Using Help

You can get help for understanding and using AAI from several sources: context-sensitive help directly from any page in the product, the complete product documentation, educational videos as well as the Broadcom knowledge base and more. Information is available to support you, as an AAI user, at any level of learning. This topic describes how to access each of these information sources and how to use them.

This topic explains how to call up the in-product help and how to work with it. If you need help with a specific problem that requires the expertise of our support team. For information about how to contact them, see Support.

This page covers the following:

Getting In-Product Help

The in-product help that you can call up while using AAI provides context-sensitive help for any page, tab, view, or dialog that you are on. This opens in a separate AAI Help panel. From the AAI Help panel, you also have a portal to all information that Broadcom produces about the topic. This includes the curated in-product help about the topic, the complete AAI documentation, relevant Knowledge Base articles (produced by our Support Team), videos, white papers, and more.

Note:

AAI administrators or supervisors can customize the in-product AAI Help to display custom help content to users in your organization. For information, see Creating Custom In-Product Help.

Opening the In-Product Help

You can call up the in-product help for any page, view, or dialog, in AAI by clicking the help icon:

  • On a full web page, click the question mark icon in the upper right corner of the blue title bar
  • On dialogs, click the question mark on the right in the page header.

This opens a topic about wherever you opened the help. From there, you have access to all product information from all relevant Broadcom sources.

Asking the Chatbot

AAI has a beta version of the Broadcom Intelligent Automation Assistant, an integrated chatbot that we welcome you to try out. For more information, see Intelligent Automation Assistant (Beta).

Learning About Your Topic

When you open the in-product help, the page contains a brief description of the main purpose of the page or dialog that you opened it from. Below that description are a series of linked titles to further topics that cover different aspects about or are related to the main topic. The steps here describe how to best navigate through the content about your initial topic. For information about how to explore other information that this starting point gives you access to, see Using the Home Page.

  1. Starting at the topic that opened when you called up the in-product help, click one of the related topics listed below the introductory description.

  2. Click embedded cross-reference links to open further related topics in the full product documentation in a new web browser tab. For more information, see Using Product Documentation.

  3. From the toolbar at the bottom of the page, click the related icon to do the following:

    • Submit a thumbs up or down feedback about whether you found the topic helpful.

    • Open the topic in the source product documentation. This opens the source page in the full product documentation in a new web browser tab. For more information, see Using Product Documentation.

    • Copy a link to this topic to share it via email or chat or to paste it into any digital document for others or yourself.

    • Print this page to a printer or PDF file. The printer settings page from your device opens to allow you to select print options such as page numbers, number of copies, and the target printer.

  4. To return to the main topic, click the X in the upper right corner of the menu bar at the top of the page.

Using the Home Page

Once you open the in-product help, you have a portal to all the product information about AAI from all Broadcom resources. There are two ways to explore content from all sources:

To use the Home page to access all product information, use the following steps:

  1. Open the Home page You can access the full list of options in one of two ways:

    • From the main topic that you first opened, click Home in the breadcrumbs above the page title.
    • From anywhere, click Help in the upper left of the main menu bar at the top of the page. If you are on a page other than the original topic that you had opened, you might have to click Help and then the X in the menu bar.

  2. Choose the area that you want to explore.

    In the documentation and online help:

    • Learn More About [Your Originating Topic]: Returns you to the first topic that opened when you called up the in-product help.
    • Get Started: Takes you to overviews and steps that help you when you are new to AAI.
    • Review What's New: Takes you directly to the Release Notes for the release that you are working in. This is the easiest and quickest
    • Explore Product Documentation: Open the complete product documentation from within this in-product pane. This is an in-product alternative to opening the documentation in a separate browser tab or page. For information, see Using Product Documentation.

    In other sources of learning and exchange:

    • Explore Training: Get links to the free online courses about AAI that are available on the Broadcom Software Academy. For more information about these courses, see Free Online Courses.
    • Watch Videos: Get links to short videos about various AAI features and best practices. These videos are included in the product documentation next to their related topics. Here you have a comprehensive list in one place. Note that the videos are embedded YouTube videos, so you can also open them in YouTube by clicking the related link.
    • Learn from Communities: Link directly to the Broadcom Communities to learn from and share with other users. For more information about the communities, see Communities. Each community article in the in-product help has a link to open the source thread on the Broadcom community website.

    Using supporting functions:

    • Reading History: Get a list of all the content that you opened in this session, so you can get back to anything you want to look at again. This is the only place to navigate to previous topics.
    • Notifications: Check the AAI notifications board to keep up with the latest news from the AAI team.

  3. To return to the Home page after looking at the list, click the Home in the breadcrumbs at the top of the page.

Searching Across All Product Information Sources

From the AAI in-product help, you can search across all Broadcom content about AAI for a specific term or phrase.

The search field is a box that contains the question, "What are you looking for?" You find it at the top of the following pages:

  • The original topic that you opened
  • The main menu

Tip:

If you are on a page without a search field at the top, the quickest way to get to it is to click the X in the far right of the page menu bar. This brings you back to the original topic, which always has a search field.

You can narrow the search to focus on specific types of information or content from specific sources.

  1. Type the search term in the search box. If you enter more than one word, the search returns all content that contains any of the words. To search for a phrase, put the phrase within quotation marks.

  2. Define the content types and sources to search in.

    1. Click the menu icon in the far right of the search box.

      Two fields open that allow you to select the options for the areas you want to search in. Use the down arrow at the end of each field to display the options.

    2. In I want to: select one of the following:

      • Learn more (default), to search in topics that describe features and how to use them
      • Troubleshoot, to search for content that focuses on problem solving

    3. In Look in: select as many as you want of the following:

      • Product Documentation
      • Videos
      • Courses
      • Support Knowledge Base
      • Community
      • Blogs

    Your last selected options are saved when you exit the help and exit AAI. Remember to check them when you enter a new search term to be sure the search is targeting the sources you want.

  3. Click the magnifying glass icon at the right of the search box to start the search.

  4. On the Search Results page, click an item of interest.

  5. To return to the Search Results page:

    • If the page has breadcrumbs at the top (for example, Home > Search > Critical Path), click Search. (From here, you can also click Home to go to the Home page.)
    • If there are no breadcrumbs, click the X in the far right of the page menu bar.

Tip:

To see which content you opened in this session, go to the Home page and select Reading History. There you have a linked list of all the places that you opened.

Opening Help for Timeline Graphics

One of the strengths of AAI is the visual representation of the jobstream executions in your workload automation landscape. Jobstream timeline views contain a variety of icons and other visual cues to the process flow, states and statuses.

  • On the jobstream timeline views, click the View Legend button above the timeline to open a pane that describes the icons, symbols, and lines that can appear on the timeline.

  • On the Gantt page, open the More menu and select View Legend to open a help pane with the following information:

    • Descriptions of the icons, symbols, and lines that can appear on the Gantt timeline

    • A list of job types and information about the relationships between jobs and their roles in the jobstream.

Using Product Documentation

A new documentation set is published online with each release. The documentation team continuously updates the help.

Accessing the Product Documentation

You can find the online product documentation on the product documentation website: https://docs.automic.com/.

Searching for Information

A search tool is available to you at the top of the page. It scans all topics within the product documentation for the terms that you enter and returns a list of links to all topics that mention the terms. The search is helpful when you are not sure where to look in the documentation for specific information, or when you want to see which topics the term is used in.

To use the search

Enter a term in the Search field, which you find in the upper right corner above the topic pane.

To get results that are helpful to you, consider the following:

  • If you enter more than one word, the search returns a list of all topics that contain both words somewhere in the topic.

  • To search for a phrase, put the phrase within quotation marks.

When going through the returned list, be aware of the following:

  • Topics that have your search term in a header are listed first.

  • If there are multiple pages of results, you can use the Previous and Next buttons at the bottom of the list to scroll bath and forth, or click a page number.

Using the Table of Contents

Use the table of contents when you want to find and explore topics by navigating through the product documentation structure.

The table of contents is in the left panel of the page. Expand and collapse topic headings to show and hide subtopics.

Notice that the path in the breadcrumbs above the title of each topic match the table of contents hierarchy leading to the topic.

Tip:

If you don't see the table of contents panel, you might need to expand the width of your browser window. If you're working on a laptop, you might also need to use a higher screen resolution.

Navigating Through Topics

Besides locating topics using the table of contents or the search tool, you can navigate through topics in the product documentation in the following ways:

  • The topic names in the breadcrumb path above the title of each topic are links to those topics.

  • The arrows in the right corner of the help toolbar above the title of each topic take you to the next and previous topics in the documentation hierarchy. These act the same as when you would navigate up and down the table of contents, expanding each level as you go.

  • As always, you can also use the back and forward buttons on your browser to return to pages you had previously viewed.

Printing a Topic

You can print individual topics from the product documentation any time. To print a topic, open the topic and click the printer icon button on the documentation toolbar, which you find above the title of each topic.

Note that the product documentation is available online only. This allows us to continuously provide you with the most up-to-date information.

See also:

Getting Started with AAI