IBM i General Design Standards › Design Standards for Help Text › Search Indexes

Search Indexes

Help panels assist users who already know how and why to start a command or program. Search indexes provide users with a way of finding out how to do something in the first place. You should provide a search index for your application, which should include

• Entries for each command and each menu
• "How" entries for commonly required operations
• "What" entries for fundamental concepts—the objects and entities on the system
• OS/400 standard root keywords, for example How, What, Novice
• Entries for common synonyms, for example, "create, make, build"
• An entry on how to use the search index itself. You can reference the help group of the system menu