Add instructor help for applications and components

You can easily create side pane help for tools in the Applications & components catalog.

In the Applications & components catalog, the Instructor pane shows content when you select an item. The information is especially useful for giving advice to your users about how to choose the right component, or giving instructions before running a tool. To make full use of this feature, users should arrange their side panes so that both panes are visible.

Select the tool for which you want to add help in the Applications & components catalog.
In the Instructor pane, click the menu, then select Add help file.

A dialog box opens for creating the necessary files according to your selections.
Click Next, then select one or more languages.

Select the languages that are used as Tekla Structures user interface languages in your organization. There must be a content file for each language even if you do not translate the content.
Click Next, then select the folder where you want to store the generated files.

The files can be stored in the model, project, firm, or system folder. The standard folder search order is followed.

If you want to distribute the files to users, we recommend that you store the files in the project or firm folder.
Click Create.

Tekla Structures creates an XML file that defines a link between the tool in the Applications & components catalog and an HTML file for the help content.

The HTML files are stored in a folder structure that separates the files into language-specific folders. The XML file and the root folder for the content are named according to the identifier of the tool that the help is for. You can copy files between the allowed storage locations, but do not rename the files or folders or change the folder structure.
Edit the HTML content files in your preferred tool, such as Visual Basic, or replace the files with your own HTML files with the same file names.

You can optionally add the instructor help files to the .tsep package for your extension so that the instructor help is automatically added when users install the .tsep package. You can use the wildcard character (*) in the project definition .xml file to add all files in the specified folder. For example:

<TargetPathVariables>
	<PathVariable Id="HelpDirectory" Value="%ENVDIR%\common\extensions\MyExtension\"/>
</TargetPathVariables>

<Component Id="ExampleExtension" Guid="4902568A-2195-4B38-BBA4-BEB56A2ABECF">
	<File Id="HelpFilesToCopy" Source="%TSEPDEFINITIONFILEFOLDER%\plugin\*" Target="%HelpDirectory%"/>
</Component>