Demonstration: Installing the “offline” information center into an Eclipse-based tool (reference or demonstration only)

This section uses the IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration, which is not available on AIX. It is therefore not possible to go through these steps on your lab workstation. Instead, a demonstration is available at the following website:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/wikis/home?lang=en#/wiki/

WebSphere%20Education%20Wiki/page/Course%20Demonstrations

Use your local browser to run the information center demonstration. You can follow along with the following instructions.

The following section was performed in a demonstration (URL provided previously):

You are not able to run this section in your lab environment. Watch the demonstration instead. These steps are presented for reference only.

It might be desirable to maintain an offline version of one or more information centers. If you already have an Eclipse-based tool, such as IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration, you can deploy documentation plug-in files into the plugins directory of that tool. For Eclipse-based systems, the help system stores its documentation in the plugins directory. The documentation plug-ins can be downloaded from IBM. As soon as it is deployed to the plugins directory, the documentation shows up in the Help contents list the next time that you start the Eclipse-based tool.

In this section of the exercise, you copy the document plug-ins for WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, IBM HTTP Server, and the Edge Components to the plugins directory of IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools.

__ 1. Copy the WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Information Center plug-in to the plugins directory of IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration.

__ a. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\softare\InformationCenterPlugin\nd __ b. Copy the entire contents of the directory to C:\Program Files\IBM\SDP\

plugins

__ 2. Copy the IBM HTTP Server Information Center plug-in to the plugins directory of IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration.

__ a. In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\softare\InformationCenterPlugin\ihs

__ 3. Copy the Edge Components Information Center plug-in to the plugins directory of IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration.

__ a. In Windows Explorer, navigate to

C:\softare\InformationCenterPlugin\edge

__ b. Copy the entire contents of the directory to C:\Program Files\IBM\SDP\

plugins

__ 4. Start IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools and verify that the WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Information Center plug-in works correctly in the help system of IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools.

__ a. Select Start > Programs > IBM Software Delivery Platform > IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration 8.0 > IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration.

__ b. In the Workspace Launcher window, keep the default workspace. Click OK.

__ c. After IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools opens, select Help > Help Contents.

EXempty __ d. In the Contents pane, the documentation for the three products is added.

__ e. Expand Edge Components, Version 8.0. Topics relevant to Network Deployment are displayed.

__ f. Expand any topic and follow the links.

__ 5. Explore the search function.

__ a. Enter virtual hosts in the search box and click Go.

__ b. Wait for the indexing to complete. Since it is likely that the data is being searched for the first time, the tool first indexes the contents.

__ c. As soon as the results are displayed, notice that the contents are similar to the contents that are displayed through the online information center.

__ 6. Explore the other components of the help system and notice that they are similar to that of the online system.

__ 8. Close IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools for WebSphere Administration. Click OK when you are prompted to exit.

Information

There might be occasions when you want to create customized content for your information center. For example, you might have instructions or procedures for administering resources that are specific to your company. In this case, you can either add the content to an existing information center or create an information center that is composed of your custom

content.

When customized content is needed, the Toolkit for Custom and Reusable Solution Information (TKCARSI) can be used to assemble and deploy a customized information center. TKCARSI is only used to assemble and deploy the content. Content can be in the form of plug-ins, documents, or graphics. Deployment can be local or to a remote server.

TKCARSI can be downloaded from IBM alphaWorks at:

http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/tkcarsi

Follow the instructions from alphaWorks to unpack and install the toolkit files to your local system.

This section provides a simple example of using the Toolkit for Custom and Reusable Solution Information to assemble and deploy customized content. The example assumes that you unpacked the toolkit files.

__ 1. Start the Toolkit for Custom and Reusable Solution Information.

__ a. Open a command window and navigate to the directory where you unpacked TKCARSI. The directory that is used in this example is C:\tkcarsi1.5.

__ b. Run the following script:

run.bat

EXempty __ c. Close the Welcome window. The toolkit workspace is displayed.

__ 2. Create a solution information project. Projects contain the artifacts to create and deploy a customized information center.

__ a. Select File > New > Solution information project.

__ b. Enter WAS ND Information as the Project name.

__ d. In the Navigation Tree tab, the new project is displayed as a table of contents with topics listed beneath.

__ 3. Change the browser title to a more meaningful name.

__ a. Select Information Center > Browser Title.

__ b. In the Browser Title tab, enter WebSphere Customized Help as the browser title.

__ c. Close the Browser Title tab. Click Yes when asked to save the changes.

__ 4. To add content to the help system, you must add one or more plug-ins to the project.

Plug-ins are obtained directly from IBM, or an information development team develops them separately. In this example, the information center plug-ins for WebSphere Application Server are used. The plug-ins are added to the project

EXempty through the book tab. Books can also contain other content such as documents, graphics, and links. Add a book to the project.

__ a. From the explorer view in the upper left, select the Books tab and click the Add Books icon.

__ b. In the New Books panel, make the following selections:

• Select Directory.

• Browse to C:\softare\InformationCenterPlugin\nd\

com.ibm.websphere.nd.doc_6.1.0.

• Click OK.

• Click Yes when asked to copy content into the toolkit.

__ c. Click OK.

__ 5. Add book content to the highest level of the navigation tree.

__ a. Drag nav_tasks.xml to 0 WAS ND Information.

__ b. The content is added to the end of the navigation tree.

__ 6. To deploy the customized information center, you must package and export the project.

__ a. Select Information Center > Export.

EXempty __ b. Click Yes when prompted to save any changes.

__ c. Browse to C:\tkcarsi1.5.

__ d. Accept the File name. Click Save.

__ e. Click Finish. It takes several minutes to compress and export the project.

__ 7. The newly created help system is ready. You can extract and run the newly created help system on a local system or a remote system. In this example, the newly created help system is extracted and then runs on a local system.

__ a. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\tkcarsi1.5 and locate WAS ND Information_package.zip.

__ b. Using the standard operating system tools, extract the compressed file to the current directory.

__ c. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\tkcarsi1.5\

__ d. Run help_start.bat. After a few moments, a new browser opens with the newly created help system.

__ e. Notice that the browser title and contents are customized. In the Contents pane, expand WAS ND Information. Topics for the content you loaded in the project are displayed.

EXempty __ f. Expand any of the topic links. Click any link to display the content of the topic.

__ g. Exit from the Toolkit for Custom and Reusable Solutions Information.

__ h. Run the help_end.bat script.

__ i. Close any remaining help system browsers.

End of exercise

Exercise review and wrap-up

IBM information centers provide online and offline approaches to searching and viewing product information. In this exercise, you used the online WebSphere Application Server Information Center to search and view topics that pertain to WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment. Next, you configured an offline information center. You did this configuration by adding content plug-ins to the plug-ins directory of IBM Assembly and Deploy Tools. Finally, you read an informational section that explained building information center content with the Toolkit for Custom and Reusable Solution Information (TKCARSI).

TKCARSI is a tool available from alphaWorks to assemble and deploy information center content.