Linking to Help Topics
This section explains how to link to topics in the Windchill Help Center (WHC) from common component user interfaces. The WHC is the repository for all help topics.
The web app for the WHC is different than the web app for Windchill.
URL Details
• The wt.whc.url property in the wt.properties file defines the URL to the WHC.
• The wt.help.HelpLinkHelper.createHelpHREF(String) API returns the correct fully qualified WHC URL.
This section explains how to link to help topics in the WHC from the Windchill UI.
Information Pages
The help button (
) will appear in the upper right corner of the information page if you set a help context in your info builder:
) will appear in the upper right corner of the information page if you set a help context in your info builder: // sets the help topic to use from the Windchill Help Center
infoConfig.setHelpContext("HelpTopicName");
infoConfig.setHelpContext("HelpTopicName");
Table/Tree
The help button () will appear in the upper right corner of the table/tree if you set a help context in your builder:
) will appear in the upper right corner of the table/tree if you set a help context in your builder: // sets the help topic to use from the Windchill Help Center
tableConfig.setHelpContext("HelpTopicName");
tableConfig.setHelpContext("HelpTopicName");
If your table/tree is still defined in a jsp instead of with a builder, adding the help topic would be as follows:
<renderTable model="${tableModel}" helpContext=" HelpTopicName"/>
Wizards
The help button () will appear in the upper right corner of the wizard if you specify a help selector key in the wizard tag:
) will appear in the upper right corner of the wizard if you specify a help selector key in the wizard tag: <jca:wizard helpSelectorKey="HelpTopicName" …>
Other Pages
If you are not using a common component but would like to produce a link to the WHC in your UI, you can use the helpButton tag in a jsp to output a button on the page:
<%@taglib uri="http://www.ptc.com/windchill/taglib/wrappers" prefix="w" %>
<w:helpButton helpSelectorKey="HelpTopicName"/>
<w:helpButton helpSelectorKey="HelpTopicName"/>
This results in a help button () in the UI.
) in the UI.If for some reason the helpButton tag cannot be used for a particular UI, you can get a URL to a help topic with the HelpLinkHelper.createHREF(String) API.
For example, wt.help.HelpLinkHelper.createHelpHREF("HelpTopicName") will return a URL to the given help topic in the WHC in the following form: <value from wt.whc.url property in wt.properties>/HelpTopicName.html.
For example: http://<localhost>/Windchill-WHC/HelpTopicName.html
For launching that URL you could use the javascript API: PTC.help.openHelpWindow(helpUrl);
This would launch the help topic in a popup window, and on subsequent clicks of the help link would refocus that same help window instead of launching a new one.