SmartHelp URL Rules allow you to define if this source is applicable for a specific page or pages. A URL matches the rule if there is at least one pattern which is matching and the last matching pattern in the list was "allow". Rules are evaluated in the order of definition. It is a good idea to define the more general patterns first, followed by the more specific patterns. You can also specify negative rules to indicate that the source is not available for the page or pages. The URLs that begin with "-" are excluded.

Some things to know as you are defining rules:

• The URL pattern is case-insensitive.
   
• The rules support the asterisk (*) wildcard, which matches an arbitrary number of characters. A trailing asterisk is always appended to the pattern by default if not present (that is we match the URL prefix).
   
• Specifying the protocol in the URL is optional. The protocol (http/https) can be anything if not explicitly set.
   
• It is recommended but not required that the URL pattern specifies at least the host or domain name. 

Examples of patterns for rules:

http://*.sampledomain.com/* - any hosts in the domain
http://host/* - host used without domain
http://192.nn.nn.nn/* - host used with IP address, where nn.nn.nn are the specific numbers in the address
http://host.mydomain.com/* - exact host name
http://host.mydomain.com:8080/* - host on specified port
host.mydomain.com – host only
*.mydomain.com – domain only
http://host.mydomain.com/app/*/hr/ - sub-region of a specific application

Negative rules can be useful when the rules are setup generally to include more URLs, and then you want to exclude specific URLs.

Example:
host/app*
-host/app_one

You need to specify only these two rules instead of specifying the individual instances, such as:

host/app_two
host/app_three
host/app_four

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