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WebFOCUS 8.2.x

Has anyone figured out how to properly use the 8.2.* documentation page? I cannot get anywhere.

WebFOCUS 8.1.05M

For 8.1.05, it is quite clean.

Two links from the same page, Technical Support Center, navigate to completely different styles of documentation.

On the 8.1.05M page, I can easily search for "accordion" and find WebFOCUS Release 8.1 Version 05M > Reporting Language > Creating Reports With WebFOCUS Language > Navigating Within an HTML Report.

On the 8.2.02 page, I'm stuck. If I navigate to Reporting Language I get to something where there is no search - how do I find "accordion" here?

Hi Francis

On the main page for the 8.2 documentation there is a search box near the top and when I went to your link for the Reporting Language there is also a search option in the top right had corner. It is definitely different as it list all the manuals it finds the word in and give you the opportunity to download the manual as a pdf. It us using WebFOCUS Magnify under the covers for this search. On the left hand panel there are more options to let you further refine the search to product, release, and content type.

In my humble opinion, this is absolutely awful.

Is there no way to navigate to a proper online documentation page?

The page states "Technical Content - Browse or search technical content in HTML format by product area. View the latest release below, or select an earlier release."

So, for 8.2.* there's an "HTML format" menu that leads you to PDF versions. How "online" is that?

Thanks for being the Focal Point Moderator.

Francis

I will pass this post along to the documentation people and see how they respond... I understand your point!

Hi Francis,

My name is Mary Casull, and I am the Director of Technical Content Development.

Thank you for your feedback! I definitely would like to follow up to hear more and enable you to be successful. If we can schedule a WebEx call, that will help me determine specific changes that would support a better experience.

Please let me know when you can identify time for this follow up.

I look forward to the call. Thanks again for relaying your feedback.

It's very easy. Please take a look at the 8.1.05M link, WebFOCUS 8.1.05M

Why can't the documentation for 8.2.* behave like that?

Thank you,

I'd love to find out what my fellow FocalPointers think. I am currently working on v7.7.05 and I find all the help I need in the Developer Studio Help documentation. The last modern version I worked on was v.8.0.09, where the Developer Studio Help documentation was great. In App Studio, I changed the Help URL to point to https://infocenter.information...s.com/wf80/index.jsp which is similar to the v8.1.05.

What do people do in App Studio 8.2.*?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Francis Mariani,

I honestly have [disliked] the documentation and the search since day one of using it (8.0.09+, technically 7.6.11). I can't just type in a keyword like CONTAINS or OMITS or ... and get the exact page where it shows an example of a use case (get something on narrative charting...that's the ticket!). A lot of the time you eventually get to a page about UI options (mostly) and a small snippet about the part that matters saying to use it and for what. No implementation example. ** CTRL+F and ancient FOCUS docs are your friend... **

Please tell me you think that the 8.2.* version is much worse than what you think of the earlier ones!

I don't know about it being worse. It functions and has more up-to-date content (although we've found bad links on multiple occasions). But search hasn't improved any, and I'm always having to scroll down to get to the Reporting Language section and click through several branches multiple times to find what I'm looking for since I can never rely on the Search functionality as much. It looks nicer, but doesn't function any better in my opinion.

I believe it functions worse than the older versions. I haven't had too much trouble searching for things in the older versions - and the results are in HTML, not PDF.

How does this relate to "Help" from within App Studio. That's where I get my syntax / usage / examples.

http://localhost:8080/ibi_apphelp/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibi.help.apps/source/opener.htm

Or, from wherever you Help comes.

Doug,

The Help Wizard in AppStudio has never been consistent in working when I need it to. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...and what I mean by that is right this moment I have an error stating that the web page cannot be found...(although some days it IS found...lol (using the same Help Config you are)). So, I've always used the web docs instead.

We don't even install local reporting servers with App Studio - that's a valid option in the installation wizard.

I've been relying on the online 8.1M documentation on the IBI site since we started using App Studio. I even pointed out recently that more and more links from search results ended up broken and they fixed that.

Apparently you can point App Studio to an URL for the Help, but I've never been able to figure out where exactly I needed to point it to, by lack of a local reporting server with the documents.

WRT the 8.2 documentation; IMHO, Magnify is giving too many results. You start from the Technical Documentation where you search for "something". In that case, you should not get results that are not from the Technical documentation.

What's also missing is the method of searching only Index keywords, like we have in the 8.1 documentation. Especially when there's ambiguity in the meaning of a search keyword, not having to bother with all the documentation pages that just happen to contain a similar word makes a significant difference.

That said, I don't miss the TOC tree at all. There is just too much in there; unless you know in which manual under what section to expect a topic, it's searching for a needle in a haystack (in the hopes that there is actually a needle to be found).

Personally, I've never been particularly successful finding things with Magnify. If I can't find something on the IBI site, I rather give Google a shot than Magnify. Frankly, I do not fully comprehend why Magnify even exists. Google is hard to beat, both for functionality and resources.

quote:

Apparently you can point App Studio to an URL for the Help

In App Studio v8.0.08, I pointed the Help URL to https://infocenter.information...com/wf8008/index.jsp. You have a Search text box, and where you can use AND, OR, NOT, ? *, though I've probably never used them.

Search for CSSURL and the first hit is WebFOCUS Release 8.0 Version 08 > Reporting Language > Creating Reports With WebFOCUS Language > Using an External Cascading Style Sheet, which is exactly what I'm looking for, and I can view the documentation in HTML format.

For 8.2.*, you are navigated to https://webfocusinfocenter.inf...ilders.com/wfappent/ where there is a Search text box, enter CSSURL and the first hit is Linking to an External Cascading Style Sheet | Rel: 8201M | Publication Date: 2017-05-10, which is a PDF document. Clicking on the link downloads the 1,900 page Creating Reports With WebFOCUS Language Release 8.2 Version 01M PDF document. You are presented with the cover page, and you have to search again. You are then presented with the search results.

This can be considered as a followup for the Director of Technical Content Development.

Honestly, I'd like to see it function like this (including dark theme) for the FOCUS/WebFOCUS language section of the documentation. Albeit, having the normal advanced search options.

.NET API Browser

Wherein, it sticks to the language and its parts, entirely ignoring any and all GUI commentary, giving us code snippets from lets say the wf_retail and/or CAR file we can run and learn from. The only "tree navigation" we see being drilling into specific versions and then in turn specific language parts and functionality available to each part.

Francis, it's not a PDF document at all, unless you get different results than I do.

Yes, there is a link to a PDF document too, but clicking the link of the search result topic line brings you to a HTML page with the relevant documentation: http://webfocusinfocenter.info...e/ExternalCSS199.htm

Yep, Wep, you're absolutely right. I assumed the link wasn't a link and clicked on the PDF link below.

Meanwhile, yes it's a link to the exact information I'm looking for, but if you click on the "Reporting Language" breadcrumb link at the top of the page, you are navigated to a useless page.

Reporting Language > Using an External Cascading Style Sheet > Linking to an External Cascading Style Sheet

There appears to be a bug in the breadcrumbs: clicking on "Using an External Cascading Style Sheet" takes you to a page with Creating Reports With WebFOCUS Language which is the useful link. So, the breadcrumb trail should be:

Reporting Language > Creating Reports With WebFOCUS Language > Using an External Cascading Style Sheet > Linking to an External Cascading Style Sheet

Again, thank you for sharing your feedback, it helps support enhancements and solutions that benefit our users.

Customer experience is very important to us. I have read through all of your inputs, and am reviewing them with our team to identify any changes that we can stage for follow up and discussion.

I will also post a schedule of customer feedback sessions in this thread.

Thank you,
Mary