How do I set up audiences with topics?

Question

I want to create my help so that there is a drop-down choice for each job role, and when the person clicks on their role in the drop-down, just the help relevant to them displays.
I'm very confused by the terminology and options.  I created a conditional build tag for each role.  I have my TOC with books and topics within them.  I tried using right-click on the topic --> Apply Conditional Build Tag to try to restrict that topic to the audiences I specified.  When I did that, the topic displayed for all audiences.  I also tried going into the Topic List and using Properties --> Topic-Level Tags to select audiences that way.  It still displayed the topic for all audiences. 
I'm generating using WebHelp, and I see in the WebHelp menu there are Content Categories.  I have each of my roles set up there, and I see that there is a Conditional Build Expression field, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be doing something with that.
I know there must be a simple way to do this, but I'm just not understanding the Help file.
Thanks so much!

Answer 1

There are numerous ways of setting up the content and TOC for each role. You can do it from one TOC and use tagging or you can use multiple TOCs but most likely you will need both. The output will contain a webhelp for each role so be aware of the size implications. Also check the outputs for topics that you didn't intend to be in a particular one.
The fact that you have chosen to only allow topics in a TOC does not mean they are the only ones in that category. Say you did not want Topic 110 in an output but Topic 109 has a link to it, Topic 110 will be included and findable in a search. Look at what is in each category via Windows Explorer.
You will likely need a combination of TOCs and tagging to achieve your objective. The Location layout is the one to study, the skinned one is for use with a script that creates skinned CHMs from a webhelp output. I'm not sure how you are concluding tagging was not used when you go on to say the layout had AND NOT statements. That is the build expression that is using the tags.
There is another thread running on this area at the moment.
You can achieve what you want but you need to check it very carefully before you demo it.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge