About Help Paths

For the context sensitive help to work, Valuemation online help must be present in the location specified in the 'Help' page of Global Settings and (optionally) User Settings.

How help paths work

Global Settings

Help paths specified in Global Settings apply to:

• all user on the Rich Client on the same database
• the Web Client

The paths are stored as Valuemation mainparameters in the database.

User Settings

Help paths specified in User Settings apply to:

• the given user on the Rich Client
• also the given user on the Web Client (which is unwanted - see 'Web vs Rich Client' below)

Check box 'Use the following settings for the current user' must be set to 'True' for the settings to apply. The paths are stored as Valuemation mainparameters in the database.

User Settings / installation-specific

Help path user settings are installation-specific. Installation-specific settings are marked with blue bullets in front of the field. These settings are additionally (to standard saving as mainparameters) stored locally (in the 'vm.ini' file located in the local Valuemation installation folder). This brings about the following behaviour:

• When the user is working with Valuemation on his/her own computer, installation-specific settings are preferred and used.
• When the user is working with Valuemation on a computer other than his own, his/her user settings are loaded from the database and applied.
• If no user-specific settings exist, global settings from the database are used.

Typically, path settings are installation-specific because they need to point to locally stored exe files starting e.g. web browser or pdf readers.

Web vs Rich Client

In regard to Valuemation platforms, path settings have to following meaning:

On the Rich Client

Paths are used in the following order of priority:

1. vm.ini from the local installation folder. If not found, then:
2. User Settings (i.e. mainparameters stored in the database). If not found, then:
3. Global Settings (i.e. mainparameters stored in the database)

Full path must be specified, e.g. 'c:\LocalVM\Valuemation_5_0_B206\doc\help\english\index.htm'

On the Web Client

The path for online help on the web client must be set by the administrator in Global Settings.

Relative path must be specified, e.g. '/doc/help/english/index.htm'. The path is relative to the 'webconf' directory in the installation directory structure.

Note: A user working both with the Rich and Web Clients should not have a different path specified in User Settings as this will interfere with the Web help path specified in Global Settings, effectively rendering context-sensitive help non-functional on the Web platform. If user path is specified, it can be temporarily bypassed by setting the 'Use the following settings for the current user' check box in User Settings to 'False' before logging into the Web Client.