Dimensional Insight provides online help for the Diver 7.0 products including Workbench, ProDiver, DivePort, NetDiver, and Help Desk. In the Workbench help, you can find all the documentation for Workbench plus the DiveLine Server, DiveTab, Production, DiveMaster, DIAL, Spectre, Visual Builder, Visual Integrator, and Measure Factory. DivePort has separate online help for administrators and users. Separate helps for DiveTab end users are available upon request.
How do you access the online help? Could you use some tips or tricks to find what you need and get you back to work faster? Read on!
What features are in the help?
The online help systems have all the standard features that you’ve come to expect, such as a table of content, search bar, and links to related information. The help system identifies your device type to give you the most effective user experience, whether you are using a laptop, desktop, or mobile device, without compromising function. Then, there are some niceties to accommodate you at whatever your level of expertise. For example, in-line expandable images and tooltips are available to get you started but stay collapsed and out of the way if you’re more experienced.
How do you access the online help?
Online help opens in your default browser. The following images show the menu options for each Diver product.
From Workbench, click Help > View Help.
Figure 1: Workbench Help
From ProDiver, click Help > View Help.
Figure 2: ProDiver Help
For DivePort administrators, click Help > View Administrator Help.
Figure 3: DivePort Administartor Help
Or, for the DivePort user help, click Help > View User Help.
Figure 4: DivePort user Help
From NetDiver, click Help.
Figure 5: NetDiver Help
From Help Desk, click Help > View Help.
Figure 6: Help Desk Help
For the best results, make sure that your browser is a vendor-supported version that supports HTML5, such as Internet Explorer 11 or later, Firefox 10 or later, or Google Chrome 13 or later.
You can bookmark the URLs, which should be similar to the following URLs if you installed Workbench, ProDiver, or Help Desk locally:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Dimensional Insight\Workbench\workbench_help\Default.htm
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Dimensional Insight\ProDiver\prodiver_help\Default.htm
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Dimensional Insight\HelpDesk\helpdesk_help\Default.htm
For help that is installed on a Diver server, the URLs should look like these for DivePort administrators, DivePort users, and NetDiver:
- https://<server>/<diveport>/help/Default.htm
- https://<server>/<diveport>/user-help/Default.htm
- https://<server>/<netdiver>/help/Default.htm
Online help updates automatically with each software release, so you can be sure that you have the version of help that matches your software.
NOTE: The online help documents all functionality, including those features that are limited to a special license class. The license you purchased and installed determines what you see in the GUI and in the various components, but the license does not limit what displays in the help.
For your convenience, the Workbench 7.0 online help includes any PDFs available for 7.0 as well as a repository of the 6.4 manuals in PDF format. In the navigation pane, click Additional Resources.
A view for your device
Now that you know how to access the online help, let’s look at the help interface. The layout depends on your device. Laptops and desktops have one view, while mobile devices have a different view that accommodates the smaller screen size.
Laptop or desktop view
On a laptop or desktop, the online help displays in a one-window view (Figure 7). There are two main panes in this view along with tool bars to help you navigate, search, and print the help topics.
Figure 7: Laptop or desktop view
- The Navigation pane, on the left, contains the Table of Contents and Glossary tabs. In some helps, there’s also an Index tab in this pane.
- The Content pane, on the right, contains the current topic or search results.
- The Breadcrumb Navigation, at the top right of the Content Pane, lets you use a single click to navigate to a parent topic in the hierarchy.
- The Header Tool Bar, above the Content pane, contains tools to help you work with the topics in the Contents pane. On the left, the tool bar includes Print, Collapse or Expand all, and Remove Highlights buttons. On the right, navigation controls move you to the prior or next topic.
- The Search Bar, above the Header Tool Bar, includes a search filter feature.
- A toggle, on the vertical bar between the Navigation pane and the Content pane, collapses the Navigation Pane if you want to hide it.
Mobile device view
The mobile device view (Figure 8) maximizes the screen area to display text by hiding the table of contents, glossary, and the search bar. You can access these features with the Menu button which switches from the navigation and search pane to the content pane where topics display.
To display a topic, such as from the table of contents, click the topic in the navigation pane. The navigation pane slides out of the way, and the topic displays in the content pane.
By default, the mobile device view shows the Content pane and tool bars.
Figure 8: Mobile device view
- The Menu button, in the upper left corner, displays the Navigation pane.
- The Content pane contains the current topic.
- The Breadcrumb Navigation, at the top right of the Content Pane, lets you use a single click to navigate to a parent topic in the hierarchy.
- The Header Tool Bar, above the Content pane, contains tools to help you work with the topics in the Contents pane. On the left, the tool bar includes Print, Collapse or Expand all, and Remove Highlights buttons. On the right, navigation controls move you to the prior or next topic.
When you click the Menu button, the Navigation pane (Figure 9) displays the Search bar and collapsed sections for the Contents, Glossary, and Search Filters. These features are fully-functional just like the features available in the laptop and desktop view. One addition is the Home button, which collapses all sections and restores the Navigation pane to the default view. For instance, when you review glossary terms, the table of contents and search bar are hidden, so you can click Home to display all sections (Figure 10).
Figure 9: Mobile device Navigation pane
Figure 10: Mobile device navigation pane after glossary search
Interface highlights
The following topics give a brief overview of the tools available in the online help.
Table of contents
The table of contents has standard functionality.
- Click collapsed topics to expand and show the subtopic titles
- Click a topic to display it in the content pane
- Show or hide the table of contents with the toggle (laptop and desktop view only)
Glossary
The glossary contains a comprehensive list of terms used across all Dimensional Insight products. You can scroll through the glossary or use the search bar to find a term. Then, click the term to expand the definition (Figure 11).
Figure 11: Glossary search
Index
The help for ProDiver, DivePort, both user and administrator, and NetDiver includes an index. Scroll through the index entries and click an entry to show the topic in the content pane. Like the glossary, the index has a search bar for quick access. Additionally, if you click an index entry that has sub-topics, a dialog box displays the sub-topics for a more granular level of topics (Figure 12).
Figure 12: ProDiver Index, granular topics
Breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumb navigation shows your location in the topic hierarchy and provides one-click access to parent topics (Figure 13).
Figure 13: Breadcrumb navigation
Buttons
For quick reference, here are the navigation, tool bar, search, and topic buttons.
Search tips
Glossary and index searches
You can search the online help topics, the glossary entries, or the index entries. To search glossary or index entries, use the search bar in the navigation pane when these sections are expanded. Glossary and index searches only search the entries, not the underlying topics, so single word searches work best.
Topic searches
To search the topics, use the search bar above the Content Pane in the laptop view or at the top of the pane in the mobile device view. You can search the topics for a general word or words, an exact word or phrase, or you can use a Boolean search to combine or exclude search terms. Search is not case sensitive.
The following table shows different search types, some example searches, and the results.
Search filters and results
Optionally, in Workbench, ProDiver, and NetDiver help you can use filters to limit the search results. Select one of the pre-defined filters to limit your search results to topics within that filter’s content (Figure 14).
Figure 14: Search filters, shown here in the laptop and desktop view
If the search word is a term in the glossary, the search returns the term definition with the results (Figure 15).
Figure 15: Search results of topics from a filtered search for a glossary term
Search highlights
When you open a topic in the search results set, all occurrences of the search term are highlighted in yellow. If you want to read the topic without highlights, click the Remove Highlights button in the tool bar (Figure 16).
Figure 16: Remove highlights from a search results topic
Provide feedback
Provide feedback
Dimensional Insight values your real-world perspective and feedback and is always looking for ways to improve the user experience. Changes, such as the search filters, were implemented based on customer feedback.
If you would like to suggest ways to improve the online help, either the format or the content, you can contact the documentation team from the link available at the bottom of every page. Expand Support Links and click the email address next to Documentation Feedback to send your comments (Figure 17).
Figure 17: Provide feedback to [email protected]
Editor’s note: This blog post was originally published in May 2017. Since then, Dimensional Insight has expanded the online help available to users, so we have updated this post to bring you the most current information.
- How to Access Dimensional Insight Online Help - May 3, 2018
- Learn about Chart Portlet and the Future of Dimensional Insight Visualizations - September 13, 2017
- How to Use Map Portlet to Visualize Geographic Data - August 10, 2017
