Using PeopleBooks

This chapter provides an overview of PeopleBooks and the PeopleSoft Online Library and discusses how to:

Set up the PeopleSoft Online Library.
Navigate through the PeopleBooks interface.
Search through the PeopleSoft Online Library.
Display and print screen shots and graphics in PeopleBooks.

Note. The PeopleSoft Online Library is designed specifically for interactive online use.

Understanding PeopleBooks and the PeopleSoft Online Library

The PeopleSoft Online Library (PSOL) is an HTML-based web site that contains comprehensive documentation for PeopleSoft applications and PeopleTools. Use this documentation as a research library and as a context-sensitive online help system. It provides standard navigation and search capabilities, including an expandable table of contents, a keyword index, and a full-text search feature.

The PeopleSoft Online Library is organized hierarchically, like a library of books. The home page (index.htm) displays links to all installed documentation types, including PeopleBooks.

PeopleSoft Online Library home page

Setting Up the PeopleSoft Online Library

You can set up the PeopleSoft Online Library on a Web server or on a local or shared directory.

See your PeopleSoft installation guide.

Navigating Through the PeopleBooks Interface

This section discusses how to:

Access the PeopleBooks interface.
Enable the reference pane.
Navigate between books and chapters.
Navigate within a chapter.
Use the table of contents.
Use the index.

Accessing the PeopleBook Interface

When you click PeopleBooks on the PeopleSoft Online Library home page, the PeopleBooks Library home page appears in your browser.

PeopleBooks Library home page

When you select a PeopleBook title on the home page, the PeopleBook interface appears in your browser.

PeopleBook interface

The PeopleBook interface displays three panes:

Document pane

The pane on the right side of the window displays the document HTML file, which corresponds to a chapter.
Navigation pane

The pane above the document pane contains display options, navigation controls, and the current PeopleBook and chapter titles.
Reference pane

The pane on the left side of the window contains three tabs: Contents, Index, and Search. Use these tabs to explore the PeopleBooks or to locate a specific topic. You can hide the reference pane to maximize the size of the document pane.

Note. When you access a topic through the context-sensitive (F1) help, or when you access one PeopleBook from another, the reference pane is always initially hidden.

Enabling the Reference Pane

If the reference pane (with the Contents, Index, and Search tabs) doesn't appear, click the Show Reference Pane button in the Navigation pane at the top of the browser. To hide the Reference pane, click the Hide Reference Pane button. If you have cookies enabled on your browser, your last Reference pane setting is remembered when you jump between books. Otherwise, jumping to a new book always hides the Reference pane (to speed page loading).

Navigating Between Books and Chapters

Use the navigation pane to view information about the current PeopleBook and to navigate between PeopleBooks or between chapters in the current PeopleBook.

Click the links at the bottom of the navigation pane to access the PeopleSoft Online Library home page (Home), the PeopleBooks Library home page, and the first page of the current PeopleBook.

and

Click the Previous button or the Next button to go to the previous or next chapter in the book.

Note. These buttons move you to the previous or next file in the sequence in which the chapter files are organized in the book, not (as with the browser's Forward and Back buttons) in the sequence in which you have opened the files.

First and Last

These links take you to the first and last file in a book, respectively.

Navigating Within a Chapter

Use the navigation features in the document pane to navigate within a chapter.

Click a cross-reference link to go to a related topic. These links typically appear in sentences that begin with the word See and below subtopic headings that contain See Also.

	Click the Top button to go to the top of the current HTML page.
	Click the Previous button to go to the beginning of the parent section.

Using the Table of Contents

Click the Contents tab to drill down to topics in the current PeopleBook.

	Click a closed folder icon to expand a chapter.
	Click an open folder icon to collapse a chapter.
	Click a section icon to open to the section.
	Click the Synchronize button to open the Table of Contents to the topic that is currently displayed in the Document pane.
	Click Expand All to open all the folders in the Table of Contents.
	Click Collapse All to close all the folders in the Table of Contents.
	Select this checkbox to automatically synchronize the Table of Contents as you navigate through the chapters.

Using the Index

Click the Index tab to search through a keyword index for the current PeopleBook.

To display an index topic, enter a keyword in the text box or scroll to the keyword and click it. The document appears at the associated topic, unless there are multiple topics.

If multiple topics are related to the keyword, a pop-up menu appears. Click the link for the topic that you want to read.

Searching Through the PeopleSoft Online Library

This section discusses how to:

Perform a simple search.
Perform an advanced search.
View search results.

Performing a Simple Search

Use the Search tab to perform a full-text search of the current PeopleBook or of the entire PeopleBooks Library.

Note. The Search tab is context-sensitive. When you use this tab on the PeopleSoft Online Library home page, you search all documentation in the library. When you use this tab on the PeopleBooks Library home page, you search all PeopleBooks in the library. When you use this tab in a particular PeopleBook, you search within that book only.

Important! The search feature is available only when you are connected to PeopleBooks with HTTP (on a Web server).

To perform a simple full-text search, enter the text for which you want to search, then press Enter or click the Search button. The Search list box displays any topics that contain the text that you entered. Click the topic that you want to read.

The simple search form uses an “accrue” logic when searching. That is, it will find results that contain any or all of the terms you entered, with priority given to documents that contain all or most of the keywords. The results appear sorted by book title, then by score. Each results page displays 50 topics, titles only. To see titles and summaries, click the Show Summaries link. Book titles will appear in the results when you search from the PeopleSoft Online Library or PeopleBooks Library home pages.

Note. Verity search syntax is not allowed in the simple search form. To perform syntax searches, use the Advanced Search page.

Performing an Advanced Search

Use the PeopleBooks Library: Advanced Search page to limit/expand your search to one or more documentation types or book titles. You can also define the type of search to perform and how you want to format the search results. Click the Advanced Search link on the Search tab to access the PeopleBooks Library: Advanced Search page.

Search for

Match

Select one of the following search modes:

All words. Only documents that contain all the keywords will be found. Do not use any boolean operators such as AND or NOT.
Any words. Like the simple search form, this search uses an “accrue” logic to find documents that match any or all of the keywords, with priority given to those that contain all or most of them. Do not use any boolean operators.
Exact phrase. When you use this mode, all search text will be assumed to be part of one phrase. There is no need to wrap the text in quotes.

Note. You can search for exact phrases in the other modes by wrapping the phrase in quotes.
Query syntax. Use this mode to take advantage of Verity's powerful search language. This includes common boolean operators like AND and NOT, as well as more complex operators. For more information, follow the Help link on the Advanced Search page.

Limit by

Search title text only	Select this checkbox to the search text only in topic titles. This can help limit your results down to just those topics that exclusively subject you are searching for.
Book Title	Click one or more titles in this list box (using Ctrl+click) to limit your search to those books only.
Product Line	Click one or more product line names in this list box (using Ctrl+click) to limit your search to those product lines only.

Results Formatting

Show titles only	Select this checkbox to hide the topic summaries in the search results. This can save a lot of screen space when scrolling through many results.
Hits in titles take priority	Using this option (on by default) will sort results with title hits before those without.
Hits per page	Select the number of topics that you want to display on each results page. The default is value is 10.
Sort the results by	Use the list boxes to specify whether to sort the results by Score, Book Title, or Product Line. You can then specify secondary and tertiary sort criteria.
Show	Select additional information to display in the results. For example, when you sort by Score, then by Book Title, you may want to see the book titles in the results. When you sort by Book Title, you may want to display book titles as headings, which is the default setting, or in the topic titles themselves. Note. When you sort by Score only, no additional information can be displayed.

Search Tips

Here are some basic guidelines to searching from the Advanced Search page:

Enter terms in lowercase to find all term matches, regardless of capitalization.

The search feature is case-sensitive. If you use mixed-case capitalization, the search feature finds only terms that match your exact capitalization.
When using the Query syntax mode, enter words separated by spaces to search for a phrase. You do not need to enclose the phrase in quotation marks. This will find work stem varieties for the words in that phrase. For example, set up finds “set up”, “setting up”, “set ups”, etc.
Enclose terms in double quotation marks only when you want the search feature to interpret the terms literally. When you do this, the search feature does not find word stem matches.

Search Results

The Search Results page displays a list of topic summaries, information about the current query, the total number of topics that were found, and the number of topics on the current page.

You search string appears as a link on this page. If you click the link, you can see the exact Verity syntax that was used to perform the search. This can be helpful when trying to debug a query that is not returning the expected results. It is also useful as a tool to better understand the Verity query language.

Navigational links on this page include:

and	Click the Previous button or the Next button to go to the previous or next Search Results page.
First and Last	These links take you to the first and last pages of results, respectively.
Back to Search	This link takes you back to your last search. Note. Some browsers will not reload all the form criteria used in the last search.
Back to Library	Click this link to return to your last location in the PSOL before jumping to the Advanced Search page.

Displaying and Printing Screen Shots and Graphics in PeopleBooks

In the document pane, you can display many of the graphics in Pop-up or Inline mode. The default Pop-up mode provides greater document loading and scrolling speeds, because each graphic is represented by a small pop-up icon. In Inline mode, graphics appear at full size in the document pane. This mode is useful when viewing the PeopleBooks locally (when loading and scrolling speeds are not an issue) and with the browser window maximized.

Navigation Pane

Hide Graphics

Click to activate Pop-up mode.

Show Graphics

Click to activate Inline mode.

Print

Click to print the current file with graphics displayed in Inline mode and in the appropriate scale.

Important! If you use your browser's Print command, the graphics appear exactly as they appear on the screen—pop-up icons are not replaced with the actual graphics, and graphics are not scaled to fit on the printed page.

Document Pane

Click a pop-up icon in the document pane to display the actual graphic at full size in a separate window.