User groups?

Please post all questions relating to Help & Manual 6 here!

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

Post Reply
laurelalana
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:33 am

User groups?

Unread post by laurelalana »

Hi there!
A rumor has reached me from others that were trained on H&M 6 on my team a few years ago that there is a way to publish certain content only for certain user groups? For example, I am the only one that edits H&M, but we have four departments that use the published output of H&M via intranet link -- is there a way to create user groups that somehow only show that department's pages to those that belong in that department? For example, Call Center folks can only see Call Center pages, etc. We publish using WebHelp.

I'm reading about builds, but I'm unsure if this is the same. We only publish to one index page -- unsure how to publish to others if that's the solution or even an option. I apologize for my ignorance -- still learning!

Thank you!
Laurel
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: User groups?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Laurel,

In WebHelp it is not possible to directly restrict access to individual pages or content on a user basis. That would require a complete login system with user name and password management on the web server. That wouldn't be something you could do within Help+Manual or the WebHelp itself. And even if you did have that, the restriction would still not really work. All you could do would be to hide content that is still there, and any user familiar with web browsers could make the hidden pages and content visible very easily. In addition to this, even without any knowledge like that they would also still be available via the search and keyword index features, which cannot be filtered like this.

What you can do is generate different WebHelp versions of your documentation for your different user groups, which is easy with Help & Manual's conditional output facilities and/or multiple TOCs. Then you store each version in a different location on your web server and use your existing user login system to direct users from each group or category to the appropriate versions. Then there is also no question of users being able to access inappropriate content, because only the content that they are meant to see is in the version they are accessing; there is nothing else to find. However, doing this does require a separate login system on your web server with a database of user names and passwords and the appropriate management functions for the same. Again, that can't be implemented in the WebHelp itself. It is a server-side technology.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
laurelalana
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:33 am

Re: User groups?

Unread post by laurelalana »

Thank you so much, Tim! That makes sense. I appreciate your time!
Post Reply