Deleting a Time Sheet), and you want each of those topics to have the same Help control button that links to the same topics. So you might create a concept called "TimeSheets." You would then insert the keyword into each of those topics. After that, you insert a concept link into each of those topics, selecting the "Timesheets" keyword for that link. The "See Also" link at the bottom of this topic is an example of a concept link. For another example with complete steps, see Concept Link Example.

• Related Topics Link More… This is a navigation link that lets users open topics that you've determined are related to the current topic. This is similar to a concept link. You should insert a Related Topics link if you are applying it to a topic that you want to associate with specific topics but you do not plan to re-use the same link in other topics. For example, let's say you have an introduction topic for your Help system. You want to create a Help control navigation link at the bottom of that topic that links users to three other topics that you feel are particularly useful to new users. However, you do not intend to use this same navigation link in other topics. So you decide to create a Related Topics link because it is quicker than creating a concept link.

• Keyword Link More… This is a navigation link that lets users open topics that are related to the current topic based on the index keywords that they share. For example, let's say you have inserted an index keyword called "Accounting department" to some of the topics in your project, including the current topic that you are working on. At the bottom of this topic, you insert a keyword link that includes the "Accounting department" index keyword. In the final output, when users click this Help control, they can select and open any topics that also contain the "Accounting department" keyword.

How to insert a concept link into a topic

1. Insert concepts into the appropriate topics.

2. Open the topic where you want to insert the concept link.
3. In the XML Editor, click in the topic where you want to insert the link (usually at the bottom of the topic).

4. Select Insert>Help Control>Concept Link (A-link).

   The Insert Concept Link Control dialog opens. The concepts that you have inserted into topics are listed on the right side of the dialog.

5. Do one of the following:

   • In the All Concepts section, double-click a concept that you want to add to the concept link.

     OR

   • In the All Concepts section, click on a concept that you want to add to the concept link. Then click .
6. The concept is added to the "Selected Concepts" section on the left side of the dialog. Do this for each concept that you want to add to the link. However, a concept link usually has only one keyword associated with it (or just a few at the most). Remember, every topic containing any of those concepts will show up in the concept link in the output. A good practice is to limit the number of topics per concept link. Otherwise, the link tends to lose its significance.

7. Click OK.

   The concept link is added to the topic. Show me…

   

8. Press CTRL+S or click to save your work.

WHAT'S NEXT?

If you want to change the way the link looks, you can modify the style of the concept link. See Editing Concept Links.

You also may want to apply an "online only" condition tag to the paragraph tag holding the link. The main reason for this has to do with creating print-based output. When you generate print-based output, Flare automatically removes any Help control links in your topics, since they do not make sense in print output. However, this may leave an empty <p> tag at the end of that topic. This means that there will be an extra empty paragraph, where you might not expect there to be one. For example, in print-based output, you might notice that a particular topic ends near the bottom of the page. Let's say that on the next page, a new heading should start. Furthermore, let's say that the heading style specifies a page break before it. If you have an empty paragraph after the text on the first page, you might end up with a blank second page before the new heading starts on the third page. Applying a condition tag to the paragraph holding the Help control link will ensure that an empty paragraph does not occur in that location.. See Applying Condition Tags to Content.

See Also

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