Help Topic Customization

You can customize the Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook help system to provide your own content. If you do customize the text labels and icons in the interface, you'll want to reflect those changes in the associated help topics.

Getting the Help Template Files

The default help system is provided in a compiled help file (.CHM). To override the default help system, you'll need to use the customizable help files provided in the OutlookHelpTemplates.zip file, which can be downloaded from the Product Downloads section of the Progress Community.

You need to extract the appropriate product and language version of the help topics, and add the topics to a folder on the local system. We recommend creating a separate Help folder, for example:

C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook\Help

Extract all files for the particular product and language version. See the readme.txt file in the OutlookHelpTemplates.zip for a description of the contents of the zip file.

In C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook folder, you will also find the customizations.xml.sample file, which contains the options that let you override the default help topics.

You can change topics in the help system by editing the HTML file associated with that topic. Each help topic and it's associated HTML file are shown in the following table:

Table 1.

Customization Option

HTML File

Help Topic Title

Quick Start Help

quickstart.htm

Quick Start

Plugin Help

ahtplugin.htm

What is the Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook?

View Sent Messages Help

viewsent.htm

Viewing Sent Secure Transfers

Default Send Options Help

defaultsendoptions.htm

Default Send Options

Plugin Options Help

pluginoptions.htm

WS_FTP Connection Configuration

Advanced Options Help

advancedoptions.htm

Advanced Options

Connector Help

connector.htm

What is the WS_FTP Connector?

Cannot Locate Error Help

cannotlocate.htm

Cannot locate the server

Authentication Error Help

autherror.htm

Cannot connect due to an authentication error

Bad Certificate Error Help

badcertificate.htm

Cannot connect due to an SSL issue

sendpassword.htm (used by MOVEit DMZ plug-in only)

Sending a Password to Unregistered Recipients

sendingsecuretransfers.htm

Sending Secure Transfers through Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook

sendoptions.htm

Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook Send Options

trackprogress.htm

Tracking Secure Transfer Progress

viewlog.htm

Viewing the Log

troubleshooting.htm

Troubleshooting

cannotsend.htm

Why isn't the Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook sending files?

recoverfailedsend.htm

How do I recover from a failed send?

Note the following about the set of help files:

  • The files that you see in the help system that are not referenced in the table are supporting files; for example images, CSS, JS. They are used to create the help display and the table of contents and search capabilities. The customized help system will display in a browser.
  • Files that have an associated Customization Option, represent the help topics that are called directly from the plug-in. For these files, you need to have a corresponding entry in the customizations.xml file in order to override the default topic. For more information, see How to Customize the Help Topics below.

How to Customize the Help Topics

To change (override) the default help topics, you will need to:

  1. Make sure you have extracted all help files for your product and language version from the OutlookHelpTemplates.zip file. Place the help files in the appropriate folder, for example:
    C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook\Help
  2. Edit the appropriate topics (.htm files) identified in the table in the previous section.
  3. Create any new images, such as screenshots, and place them in the appropriate folder, for example:
    C:\ProgramData\Progress\Ad Hoc Transfer Plug-in for Outlook\Help
    Note: Remember to edit any reference to an image to use the new image.
  4. Open the customizations.xml.sample file (found in the above mentioned folder) and save it as: customizations.xml
    Note: If you have made previous customizations, this file will already be saved as customizations.xml.
  5. Edit the customizations.xml file to change the reference for any of the help topics. You need to remove the comment tags from any help customization option that you will use. Make sure you enter the path for the customized help topic.
    Note: If you use extended ASCII characters (for example, characters with accents or umlauts), you must save the customizations.xml file as a UTF-8 encoded file.
  6. Close Outlook and restart Windows.

    The new help topics will display when selected from the Outlook plug-in.