After your Epicor application is installed, your help system is ready to access from within the application by pressing F1 or selecting Contents from the Help menu. The field-specific help is also available by selecting Field Help from the Help menu. The following steps are optional, but recommended if you want to improve the performance and efficiency of the help system by hosting the help in a web site and implementing server-side searching. For example:
* Host Help System in a Web Site. If your Epicor application is used over a wide area network (WAN), by default the help system (a large collection of non- complied html files) is installed to be accessed from the file system. Alternately, you can host the help on a web site to improve the speed of accessing the help. * Implement Server-side Searching. By default, the help system searching
capability relies on index files that are downloaded to each client workstation. Alternately, you can implement server-side searching which uses Windows Search and provides a more robust and faster search. In addition to having natural language searches, users can do advanced searches using Boolean operators, and/or choose to search only among help topic titles. See the application help for more information on advanced help system searches. It is recommended that you complete both of these optional configurations. Note that you can host the help in a web site without implementing the server-side help, but you cannot implement the server-side help without hosting the help in a web site.
H.1 Host Help System in a Web Site
Use the following steps to configure your help system to run in a web site.
1. Navigate to the root where your Epicor application is installed. Copy the Help
2. For Windows operating systems, select Start - Run. Enter inetmgr to start Internet Information Services (IIS).
3. Open the IIS online help and follow the instructions for creating a virtual directory.
Be sure you create a virtual directory pointing to the physical location of the Help folder you copied in the previous step.
Note! For Windows 2008, you must make the virtual directory an application and have it use an application pool that uses the Managed pipeline mode of type
“Classic.”
4. After you created the virtual directory, test the help by using your Internet browser
to browse to the snm_enu.htm file in the root of the virtual directory. Do not set the snm_enu.htm file as a default document.
5. Edit each client .mfgsys configuration file to use the help URL you just created.
To do this:
- Navigate to the Client\Config folder on your workstation. - Open the .mfgsys file in a text editor, such as Notepad.
- Edit the <helpServer uri=" " /> line to add the new help URL between the empty quotes. For example, if you created a virtual directory with an alias of Help on a server named MyServer, the edited line would look similar to <helpServer uri="http://MyServer/Help/" />
H.2 Implement Server-Side Help Search (Windows Server 2003)
Use these steps to implement the server-side search using a Windows Server 2003 environment.1. Verify that you completed the “Host Help System in a Web Site” instructions in
the previous step.
2. Verify that ASP.NET is enabled on the web server. See your Internet Information
Services (IIS) documentation for information on how to make the verification.
3. Select Start - Run and type services.msc and click OK. Find the Indexing
Service. If it running double-click the service and select Stop. Change the Startup type to Manual or Disable.
4. Download and install Windows Search 4.0 for your version of Windows 2003.
5. Select Start - Settings - Control Panel - Indexing Options. Note the locations being indexed. Click Modify. Clear check boxes next to any folder that you do not want to index. Make sure that the Standard folder under the Help\enu folder (for example, C:\www\Help\enu\Standard) is selected for indexing. In later steps the help search will be configured to search only the help folder. However, you may want to clear other folders just so the indexing is not taking any CPU cycles indexing files you do not care to have indexed. Click OK and Close.
6. Open Windows Explorer. Navigate to the Standard folder under Help\enu where
you installed the help.
7. Use a text editor such as Notepad to edit the Web.config file in the Standard folder.
Find this line: <add name="EpicorHelpSearch" connectionString="file:C:/ ExamplePath/ExamplePath/Help/enu/Standard" />. Change the connection string portion that is in quotes to the path where your Help\enu\Standard folder is located. Leave the file: as is and use forward slashes instead of back slashes as is shown in the example path. Save and close the file.
Note! Using search in Epicor help only returns results from .html files in the folder (and its subfolders) you configured in the above step.
8. Select Start - Run and enter inetmgr to start Internet Information Services (IIS).
Go to the virtual directory you created for the help system. Expand the nodes down to enu/Standard.
9. Right-click and select Properties. Click Create to create the application name.
For Execute Permissions, select Scripts only. Click OK. Close the IIS console. 10. Open Windows Explorer. Go to the help system folder. Expand the node down to
enu/Standard/frameset.bak/indexserver.
11. Copy the snm_enu.htm file and paste it in the root of the Standard folder. When prompted, select Yes to overwrite the current file.
H.3 Implement Server-Side Help Search (Windows Server 2008)
Use these steps to implement the server-side search using a Windows Server 2008 environment.1. Verify that you completed the “Host Help System in a Web Site” instructions in
the previous procedure.
2. Verify that ASP.NET is enabled on the web server. See your Internet Information
Services (IIS) documentation for information on how to make the verification.
4. Under Roles Summary, click the File Services. Add the File Services role if it does not already exist.
5. Under Role Services, check for Windows Search having a status of installed. If it
is not, click Add Role Services, select Windows Search Service and click Install. Note! If you had Windows 2003 Indexing Service installed (under Windows 2003 File Services), clear its check box to uninstall it since you cannot run both Indexing Service and Windows Search at the same time.
6. Select Start - Settings - Control Panel - Indexing Options. Note the locations
being indexed. Click Modify. Clear check boxes next to any folder that you do not want to index. Make sure that the Standard folder under the Help\enu folder (for example, C:\www\Help\enu\Standard) is selected for indexing. In later steps the help search will be configured to search only the help folder. However, you may want to clear other folders just so the indexing is not taking any CPU cycles indexing files you do not care to have indexed. Click OK and Close.
7. Open Windows Explorer. Navigate to the Standard folder under Help\enu where
you installed the help.
8. Use a text editor such as Notepad to edit the Web.config file in the Standard folder.
Find this line: <add name="EpicorHelpSearch" connectionString="file:C:/ ExamplePath/ExamplePath/Help/enu/Standard" />. Change the connection string portion that is in quotes to the path where your Help\enu\Standard folder is located. Leave the file: as is and use forward slashes instead of back slashes as is shown in the example path. Save and close the file.
Note! Using search in Epicor help only returns results from .html files in the folder (and its subfolders) you configured in the above step.
9. Select Start - Run and enter inetmgr to start Internet Information Services (IIS).
Go to the virtual directory you created for the help system. Expand the nodes down to enu/Standard.
10. Right-click Standard and select Convert to Application. Click OK. Close the IIS console.
11. Open Windows Explorer. Go to the help system folder. Expand the node down to enu/Standard/frameset.bak/indexserver.
12. Copy the snm_enu.htm file and paste it in the root of the Standard folder. When prompted, select Copy and Replace to copy the file.