Deploying Your Help Collection

After you have authored your Help files, you will probably want to deploy them so that they can be integrated with the Visual Studio Help content on users' computers. The Visual Studio SDK has two distinct options for installing and registering your Help content. You can use either HelpStudio Lite or Microsoft Windows Installer and the Help merge modules supplied with the Visual Studio SDK. This section discusses how to use the merge modules and Microsoft Windows Installer to deploy and integrate your content.

There are three steps to installing and registering Help on a user's computer:

• Create a Setup program and add your Help files to the project.

• Update the supplied merge module (.msm) file with your specific information and several lines of information specific to Visual Studio.

• Consume the updated .msm file, together with an additional set of .msm files (also supplied), into your project's .msi file.

The following topics provide implementation details.

In This Section

• Help Integration Wizard Overview
  Provides an overview of features offered by the Help Integration Wizard, a preferred way to use the Help merge modules and Microsoft Windows Installer to register and integrate your Help collection with the Visual Studio Help collection.

• How to: Use the Help Integration Wizard to Add a Help Collection to Visual Studio
  Provides step-by-step instructions for using the Help Integration Wizard to create a deployment project that integrates a test Help collection with the Visual Studio Help collection.

• Walkthrough: Registering and Integrating Your Help Collection Using Windows Installer
  Provides step-by-step instructions for manually editing the Help merge modules and for creating a deployment project that, as soon as it is compiled, integrates a test Help collection with the Visual Studio Help collection.

• Registering a Help Collection with Visual Studio .NET 2003
  Describes how to use the Help Integration Wizard or the Orca tool to modify Help merge modules to register and integrate your Help collection with Visual Studio 2003. NET.

• How to: Create and Register Help Filters
  Describes how to provide Help filters to enable end users to filter information.

• How to: Validate Help Collection Installation
  Provides instructions for validating the integrity of the Windows Installer installation of your Help collection.

Related Sections

• Microsoft Help Integration
  Contains information about Help integration features that are not available with HelpStudio Lite. Also contains information about how to use Microsoft Windows Installer and Help merge modules to deploy and register your Help content with the Visual Studio Help collection.