APPLICATION MANAGEMENT

Creating context-sensitive Help for an application
You can make an application's Help documents or pages context-sensitive so that users can open them by pressing a key, such as F1, or by clicking a Help button. You can associate a Help document or page with each page, form, subform, view, and folder in an application.

When you provide Help for an element, your formula overrides whatever context-sensitive Help already exists for that element. This feature is not intended for context-sensitive Help on dialog boxes or menu items.

To create context-sensitive Help for an IBM® Lotus® Notes® application, you write a formula for the HelpRequest event for a page, form, subform, view, or folder. You can use the formula language command @Command([OpenHelpDocument]) to specify which Help document to open when a user requests Help while an element is active. You can also use @helpCommand([OpenPage]) to open a page instead of a document.

The HelpRequest event is not available for applications over Web servers; however, you can create a button for an element and program the button using a formula with @Command([OpenHelpDocument]) or @Command([OpenPage]). A user clicks the Help button to see the associated Help document or page.

Because the HelpRequest event accepts a formula, you can use the formula language in other ways to provide Help. For example, you can use an @If formula with @IsDocBeingEdited to provide different Help for a form depending on whether a document is being read or edited, or depending on other conditions specific to your application. You can present a dialog box to allow users to select among several Help documents or pages. You can place Help text directly onto a form or page, set the text with a hide-when formula, and use a formula on the HelpRequest event to reveal the text (by changing the value of a document field) when a user requests Help.

Note To open documents in response to Help requests, there must be a view containing those documents sorted by a key field that you can use as parameters for @Command([OpenHelpDocument]). You can use @Command([OpenPage]) without requiring a specific view or key field.

For syntax and usage information on using @Command([OpenHelpDocument]) or @Command([OpenPage]) in a formula, see the Domino Designer Programming Guide.

See Also