MadCap Flare: Generating Identifiers - can-dea/writing-samples GitHub Wiki

About this sample

I wrote this sample in 2022. It reflects a process I completed frequently while working as a technical writer and managing an online help website. This sample is written in markdown.

In MadCap Flare, you can create records called identifiers to assign unique values to each topic file in your project. You can provide the unique values from these identifiers to development so that they can configure context-sensitive help hooks in the software to point to relevant help topics.

To generate identifiers, follow these steps:

  1. In MadCap Flare, open the project for which you want to create identifiers.

  2. In the Project Organizer pane, expand Advanced > CSH.

  3. Open the file called AliasFile. A new tab opens that has two sections: Topics and Identifiers.

  4. In the Identifiers pane, right-click and then select Auto Generate. The Generate Identifiers window opens.

  5. In the Header File section, select Choose Existing. The default header file appears in the drop-down list. You can select a different header file if required.

  6. In the Identifier Options section, complete the following fields:

    1. Starting Value: This value is assigned to the first identifier you create, and it increments for subsequent identifiers. By default, the value is 1000. You can change it if required.
    2. Prefix: If you want each identifier value to be preceded by a prefix, enter it in this field.
    3. Include file or phrase name in identifier: Select this check box so that identifier names include topic file names. This option makes it easier to find identifiers in the header file.
    4. Generate Identifiers for: Select Unassigned topics and micro content so that this process only assigns new identifiers to files that do not already have assigned identifiers.
    5. Select Create. The new identifiers are generated and then displayed in the Identifiers pane.