Object Advisors

Object Advisors are pop-up panels that display information about an object. They enable organizations to develop custom on-line training materials for their end-users. Individual users can use Object Advisors to help identify the contents of folders and documents. You can determine the level of detail provided by each Advisor. For example, if you work with numerous word processing documents and have trouble identifying them by name, you can define Object Advisors that provide a summary of the contents of each document. The following figure shows the Advisor for the Multimedia folder.

Trainers of novice PC users can create Advisors for program objects. For example, when a user clicks the Lotus Ami Pro program icon, an Advisor can provide a brief explanation of Lotus Ami Pro and its uses.

Introduction

The text used for Object Advisors is saved in an Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file format, which allows for leveraging next generation internet/intranet technologies in a corporate environment, including new internet features such as JAVA.

Companies with significant turnover can spend millions of dollars to retrain employees in using their desktops. Object Advisors can help make retraining easier by providing a global method of obtaining help that can be updated at any time, and by using HTML files which can be centrally stored on any network file server.

Some typical scenarios for using Object Advisors:

  • An end-user is unfamiliar with new procedures in a particular workgroup, or is a new employee in the corporation. Object Advisor is opened in its "trainer" mode. When the user clicks an object, a pop-up Advisor window displays information about the object, using rich text, graphics and multimedia. After reading the information, which is stored on internal networks, the end-user can begin to work or find more information on how to proceed.

  • An end-user determines that the host connection to the corporate mainframe is no longer working. The user reads the Object Advisor information provided for the 3270 Connection object, and after realizing there are still too many questions to begin work, submits a problem report over the corporation's intranet by filling out a web form that is linked to every help object on the desktop. Immediately, a corporate help desk specialist is notified of the problem and can resolve it with a phone call.

  • An IS manager creates Object Advisors for all the network resources (e.g., printers, modems, etc.). If a user has a problem printing, the Advisor provides custom help for the desktop printer objects. Furthermore, the end-user can fill out an HTML form that is linked to the printer objects' Advisors, which will notify the network manager that there is a problem with the printer.

  • Your company's new software product arrives with an Object Advisor. Now, when your users have questions on how to use the new product, the Advisor is invoked and up-to-date information is displayed for the application. The Advisor can provide links to external resources that provide Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and answers resources, the latest fixes and patches for the application, internet technical support, problem submission, and help databases.

    Object Desktop 2.0 provides Advisors for most of the default OS/2 objects.

    Using Standard Advisors

    To enable Object Advisors, double-click the Object Advisors icon in the Object Desktop folder.

    Alternatively, you can choose Advisor, Open, Train! from the Object Advisor's context menu. This places the Object Advisor in Trainer mode.

    The opened Master Advisor consists of a title bar.

    To view one of the Advisors shipped with Object Desktop, single-left click a any object in the Object Desktop folder or any standard OS/2 object, such as the Multimedia or OS/2 System folder. The Advisor text is displayed in a pop-up window, as shown in the following figure.


    Scroll down the window to see the following hyperlinks:

    Help. Opens the Help panel for the object.

    Open. Opens the object.

    Find. Accesses the Find File utility.

    Settings. Opens the object's Settings notebook.

    To close the Advisor window, click any location on the desktop or a window frame.

    By default, an Advisor is opened when you single-left click an object that has an Advisor.

    To change the mouse action for displaying Advisors:

    1. From the Advisor's context menu, choose Settings.

    2. On the Advisor page, choose a method for invoking the Advisor window.

    Customizing the Object Advisor

    Mouse Over Object.

    The Advisor window appears when the mouse pointer is held over an object for a few seconds.

    Single-click Object.

    The Advisor window appears when you point to an object and single-click the left mouse button.

    Ctrl+Alt Click.

    The Advisor window appears when you point to an object and press Alt+Ctrl and click the left mouse button.

    The other option on this page, View External Links in Advisor, is relevant if you plan to embed URL links in your Advisor panels. Mark the checkbox to view linked URLs directly in the Advisor panel. If the checkbox is unmarked, the IBM Web Explorer will display linked URLs when you click them in an Advisor panel.

    To open an Advisor that was shipped with Object Desktop:

    1. If the Object Advisor is open in Trainer mode, close it.

    2. From the Advisor's context menu, choose View, Definitions View.

    3. In the Objects field, choose an object from the drop-down list, which includes all OS/2 and Object Desktop objects that have Advisors.

    When you select an object, its object ID appears in the field to the right of the Object name.

    The HTML file used to create the Advisor appears in the top pane.

    The Advisor preview pane is displayed at the bottom of the window. You can see exactly what will be displayed when the Advisor is launched for the object.

    Editing Advisors (HTML file)




    Make your changes in the top pane. If you are just changing the text, you don't have to know HTML. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, be careful not to change any of the HTML coding, which is denoted by brackets <>. Enter your descriptive text between the <p> and </p> codes, which identify a text paragraph in HTML. Do not delete the <p> or </p> codes.

    To save your changes, choose File, Save.

    The commands on the Object Advisor Definitions View menu bar:

    The File menu commands are:

    Save. Saves changes made to the HTML file.

    Import. You can import an HTML file to replace the existing text used for an Advisor.

    Export. Exports the HTML file to the Object Desktop folder. You can then edit the file using any HTML editor.

    Settings. Opens the Object Advisor's Settings notebook.

    Close. Closes the Definitions View window.

    The Edit menu commands are:

    Undo. Reverses the last editing action. For example, if you remove an Advisor and wish to restore it, you must choose Undo immediately after choosing Edit, Remove.

    Find. Enables you to find and replace text strings in the HTML file that is currently displayed.

    Remove. Deletes the Advisor for the object currently displayed in the window.

    The Action menu commands are:

    Next Object. Replaces the Advisor for the object currently displayed with the Advisor for the next object on the list (which is organized alphabetically by object name).

    Previous Object. Displays the Advisor for the previous object on the drop-down list.


    Next Empty Object. Displays the next object on the list that has no defined Advisor.

    Previous Empty Object. Displays the previous object on the list that has no defined Advisor.

    Assign Default Template. Used when you create a new Advisor for an object. Assigns a default HTML file. The template file is ADTEMPLT.HTM, which is stored in the Object Desktop installation directory. You can edit or replace the contents of this HTML file.

    To create an Advisor for an object:

    1. If the Object Advisor is open in Trainer mode, close it.

    2. From the Object Advisor's context menu, choose View, Definitions View. The Advisor editor is opened.

    3. Drag the object icon to the Definitions View window. The object name appears in the Objects field. In the HTML pane, a message says the definition is empty.

    4. Choose Action, Apply Default Template to add a starter HTML file. The following figure shows a portion of the template.

    Creating New Advisors


    5. Edit the Advisor text. If you are unfamiliar with HTML, you can just replace the text "Describe ..." with your own text. Enter all the text between the <p> and </p> codes, which identify a text paragraph in HTML. Do not delete the <p> or </p> codes. Preview your edits in the Preview pane.


    6. Choose File, Save to save the new Advisor.

    7. When you are finished, close the Definitions View window.

    To view the new Advisor, double-click the Object Advisor icon to open it in Trainer mode. Click the object that has the new Advisor and the Advisor window will pop up.


    Deleting an Advisor

    To delete an Advisor:

    1. If the Object Advisor is open in Trainer mode, close it.

    2. From the Advisor's context menu, choose View, Definitions View.

    3. In the Objects field, choose the object whose Advisor you would like to delete.

    4. Choose Edit, Remove. The Advisor is deleted and the associated object is removed from the Object Advisor drop-down list. The Advisor for the next object is displayed in the Definitions View window.