Can you use a single webhelp file to display different help for two apps?

Question

I have updated a WebHelp project for a Windows app (let’s call it App1). Now the Dev team is creating a separately installed app (lets call it App2) that shares some of the same Help information as the original app. Both apps can be installed on the same system. The Help for App1 is accessed from an About menu in the app UI.  Some of the topics are dialog boxes accessed from a question mark icon (?) at the bottom of the UI (I assume map IDs are involved in hooking up the dialog box Help - I need to verify this with Dev). The Help for App2 will be accessed from the App2 UI, which looks very similar to the App1 UI, except that certain features in App1 are missing from App2.
Here are the parameters:
In some cases, entire Help topics will apply to both apps.
In some cases, a portion of a topic for App1 will also apply to App2.
In some cases, a topic or topic portion for App 1 does not apply to App2 and vice versa
I’m using Robohelp 9 (RH9). Is there a way to allow App1 to display only the WebHelp that is relevant to that app and for App2 to display only the WebHelp that is relevant to that app? Is there a solution that would allow me to use one Help project and build only one Help file, with the result that App 1 displays only the Help it needs and App 2 displays only the Help it needs?  Would conditionalizing the Help and providing two sets of WebHelp be the solution? Or is there some other alternative?

Answer 1

You could do it in a couple of ways – one way is to have 1 project & use conditions to generate 2 flavours of WebHelp output, one for each App; the other way would be to use one project and create DUCC flavoured WebHelp – that way the use would choose to read the appropriate flavour of help for their App.