filtering content

[julie]

Hi

My Project Manager asked me to filter the FAQ content based on the user type. I am developing an online help using DITA. We have two types of users. There are a set of questions developed for each user type, for example A and B type of users. When user A log in to application and access the help page,only the questions set for A user should be displayed. When user B log in, only user B user type questions should display. Is there a way to do this in online help?

Regards
Julie

[Radu]

Hi Julie,

You probably need conditional processing in order to achieve this.
In DITA there are 4 attributes which can be specified on the XML elements to achieve conditional processing:
* product: the product that is the subject of the discussion.
* platform: the platform on which the product is deployed.
* audience: the intended audience of the text
* rev: the revision or draft number of the current document (typically used for flagging only, not for filtering)
* otherprops: anything else

So for example you will have questions with audience="userA" and questions with audience="userB" set to them.
Then you edit the transformation scenario associated to the DITA Map and in the Filters tab you can add the attribute/value pair of audience/userA to exclude some of the questions.

With 2 transformation scenarios with different filters you can obtain 2 XHTML outputs, one for one user and the other for another.

Regards,
Radu

[julie]

Hi Radu

Thank you for the reply. But, my doubt is that how do we integrate two help to the same application? How do the help file changes based on the login user type?

Regards
Julie

[Radu]

Hi Julie,

Using DITA to produce the XHTML output I guess the only solution would be to redirect the user to one help index page or the other based on the credentials.

Regards,
Radu