Help

The 'Help Setting' part of 'Global Settings' administers path settings to source help files. The same settings can also be found under 'User Settings', with the following difference: Settings made in 'Global Settings' apply to all users while the settings made in 'User Settings' apply to the currently logged user. For this distinction to apply, the 'Use following setting for currently logged in user' check box must be checked. If unchecked, the global settings are always used.

• Customer help used

  The check box should be selected if help system for which help key assignments (context sensitivity) have not been created. This is usually (but not necessarily) the case when custom help is used.

  The 'Customer help used' check box effectively turns on/off Valuemation help key assignment functionality. It works in the following way:

  • When help key assignments have been created for the help system in use (e.g. when standard Valuemation help is used), then:

    - Setting the 'Customer help used' check box to FALSE lets Valuemation help key assignment do its magic - as a result of which the help is context-sensitive (E.g.: pressing F1 with Global Settings opened and in focus opens the 'Global Settings' topic, etc.).

    - Setting the 'Customer help used' check box to TRUE bypasses Valuemation help key assignment - help is no longer context sensitive. (E.g.: pressing F1 always opens the main help page.)

  • When the customer uses their own help and no help key assignments have been created (standard help key assignments are no longer relevant at this point), then:

    - Setting the 'Customer help used' check box to FALSE results in Valuemation trying to find the help key assignments, not finding any and then opening the main 'index.htm' page of the customer help system

    - Setting the 'Customer help used' check box to TRUE bypasses the above described "blind", unnecessary step - the main 'index.htm' page is called directly. This is the preferred setting in such case.

  Customer help used - a mixed case scenario:

  Lets consider e.g. a German company using Valuemation who have their own customization-specific help created in German. They could do the following:

  1. Keep the standard English Valuemation help in its standard location (\doc\help\English)
  2. Create a new folder in parallel with the 'English' folder (called e.g. 'Custom') and put their own help to this folder
  3. In 'Help Settings'

     - Specify the English path to the 'English' folder

     - Specify the German path to the 'Custom' folder

  4. Set the 'Customer help used' check box to FALSE

  As a result:

  • Switching Valuemation GUI to English will provide standard English help. The help will be context sensitive
  • Switching Valuemation GUI to German will provide the customization-specific help. The help could be context sensitive if help key assignments have additionally been created by the customer. Otherwise the main help page will open when help is called.

  In this scenario, the 'Customer help used' check box is (on purpose) set to FALSE even though customer help is in fact used and no help key assignments exist for it. The reason for this non-standard setting is to sacrifice a little bit of performance for keeping the English help context sensitive.

• Help Paths

  A separate help system for each supported GUI language can be linked. Each of the help systems must be put in a location and this location specified as help path in the corresponding field.

  Use the language-specific fields of the 'Help Setting' window to specify the paths, including the file which starts the help system. For example, "(Valuemation root folder)\doc\help\English\index.htm" starts the standard English help.

• Default Help Path

  'Default Help Path' points to a default help file which is called when the language-specific help corresponding to the currently selected GUI language cannot be found.