Help Mode Implementation (SAP Library

Help Mode Implementation

The help mode enables a content developer to ship help texts in a PAR and to render a portal component in the help mode by displaying the help text.

The portal runtime supports four kinds of help text sources.

The help text:

· Is stored in the PAR file of the component that is rendered in help mode

The structure is free and should only respect the public/private rules of the PAR file structure.

· Is stored in the PAR file according to a predefined structure that supports localization of the texts

The help texts must be stored in the public folder named help. When retrieving these text files, the portal runtime assumes that these text files are located in a subfolder corresponding to the user language.

· Is accessed with an external URL

The help can be displayed in a separate frame. It is defined by the HelpIsolationMode property of the portal component.

· Is retrieved from another portal application

It enables the help texts to be packaged in different PAR files. This approach does not support text localization

The configuration is done using the following properties:

Property	Description
HelpName	Specifies the name of the help text file that needs to be located in a subfolder of the help public folder of the PAR
HelpURL	Specifies the location of the help text to be displayed when the portal runtime renders a portal component in the help mode. Many formats are supported

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

The portal runtime first looks at the HelpName and then inspects the value of the HelpURL. If none of these properties are set, an error message is displayed.

Example

HelpName

Example Property

Description

Index.html

Access to the file index.html located in the following directory:

help/{user_language}/index.html

where {user_language} is the language of the user accessing the component .

If a language specific version is not found, it uses the top level file without any language code.

HelpURL

Example Property	Description
http://www.yahoo.com	Connect to the specified URL to get help for the portal component. This is the case when the help texts are stored in an external Web site. In that case, the portal component can decide to display the content of this external Web site in a separate frame. To use this feature, the portal component should set the value of the property HelpIsolationMode to URL.
docs/index.html	Access to the file named index.html in the docs directory of the portal application. This is the typical scenario where the help text is provided in the PAR of the portal component. This format is free and does not support text localization.
/com.sap.portal.helpcomponent.default/docs/index.html	Access to the files named index.html in the docs directory of the helpcomponent portal application. In that case, the help text is shipped in a separate PAR.