What would you do if you had to create something using software that is unfamiliar to you, or to use familiar software to create something you’ve never made before? How would you come up with the information you need to be successful? Consider these methods:
– Guess – That’s right, just guess and save yourself the embarrassment of having to ask a coworker who won’t know, and will think less of you for asking. You can flounder around for quite a while, and the results aren’t always the best.
– Ask a coworker – See above bullet.
– Google it! – That way, you can find out who likes the software, who doesn’t, who’s used it successfully, who hasn’t, where you can buy it, where you can download bug fixes, and, occasionally, some information that you can actually use.
– Consult the product Help system – Now there’s a good idea! The software’s embedded help system can show you exactly what you need to know – no embarrassment, no floundering, and no garbage.
Help is at hand
Your friendly Micro Focus software Help system is there to (wait for it…) Help you to be successful! Get to know it. Embrace it. Digest it.
A software Help system is made up of a collection of Topics – Hot Topics. Each one is a sizzling bite of information, specially prepared to satisfy your craving for knowledge. Topics come in many varieties, such as how to’s, concepts, popups, tutorials, and references. A help system is a smorgasbord of hot topics. Come to the bountiful feast: each product contains countless entries and help items across a range of technologies and use cases, covering reference definitions, examples, tutorials, tips and instructions. Each entry is designed to help the product user get the very most out of the technology at their fingertips.
Example: Mainframe Web Services
Some of the hottest topics around can be found in the Help systems across the Micro Focus Application Modernization and Connectivity product range. Let’s say, for example, a team of developers uses Micro Focus Enterprise Developer on a daily basis to maintain a modernized legacy CICS mainframe application. They’ve migrated the application off of the mainframe, and have it running successfully on Enterprise Server. It’s all going so well that now the team has been asked to use Enterprise Developer to create Web services that run on Enterprise Server and provide access to the application via a SOAP requester tool.
Uh oh. How do they do that? Where should they start?
The developers could start with the CICS Web Service tutorials in the Enterprise Developer Help. Open the Help system from the software, search on “CICS Web service” tutorial, and boom, baby:
It’s hard to come up with a scenario that isn’t covered here! Each of these tutorials is based on a provided demonstration application, and walks developers through the steps of creating a Web Service provider or requester.
But, what if the developers first need to read up on how Enterprise Developer approaches CICS Web services? Just search for CICS Web service, no quotes:
Ah, there it is…the CICS Web Services topic is just the morsel. Here’s a sneak peak:
And here’s the link to the complete topic, which is currently a pretty hot one!
Conclusion – Here to Help
But wait…there’s more. Lots more. Whatever you want to do in Enterprise Developer, or any Micro Focus AMC software product, the Help system is where you start.
In follow-on blogs, I’ll introduce you to each flavor of hot topic found in a Micro Focus AMC Help system, and show you how to navigate the buffet. Watch this space!
And with our SupportLine, the Community Sites , Training and Education and Micro Focus Support on Twitter, we have you fully covered……
