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Online Help: Search

AT 2015-05-22: Please note that the original article "Online Help: Search and Index" was split into two sepearate items. The Index project did not get sufficient funding for implementation in ILIAS 5.1. 
The Search project will be implemented for ILIAS 5.1 

1 Requirements

Search
It would be very helpful to search the workflow help:

• People could look up a term instead of navigating to an instance of the object and opening the help. Thus the help search should be available thoughout all workflow help panels in a prominent position. It should not be a part of the main menu in order not to be confused with the system search.
• Especially new administrators would benefit from a help search. They now have to browse the administration help "fishing" for the relevant information.
• Results should be displayed as a list of pages, not neccessarily the chapter that encompasses the respective page. If it is helpful to display a few words of the page underneath the page's title or not due to the small screen estate  has to be checked.
• Clicking on a result should take people to the respective page. They read it and consider it helpful or not.
• If it is helpful the page has to stay open so they can follow the instructions in the main screen. Because they may have to navigate quite a bit to go to the starting point of the instruction.
• If the page is not helpful people should be able to get back to their initial result list without having to search again.

2 Status

• Idea / concept: Alexandra Tödt toedt (at) leifos.com
• Funding: Partly funded by FH Dortmund
• Maintainer: Alexander Killing, Leifos
• Implementation of the feature is done by Alexander Killing, Leifos
• Testcases: tbd

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Alexandra Tödt toedt (at) leifos.com

4 Discussion

Alex Killing 13 Apr 2014: I support both features. The editing of the keywords for the index should just be the current metadata editing of LOM keywords. I would postpone the mulitlanguage discussion for now.

Matthias Kunkel, 13 Apr 2014: I support the requests for a search and an index in the online help, too. Based on the recommendations by the maintainer and the head of development I schedule the feature for 4.5.

Fabian Kruse 03.02.2015: I support the suggested features and would like to amend them as discussed in Mantis 13922:
 
Currently, when opening the Online Help, I get an overview of the different help texts offered for my current screen. I click on a text and read it. I can then navigate back to the overview using the "Back" button. This works fine.
 
The problem starts with the introduction of internal links in 4.4. We are now able to reference texts from other parts of the Online Help, which is extremely useful and highly appreciated.
 
But: Using the "back" button from a linked text won’t take me back to the originating text the link appeared in (as most internet users used to working with a browser would expect). Instead, it takes me to the content overview.
 
My suggestion would be to provide two links:

• Overview: A link that (as currently implemented) leads back to the overview.
• Back: Another link that leads back to the originating help text, just as you would expect from a web browser.

The implementation of this would ideally be coordinated with the search/index feature, as it, too, would require an extension of the navigation structure of the Online Help. This should be streamlined in order to avoid confusion.

Matthias Kunkel, 28 Feb 2015: This  feature was already scheduled for a previous ILIAS version but not implemented due to missing funding or time. We re-schedule it automatically for 5.1 to save time for discussing new feature requests.

5 Implementation

Search feature is implemented as described above. Unfortunately no funding for index or general navigation improvements.

Test Cases 

Test cases were prepare at 2015-08-24 vy Alexandra Tödt 

• http://testrail.ilias.de/index.php?/cases/view/6385: C6385 Hilfe durchsuchen

Approval 

Feature was approved by Thomas Langkau on 2015-08-25.