Making External Documentation Available Through the PeopleSoft Online Help

You can add a custom links portlet to the PeopleSoft Online Help home page, product line navigation maps, and subject navigation maps. When you add a custom links portlet to a subject navigation page, the portlet also appears on every help page within that subject folder.

You can give the portlet any title, and you can use different titles and links on different pages.

To add the custom links portlet:

1. Open the info.xml file within the folder for the page to which you want to add the portlet. You can edit the following info.xml files:

   docroot/language/info.xml	Add a custom links portlet to the PeopleSoft Online Help home page.
   docroot/language/product line/info.xml	Add a custom links portlet to a product line navigation page.
   docroot/language/product line/subject/info.xml	Add a custom links portlet to a subject navigation page.

2. Add a <custom-links></custom-links> tag pair immediately after the <copyright-statement> at the end of the file.

   The following example shows the new tag in bold:

   ...
   <copyright-statement>Copyright © 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.</copyright-statement>
      <custom-links>
      </custom-links>
   ...

   Note: The structure of the info.xml file is the same for all folder levels (home, product line, and subject), except that the container tag is different. For example, the container tag for the home page is </home> and the container tag for a product line navigation page is </productLine>. Make sure that you do not change the container tag when you edit the file.

3. Within the <custom-links> start tag, enter the title attribute and set the value to be the title of the new portlet.

   The following example shows the new title in bold:

   ...
   <copyright-statement>Copyright © 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.</copyright-statement>
      <custom-links title="Company Links">
      </custom-links>
   ...

4. Between the <custom-links> start and end tags, add one or more standard HTML <p> and <a> tags for the links that you want to insert.

   The following example shows a new link in bold:

   ...
   <copyright-statement>Copyright © 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.</copyright-statement>
      <custom-links title="Company Links">
        <p>
          <a href="https://www.example.com">Example Home</a>
        </p>
      </custom-links>
   ...

You can set up Oracle Secure Enterprise Search to create search indexes for any documentation website, including custom documentation for your organization or PeopleBook Library sites for previous releases. To do this:

1. Crawl the external documentation site to generate a full-text search index.

   See the Secure Enterprise Search documentation for instructions.

   Note: For PeopleBook Library sites for previous releases, you do not need to recrawl the site if it already has full-text searching set up on Secure Enterprise Search.

2. Modify the docroot/js/common.js file to set the following variable:

   searchOpt

   Add a group=SourceGroupName entry for each source group that you want to search from the PeopleSoft Online Help. SourceGroupName represents the name of the source group in Secure Enterprise Search. Separate the entries with the ampersand symbol (&).

   The following example shows the common.js file with multiple groups specified for the searchOpt variable (highlighted in bold):

   /**  
   * common.js  
   **/ 
   var searchURL = "http://example.com:7777/search/query/";          //http://host:port/search/query
   var altHelpURL = "";         //http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?id=%CONTEXT_ID%&ctx=hr91fp1
   var searchOpt = "group=pt853&group=hcm91";          //group=pt853
   var queryTextParamName = "q"; //q
   var advancedSearchURL = "http://example.com:7777/search/query?group=pt85";  //http://host:port/search/query?group=pt85

If you have upgraded to the latest PeopleTools release but still have some PeopleSoft 9.1 (or earlier) applications, you can set up the context-sensitive help to look up context IDs in a previous PeopleBook Library website if it can’t find the context ID in the PeopleSoft Online Help website. To do this, modify the docroot/js/common.js file to set the following variable:

altHelpURL

Enter the help URL that you entered when you enabled context-sensitive help during the applications installation. To find the URL:

1. Log in to your PeopleSoft application in a browser.

2. Select select PeopleTools, then select Web Profile, then select Web Profile Configuration.

3. Click Search and select the profile name that you specified during your PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture installation.

4. Copy the URL from the Help URL field on the General page.

   Example for a hosted site: http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?id=%CONTEXT_ID%&ctx=hr91fp1

   Example for a locally installed site: http://example.com:5080/htmldoc/f1search.htm?ContextID=%CONTEXT_ID%&LangCD=%LANG_CD%

Note: You can enter only one URL for this variable.

The following example shows the common.js file with a hosted site specified for the altHelpURL variable (highlighted in bold):

/**  
* common.js  
**/ 
var searchURL = "http://example.com:7777/search/query/";          //http://host:port/search/query
var altHelpURL = "http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?id=%CONTEXT_ID%&ctx=hr91fp1";         //http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?id=%CONTEXT_ID%&ctx=hr91fp1
var searchOpt = "group=pt853";          //group=pt853
var queryTextParamName = "q"; //q
var advancedSearchURL = "http://example.com:7777/search/query?group=pt85";  //http://host:port/search/query?group=pt85