Using the Asta Connect Help
The Asta Connect Help provides you with detailed information on how to use Asta Connect to plan and manage your projects. This topic explains how to use the Help and provides tips to help you find the information you need.
Accessing the Asta Connect Help
To access Help when working with Asta Connect, click 
, which appears at the top-right of Asta Connect pages and dialogs:
The Help appears in a new tab in the browser window, displaying information relating to the page or dialog you are currently looking at in Asta Connect. This is illustrated below, where 'A' indicates the browser tab that displays Asta Connect and 'B' indicates the browser tab that displays its Help:
You can switch between Asta Connect and its Help by clicking between the two browser tabs.
The Asta Connect Help is divided into two main panes:
- The table of contents pane, which appears to the left.
- The topic pane, which appears to the right. This pane displays the main text of the Help, in a series of individual 'topics'.
The Search control appears above these two panes.
Displaying the Asta Connect Help in its own window
You may prefer to display the Asta Connect Help in a different window to Asta Connect itself. If you do this, you can arrange the two windows on your screen so that you can view Asta Connect and its Help at the same time - side-by-side - as illustrated below:
To display the Asta Connect Help in a different window, right-click the Asta Connect Help tab in your web browser and select Move tab to new window:
You can then arrange the windows so that Asta Connect and its Help are displayed on the screen at the same time.
Moving between topics in the Asta Connect Help
You can move between the various topics in the Asta Connect Help by:
- Selecting topics from the table of contents.
- Clicking hyperlinks within the text of individual topics.
- Clicking 'related topics' suggestions, which appear at the end of most topics.
- Searching for information.
Searching for information in the Asta Connect Help
Perhaps the best way of finding the information you need in the Asta Connect Help is to search for it. You search for information using the Help's Search control, which appears at the top-right of the Help pane:
To search for information in the Asta Connect Help:
- Click in the Search control and type the information that you want to search for. You can type single words, multiple words, multi-word phrases or questions.
Tips on how to search for information effectively - When you have typed the information that you want to search for, either press ENTER or click
at the right of the Search control. A list of Help topics that provide information on the query you have entered is displayed, with the most relevant topics displayed at the top of the list:
- Click the title of a topic to display it.
- If the first topic you click does not answer your query, click your web browser's Back button and try clicking one of the other topics. If you still cannot find an answer to your query, try varying the wording of your search query.
Sometimes, depending on what you have searched for, useful information appears above the search results that may answer your query directly. This is illustrated below, where the query how do I create a new task? has been entered into the Search control:
If the information displayed here is too large to be displayed completely, click 
beneath the information to display it in its entirety:
The title of the topic from which the information is taken is displayed beneath the downwards-pointing arrow - highlighted in blue above. Click the topic title to display the full topic.
Tips on how to search for information effectively
You can search for information by entering the following into the Search control:
- Single words. Searching using single words results in a very 'broad brush' search. For example, if you entered project or projects into the Search control, your search query would result in suggested topics containing information on projects; but you would also see suggested topics containing information on project tags, the project performance dashboard, project teams, etc. It can be very difficult to find the precise information you want using single word searches, and most of the time it is best to narrow down your search by using multiple words in a search query.
- Multiple words. Searching using multiple words results in a more targeted search. For example, if you entered export project into the Search control, the first few suggested topics would describe how to export projects and other data from Asta Connect - together with a list of steps at the top of the search results that describes in detail how to export data without you having to click a suggested topic at all. You can include any number of words in a search query. The more words you include, the more targeted your search will be, and the more likely it is that the suggested topics will contain the information you are looking for.
- Multi-word phrases. Place inverted commas - " " - around words in a search query to search for multi-word phrases. For example, if you entered project tag into the Search control, the Help would suggest topics that contain the word 'project' and the word 'tag', even if the two words appeared separately in a topic and were completely unrelated; whereas if you entered "project tag" into the Search control, the Help would suggest only those topics that contain the phrase 'project tag'. Using inverted commas around multi-word phrases helps to exclude less relevant topics from your search results.
- Questions. Some people prefer to enter questions when they search, rather than just entering keywords into the Search control. You can do this when you search for information in the Asta Connect Help. For example, rather than entering create project, you can enter how do I create a project?; rather than entering project tag, you can enter what is a project tag?; and so on.
The following tips may also help you find the information you want:
- If a search query results in too many results, try using more words in your search query.
- If a search query results in irrelevant results - or in no results at all - try using different words in your search query.
What to do if the table of contents is not visible
If you resize the browser window beneath a certain width, the table of contents pane disappears from the Help, leaving only the Search control and the topic pane displayed. This is to give the topic pane the maximum amount of space in a narrow browser window. You can still access the table of contents, by clicking 
, which is displayed to the top-right of the Search control when the table of contents is not visible:
If you do this, the table of contents is displayed at the right hand side of the Help, pushing the Help pane to the left:
As soon as you select a topic in the table of contents, it disappears and the Help pane is displayed fully again.
To redisplay the table of contents in its usual place, in a pane to the left of the topic pane, resize the browser window to make it wider.