One of the most often used areas of any Help System is Search. And since Search is created automatically when you generate a layout, there's nothing the RoboHelp author has to do to make Search available for the user.
Search does have one main drawback for the user. If the word the user types in the Search box isn't found within any topics, the Search will fail and nothing will be displayed for the user. A failed Search is a missed opportunity for both you and the user.
Here is an example of how Search could fail. Your company Help System, a Policies guide, includes a topic concerned with contraband substances in the office. The word contraband is contained within the topic so the word will be found if users search for that specific term. However, a user who is curious about contraband substances might elect to search the Help System using another word, such as illicit. Because the wordillicit isn't in the Help System, the Search will fail.
There are a couple of ways to fix the problem. One way would be to add Search terms to the properties of individual topics. Another way, which I'll cover here, is to use RoboHelp's Advanced Settings for Localization to create a synonym (illicit) for contraband.
In RoboHelp, choose File > Project Settings. On the Generaltab, click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Settings for Localization dialog box.
On the Synonyms tab, click the New button. It's now a simple matter of adding the Word and its Synonym. In the image below, I've added illicit as a Synonym for contraband. And since many of my users type the mangers when they really mean managers, I've made a Synonym pairing for those two words.
In the Generated WebHelp layout shown below, notice that I have searched for illicit. While illicit isn't a word in any of the topics in my Help system, the Drug Policy topic was still flagged in a successful search.
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