About Smart Help

This section contains information about the purpose of Smart Help and the sources of content.

Smart Help is an in-context help tool that shows screen-specific content to serve our customers and set them up for success. Smart Help provides access to multiple types of knowledge, such as knowledge base articles, product help, support references, and training content. Custom training materials and documents can also be mapped to Smart Help.

In Infor OS Portal, Smart Help is a widget that is automatically enabled.

How Smart Help works

ION API Gateway and ION API Request Calls are used to search content repositories and retrieve information that matches content for a corresponding screen. A requirement for configuring Infor applications in OS Portal is to implement and pass Infor Business Context (IBC) messaging. These IBC messages contain logical IDs that identify the application and screen IDs that correspond with a specific screen in the application.

When a specific logicalID and screenID are linked to an application, we can link content to that unique logicalID/screenID combination. As a user navigates an application, content with the matching logicalID/screenID combination is displayed in the Smart Help panel.

Prerequisites

This section contains the prerequisites for Smart Help.

Version requirements

For Infor User Adoption Platform, version 5.43 or later is required. Other channels don't have special version requirements.

Note: UAP is a third party application with its own license. Contact Infor for more information about UAP. Only the UAP content channel requires separate licensing.

Content

On the Infor OS and application side, applications must implement and pass Infor Business Context (IBC) messaging. This is an Infor OS Portal standard. Specifically, applications must pass unique screen IDs and logical IDs in their IBC messages.

Infor-delivered content must contain screenIDs that are embedded as attributes in the content so that the content can be matched to Smart Help.

Permissions

Multiple content repositories can be accessed. Each repository is required to have unique permission requirements. This table shows the required permissions for each repository:


Smart Help Channel	Repository	Permissions required
Infor Help	docs.infor.com	None
Knowledge Base	Infor Concierge/Infor Customer Portal	The email user ID that is used to sign in to Infor OS Portal must match the email user ID for Infor Concierge.
UAP Content	Infor User Adoption Platform	Purchased Infor User Adoption Platform license and setup as described in this document.
My Content/My Links	Infor Document Management	User access to Infor Document Management.

Infor OS administrator access

These administrative permissions are required for Infor OS applications:

Set up applications in Infor OS
Add and configure security roles
Configure applications in ION API Gateway

The Context viewer

The Context Viewer widget displays the Infor Business Context (IBC) messages passed by the application. These messages include screen IDs used to link Smart Help content to individual screens.

The Context Viewer helps developers intercept and analyze context messages sent from applications. It displays JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) messages in two formats: JSON Object View and JSON Text View.

For Smart Help, the JSON Object View shows IBC messages, including the screen IDs and logical IDs used to call Smart Help from the application. The logical ID identifies the product, and the screen ID identifies a specific page within that product.

When the Context Viewer is enabled, the screen ID can be identified and used to troubleshoot or upload customized content to Smart Help.