Key details

RoboHelp training course for beginners, teaching key techniques for developing professional-standard online help in a variety of formats.

Adobe RoboHelp has long been the industry standard tool for online help development. Introduction to RoboHelp training provides a thorough grounding in the application. You’ll learn to:

• Develop professional-standard online help in a variety of formats.
• Create ‘single source projects’ from which you can generate both help and print documentation from one source.
• Use some of RoboHelp’s more sophisticated features, such as the use of styles and style sheets for consistency and greater productivity, and techniques for making your online help context-sensitive.

This course is ideal for newcomers to RoboHelp and online help development, and those with minimal experience.

Armada has been involved in technical authoring for over 20 years; our in-house team uses RoboHelp on a wide range of projects for clients. Our industry knowledge and application expertise is reflected in our RoboHelp training courses. Not only do we cover the use of RoboHelp, but we teach techniques relevant to technical authoring scenarios you are likely to encounter.

Introduction to RoboHelp training is arranged on-request, i.e. one-to-one training or a ‘closed course’ for your group. Your training can be tailored to take into account any existing knowledge you have, and the work you’re going to be doing.

In-class or online

This course is available in-class at eight centres or live online.

Expert trainers

RoboHelp courses are hosted by expert trainers from a technical authoring background with vast experience of using the application professionally. For further details, see Expert trainers.

How will I learn?

RoboHelp training is hands-on and practical.

Beginning from scratch, you’re guided through the various stages of developing online help, exploring all related topics along the way. By the end of the course, you will have created your own fully functional help centre that you can take away for future reference.

There is plenty of time to ask questions, and you can take away all the files you create.

Training guide and certificate

Course delegates receive:

• A comprehensive training guide for RoboHelp, to refer to throughout the course, and to use as a refresher afterwards.
• An e-certificate confirming successful course completion. Click here to see an example of the certificate you receive.

After course support

Following RoboHelp training, delegates are entitled to 30 days’ email support from their RoboHelp trainer to help with any post-course issues. For further details, see Support.

RoboHelp version

Training is available on any recent version of RoboHelp, running on Windows or Mac.

Prerequisites

Delegates should be familiar with Windows and basic word processing techniques. No prior RoboHelp knowledge is necessary.

General information

Course times

Standard course times are 9.30am–4.30pm.

As we’d be hosting this as a ‘closed course’ for you/your group, there’s usually flexibility to change these times to suit you, e.g. start or end 30 minutes earlier or later.

Payment

Payment for RoboHelp training can be made by:

• Bank transfer. Please call 01527 834783 for our bank details.
• Card. All major credit and debit cards accepted. Payment can be made securely online or over the phone. Card payments are processed by Stripe. Armada doesn’t record or store your card details.

Purchase orders

We accept purchase orders from UK-registered companies and public sector organisations.

Accommodation

See Accommodation local to our training centres.

Cancellations and postponements

If an on-request Introduction to RoboHelp course booking is cancelled giving less than 20 working days’ notice, a cancellation fee is payable. View cancellation terms.

If an on-request Introduction to RoboHelp course booking is postponed giving less than 20 working days’ notice, a postponement fee is payable. View postponement terms.

Terms and conditions

Expert trainers

Introduction to RoboHelp training courses are hosted by:

• Lynne Telfer
• David Rose
• Nigel Platts

Lynne Telfer

Lynne Telfer is highly experienced instructor with over 25 years’ experience working as a professional trainer.

In the late nineties, Lynne worked for Adobe as a trainer and consultant, hosting courses in FrameMaker and other applications at all levels for Adobe’s clients. She’s provided training in Adobe’s Technical Communication and Creative applications ever since.

Lynne has expert knowledge of:

• Adobe FrameMaker – both Unstructured and Structured use.
• Adobe RoboHelp.
• Adobe Creative Cloud applications: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat.
• Adobe’s e-Learning tools – Captivate and Presenter.
• Microsoft Office suite of applications, covering the mainstream applications Word, Excel and PowerPoint to advanced level.

Lynne has a BA Hons in Educational Practice from Oxford Brookes University.

David Rose

David Rose is an Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) and an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in RoboHelp.

David began working as a technical author in 1989, joining Armada’s in-house authoring team in 1992.

He began using RoboHelp soon after, and it has been his tool-of-choice for online help development and single-source projects ever since.

As Armada’s longest-serving member of staff, David is a key member of our training team. He places a strong emphasis on staying in tune with current industry standards and applications, to ensure that the approach he takes with his projects and training courses are the most appropriate and up-to-date.

Nigel Platts

Nigel is a Co-Founder of Armada Technical Authors with over thirty five years’ experience in user-assistance in a wide range of roles including Technical Writer, Manager, Consultant and Trainer.

Nigel continues to undertake projects from time to time to keep up-to-date with the latest technologies and practices. His areas of expertise include software for local government, accountancy and finance.

Course content

Setting the scene

• Introduction and course objectives
• RoboHelp technology overview
• Why good online help is important

Getting started with RoboHelp

• RoboHelp files and formats
• RoboHelp resources
• Starting a new project
• Opening an existing RoboHelp project

Understanding the interface

• Ribbon tabs and pods
• Rearranging pods and panes
• Using workspaces
• Using the multi-tab editing pane

Working with topics

• Opening and editing a topic
• Saving a project and its topics
• Adding and deleting topics
• Using headers and footers
• Using the tag list
• Using link view and topic preview

Navigation

• Navigation strategies
• Creating a table of contents
• Creating an index
• Creating a glossary

Generating WebHelp

• Understanding the help output options
• Generating a WebHelp system

Generating HTML Help and Responsive HTML5

• Generating HTML Help (CHM)
• Adjusting HTML Help window properties
• Generating Responsive HTML5 Summary

Adding media

• Comparing image file formats
• Inserting images, multimedia and Captivate

Hyperlinks

• Types of RoboHelp hypertext links
• Creating text links
• Using bookmarks
• Creating pop-ups
• Creating drop-down and expanding links

Developing topics

• Image maps
• Working with tables
• Spell checking

Master pages and style sheets

• Comparing master pages and style sheets
• Using master pages
• Summarising style sheets

Settings and properties

• Advanced project and RoboHelp settings
• Adjusting topic properties
• Summarising WebHelp skins

Conditional build tags

• Creating a conditional build tag
• Defining a conditional build expression
• Applying a build tag

Snippets and user‑defined variables

• Understanding reusable, variable content
• Using snippets
• Variable sets
• Creating and inserting a user-defined variable
• Updating a user defined variable

Styles and style sheets

• Advantages of using style sheets
• Creating paragraph styles and character styles
• Creating table styles
• Creating list styles
• Overview of multi-level, hyperlink, image and div styles

Generating printed documentation

• Quickly generating a Word document
• Generating a good-looking Word guide
• Improving the headers and footers
• Producing a PDF file

Developing WebHelp skins

• Understanding skins
• Creating sophisticated skins
• Generating WebHelp with multiple content categories

Importing files

• Advice for efficient importing
• Importing an HTML file
• Importing a Word document

Context-sensitive help (CSH)

• Author and developer roles
• Creating map files for HTML Help
• Assigning Map IDs
• Testing CSH
• Making WebHelp context-sensitive

Enhancing topics

• Creating breadcrumbs
• Using related topics links
• Making inline glossary expandable items
• Inserting a Topic ToC
• Fixing broken links
• Adding a twisty to drop-downs

Track Changes and reviewing

• Track Changes overview
• Review pane overview
• Creating PDFs for reviewing
• Importing edited PDFs

Dynamic effects

• Dynamic HTML special effects

Live online training

Online training lets you participate in a live RoboHelp course from your place of work or home.

We do everything possible to make your online training experience as close as possible to actually being in the classroom. You can:

• See and hear our trainer, and the other delegates participating in the course…
  
• Watch our trainer demonstrate techniques in RoboHelp.
• Interact by speaking, using chat, or raising your ‘virtual hand’ if you need assistance.
• Share your screen with our trainer, and allow them to take control to explain something.

Like our in-class courses, online Introduction to RoboHelp courses…

• Are presented by expert instructors.
• Give you plenty of opportunity to carry out assisted, practical exercises using RoboHelp.
• Offer 30 days’ email support from your trainer.

All you need is an Internet-connected computer with…

• RoboHelp installed.
• A webcam and audio capability. If your computer running RoboHelp doesn’t have these, you can use a second device, such as another computer or tablet. See Hardware recommendations for live online training for further details.

If there’s anything you’re not sure about we’ll do our best to help you. We won’t, however, be able to assist with your RoboHelp installation.

We provide everything else…

• Links to download the files, resources, etc. you’ll use in your course.
• A training guide. For most courses, you can choose from a printed copy that we post to you, or a PDF.

In the week before your course, we’ll send you an email containing everything you need to prepare for and participate in the training. Then, a couple of days before your course, we’ll give you a courtesy call to make sure you have everything in place and answer any questions you may have.

Please note that we are not able to record scheduled online courses for privacy reasons.

When you attend live online training, you’re participating in a real course, hosted by a real trainer, in real time