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About Search

When your end users need to find specific information in your project, the three most common methods they use are: the search feature, a table of contents (TOC), and an index.

You can add the search feature to any of your online output targets. When users want to find information about a specific subject, they enter key words in the Search field. A search engine looks through every topic in your project to find the term(s) entered by the user. When it finds the terms, it presents the user with a list of topics to open. Search results are ranked, not listed alphabetically.

The search feature is good because it is very thorough. However, it also might return several topics that contain the search terms but are not really relevant for the user's needs. That is why creating an index is also important.

Basic Steps

Following are the basic steps for adding the search feature for your end users:

Enable search To include the search feature in your output, simply enable it in the skin you want to use for the target. See Enabling Search in Skins.
Associate skin with target Now that the search feature is enabled in the skin, you need to associate that skin with the target you are building. See Associating Skins with Targets.
(Optional) Add search filter A search filter lets users narrow their search based on concepts. Concepts are simply keyword markers that you insert into topics that have some kind of relationship with each other. They are also used for inserting concept links into topics (such as the "See Also" link that you see at the bottom of this topic). For more information, see the following:
(Optional) Modify styles for highlighted search terms When users perform searches in your online output, the keywords that are found are highlighted in the topics. The background for each term found in a topic is highlighted in a different color. In Flare, you can create styles for this purpose and change not only the color background, but other settings as well (e.g., font style, text decoration). See Using Styles to Change the Look of Highlighted Search Terms.
(Optional) Include or exclude topics from search You can include a particular topic in the generated output but exclude it from any search that users perform. See Including or Excluding Topics in Search.
(Optional) Include stop words in search Flare has a "stop words" list behind the scenes that omits certain common words (such as "an" and "the") when users perform searches. However, if you would like those common words to be included in user searches, you can easily do so. See Including Stop Words in Search.

Note: The MadCap Help Viewer supports wildcard searches on Microsoft Windows XP (and newer operating systems) when SQL Compact is installed (see Installing SQL Server). For example, if you type Mad* in the Search field, Flare will list all topics that contain words starting with "Mad" (e.g., MadCap, Madagascar, madness, Madrid).

This means that you can perform wildcard searches in Flare's online Help. In addition, if you distribute DotNet Help output and the MadCap Help Viewer to your users, they can perform wildcard searches in your Help system. The search response is also faster with this option.

To set this option, open the target, select the Performance tab of the Target Editor, and select Include SQL Search Database.

Server-Side search

Following are some additional features of search that may be available to you. Some of these features are available if you integrate your project with MadCap Feedback, and others are available if you use the WebHelp Plus output:

Features Available with MadCap Feedback

Reports on search keywords With MadCap Feedback, you can determine how readers are using search in your online output. This helps you answer questions such as: What are they looking for? What are they finding? And more importantly, what are they unable to find? You can use the Feedback Explorer to view used search phrases, as well as searches where no results were returned to the user.
Creating synonyms If users enter search phrases in your online output and those phrases are not returning results, this does not need to be the end of the story. You can make improvements to your output so that, in the future, users are able to find the search results they need. One way to make an enhancement is to add the information that your users are looking for (if that information does not yet exist in your Flare project). Another way to enhance your output is to create synonyms for search phrases.

You can create synonyms within the Flare project or within the external Feedback Explorer (which is used with MadCap Feedback). It is not mandatory that you have MadCap Feedback in order to use synonyms in Flare output, but using MadCap Feedback makes it much easier to determine which words require synonyms based on the search results of your users. Using the external Feedback Explorer to create synonyms is appealing because the synonyms become immediately available for users searching in your output (without needing to republish the output). Be aware, however, that creating synonyms in the external Feedback Explorer works for the Feedback output as long as you continue to publish output to the same server. If you create synonyms in the external Feedback Explorer, it is recommended that you also create those synonyms at the source (i.e., within the Flare project), in case you ever publish to a different server. The easiest way to do this is to export the synonym file from the Feedback Explorer to the Project\Advanced folder in the Flare project. See the Feedback Explorer online Help for more information and steps on how to export synonym files.

example

Let's say that you view search keyword results from your users and find that many are entering the search term "sofa." Unfortunately, you have not used that word in your project, so users are unable to find the topics that they need. However, you have used a similar word, "couch." Therefore, in the Synonyms Editor, you enter "couch" as a synonym for "sofa." The next time a reader enters "sofa" as a search keyword, topics containing the word "couch" will be returned in the results.

Note: After you create synonyms, there is nothing else you need to do in order to make them available in the output. If you create synonyms in Flare, they are automatically applied at the project level, so all targets will incorporate those synonyms when you generate and publish the new Flare output. If you also have MadCap Feedback and create the synonyms in the Feedback Explorer instead, the synonyms become immediately incorporated into the output (even if you do not republish your Flare target). Please note that if you are testing synonyms in the Feedback Explorer, you may need to refresh the interface to see the changes

For more information about performing this task in Flare, see Creating Synonyms to Enhance Search Results. For more information about performing this task in the Feedback Explorer, see the online Help provided with that application.

For more information about MadCap Feedback, see About MadCap Feedback and Features and Benefits of MadCap Feedback.

Features Available with WebHelp Plus

Searching non-XHTML files When end users perform a search in your online output, you can ensure that non-XHTML files (e.g. PDF, DOC, XLS) are included in that search. This is possible if you have installed it on a Web server running Microsoft IIS and published WebHelp Plus output to that server. When you build WebHelp Plus output, a subfolder named "AutoSearch" is created and placed in the generated output folder. You can place non-XHTML files within the published AutoSearch subfolder (whether the non-XHTML files are linked to content from your Flare project or not). When users perform a search in your output, those non-XHTML files will also be scanned and become accessible to the users.
Faster searching Another benefit of generating and publishing WebHelp Plus output to a Web server running Microsoft IIS is that users will find the task of performing a search to be much faster than it is otherwise. This is especially useful if you have a very large Help system.

For more information, see About WebHelp Plus Output, Including Non-XHTML Files in Search, and About Advanced Server Features in WebHelp Plus.