Help and Support Center
A new central Help access point for Windows users
By Joe Welinske
Contents
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Introduction 
The latest version of Windows makes it possible for software vendors to integrate their Help content right alongside the operating system Help provided by Microsoft. This new capability is open to all software vendors. Microsoft announced the details of this exciting capability at the 2002 WinWriters Online Help Conference.
Since the release of Windows 95, users have had two ways to access Help: via the Help item on the Windows Start menu or through links embedded within individual applications. The former method has been limited to operating system topics developed by Microsoft. All other software vendors have had to rely solely on context sensitive Help to deliver the user to their content. While context sensitive Help can be an extremely effective way to deliver most users to the appropriate topic, the concept of a single access point to all Help may be more intuitive to many Windows users. Thus was born Help and Support Center (HSC).
HSC stems from customer feedback that indicated the desire for a simplified access point for user assistance. It's essentially a portal to a variety of Windows user assistance components. HSC uses a web-like UI to provide access to locally installed Help topics as well as remotely provided, web-based resources.
You may already have seen HSC. It made its debut in Windows ME and now is featured in XP and .NET Server. Up until now, HSC content has been limited to that developed by Microsoft or value-added resellers, such as Dell, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard. Now this functionality is available to all independent software vendors (ISVs)—that means YOU! Anyone producing a Windows application can add their content into HSC.
Pierre Jacomet, Microsoft’s Program Manager for HSC, presented a session specifically on this new technology at the 2002 WinWriters Conference. His session, "Integrating Your Help into the Microsoft Help and Support Center," provided an overview of HSC architecture and a step-by-step explanation of the content integration process. We’ve designed this article to provide you with a preview of HSC.
A Look at HSC
Figure 1 below shows a typical home page for HSC—what you would find on a Dell machine featuring Windows XP if you click on Help. The "Pick a Help Topic" section presents top level nodes that each lead to their respective topic trees. The home page installed on a Compaq computer might have a different look because Windows resellers can customize this page. The Microsoft content is present in HSC in every version of Windows. The resellers can add their own content but cannot remove the Microsoft content.
Figure 1: Help Support Center home page in Windows XP.
Figure 2 below shows the second level of HSC. This particular window is displayed if you clicked on a top level node on the HSC home page—for example, Networking and the Web. The arrangement of information is similar to the UI of the Microsoft HTML Help viewer with the table of contents (TOC) on the left, content on the right, and command functions at the top. Microsoft calls this the Standard Content View.
Figure 2: Standard Content View.
As an ISV, you can add content to any level below the HSC top level. The amount of content integration you employ is up to you. At a minimum you might integrate a single topic that offers an overview of your product or your Help system. This topic could link to a master Help file installed alongside your application. Or that single overview topic could link to support information on your corporate web site. On the other end of the spectrum, you could integrate the entire TOC for your product into HSC. Regardless of the approach, you can link from HSC to external compiled Help files (.CHMs) and also to your web site.
In addition to the Standard Content View, you have several options for displaying your content. Figure 3 and Figure 4 below show two other views that you can specify during integration. Also, another advantage of linking your Help into HSC is that your content is accessible through the built-in, full-text search engine.
Figure 3: Full Bottom Pane View.
Figure 4: Mini View.
How Content Integration Works
HSC content integration is not difficult to implement nor does it require any unusual software or hardware configurations. However, the process is a bit convoluted, is not intuitively obvious, and will require several hours of your time to absorb it all. Your main resources will be the Content Integration Guide, the Production Tool, and the Production Tool Help file—all to be provided by Microsoft.
The first step is to construct your Help files. For this step there is no change from your current development process. Whether you are using HTML Help Workshop or RoboHelp or another authoring tool, the end product only needs to be a compiled .CHM file.
Next you employ the Production Tool to create what is called an Update Package. The Update Package is a file that your product’s installation routine will install on the user’s machine along with your application. The Update Package contains your Help content, instructions to HSC on how to integrate your content into the already existing content, and security information about your organization.
Using the Production Tool you open a database file provided by Microsoft that shows the default Windows Help system topic hierarchy. In HSC parlance this hierarchy is called the taxonomy, which is shown in Figure 5 below. Now you select the node below which you would like to integrate a TOC node or topic. For each entry, you supply a description, URL, window type, and (optionally) Search keywords. When you are finished adding nodes or topics, the Production Tool builds the Update Package file.
Figure 5: The Production Tool.
To complete the process you must supply an Authenticode Digital ID so that the Update Package is digitally signed. This ID guarantees that you are in possession of a Class-3 software publishing certificate. The certificate, in turn, guarantees the end user that your Help content is from a trusted source and not intended to be malicious or harmful. The Authenticode ID and certificate are not available through Microsoft. You must purchase them from a certification authority such as VeriSign or GTE. The cost of the certificate will vary and you may want to speak to your organization’s security administrator about this. If you are conducting Internet transactions of any kind, it is likely that you already have access to a valid certificate.
Once the Update Package is digitally signed, the Production Tool compiles all of the data into a CAB file, the standard file format used in Windows product installation routines. You will probably hand off the CAB file to your product installation programmer. Before delivering the CAB, you can test the content integration file on any computer running Windows XP or .NET Server.
If HSC content integration proves popular among Help authors, Help authoring tools may elect to support this activity. If that happens, the entire process described above could be reduced to a couple of mouse clicks.
Where to Begin
While HSC Content Integration offers promise as an innovative new Help access point, it’s important to realize that HSC is in its nascent stage. ISVs are just finding out about HSC—and its effectiveness won’t really be known for a while.
A number of design considerations already come to mind. Should you use HSC integration strictly as a portal to your context sensitive Help? Or, do you integrate a copy of your entire Help system into HSC? Or, something in between? Is it safe to link to web resources, or are you better off sticking to locally installed content? How does your placement in the standard HSC taxonomy affect the ability of users to find your content?
Certainly many ideas, challenges, and solutions will crop up over the coming months. One thing that seems certain is that this new technology is worth investigation by all user assistance professionals. HSC may not provide you with an immediate solution, but it is worth understanding its capabilities so you can employ it if needed in the future.
A Microsoft Developer Network HSC site will be appearing concurrent with the 2002 WinWriters Online Help Conference. The site will offer some general information for developers.
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