Adding Contextual Help to Forms

This topic describes how to add help text to various parts of your intake forms to aid public users when they are filling out an application form.

Working with Contextual Help

If you determine that the end user needs additional information to understand a user-interface element in your intake form, you can add contextual help text to that user-interface element. If you add contextual help to a user-interface element in your intake form design, the system displays a Help icon next to the label of that user-interface element.

You can see the Help icon in both the design and runtime mode. At runtime, end users click the Help icon to display your help text in a pop-up, without leaving the page.

Note: At design time, the Help icon does not display the help text popup when clicked.

You can add contextual help text to these intake form elements:

• Page tabs

• Field groups

• Group boxes

• Fields (applies to fields in field groups and to user-defined fields)

Note: For group boxes and field groups, you can add help only when the Show Label attribute is turned on.

You can’t add contextual help text to these intake form elements:

• Radio sets

• Check box sets

If you need to add help for radio sets or check box sets, use a group box to contain the control and add the help text to the group box container.

Adding Contextual Help

To add contextual help:

1. Select the page element to which you want to add contextual help.

   Note: You cannot add help text directly to radio sets and check box sets. Add help text to a group box surrounding the radio sets or check box sets.

2. Click the Help button in the attributes panel.

3. On the Contextual Help Setup page, note the Type Code, Page Name, and Page Object values.

   These values uniquely identify the page element to which you are associating the contextual help. You can’t change these values. They are read-only and maintained by the application.

   Item	Value
   Type Code	An automatically generated value consisting of the internal product code and the permit type code derived from the permit type definition.
   Page Name	The name of the page tab on which you are adding help. Regardless of what the page label is on the tab, the application displays each tab using the default name in sequence, such as tabs1, tabs2, and so on. For example, the second page tab in an intake form may have the name Fence Information, however in the Page Name field it will appear as tabs2.
   Page Object	Identifies the page element for which you are adding help. Regardless of the page element’s label, the application displays the internal naming convention as the field value, which is the page element type code + sequence added. For example, for the second field added to the form the field value is fields2, which indicates the element is a field and it is the second field added to the form. The page element type codes are: Field groups: ccas Group boxes: widgets Fields in field groups: <field group>_<internal field name> (such as ccas2_ReleaseDate) User-defined fields: fields

4. In the Description field, add text to describe the purpose of the help text so other implementation team members can understand the content.

5. Click the Add New button in the Contextual Help Details grid to display the Add Context Help Details dialog box.

   The Type drop-down list will show Agency Defined.

   Note: Help topics of type System Defined are provided by Oracle and should not be altered or removed. Use the Agency Defined help topic type to add help topics specific to your implementation. If you want your custom help text to display instead of delivered help text, disable the System Defined help topic, create your custom topic, and enable it.

6. Activate the Help Content edit box by clicking to the right of the Help Content field label.

7. In the Help Content edit box, enter your help text.

   The system provides rich-text editing features, which enables you to implement limited formatting options, as needed.

8. When you’ve added the content, and you are ready for it to be viewed by end users, turn on the Enabled switch.

   Note: To prevent the help content from displaying at run time, turn off the Enabled switch.

9. Click Save on the Contextual Help Details page.

10. Click Save on the Contextual Help page.

11. Confirm that the help icon appears on the page tab or next to the page control label in your intake form design.

For more information on contextual help, see Setting Up Contextual Help.