Installation Overview

While Inline Manual is code-free, it does require a quick one-time installation to go live in your app. Once installed, your topics (walkthroughs, tooltips, articles etc.) will be visible to your users. Basically Inline Manual has two requirements: the Authoring Tool, a Chrome extension used for creating the content and the Inline Manual Player, a short javascript code responsible for displaying the content in your app.

Install the Authoring tool

Read how to install the Authoring tool.

The Authoring Tool is used to create, add, and edit your topics - walkthroughs, tooltips, redirects, folders, and articles. You can install the Authoring tool right now, and begin creating your in-app walkthroughs and tutorials.

However, they won't be visible for your users until the Inline Manual Player is installed in your app.

Install the Inline Manual Player

Read how to install the Inline Manual Player.

The Inline Manual Player consisting of short javascript code is the main app that will display the widget, articles, walkthroughs, and tooltips that you create for your site or application.

The Player can be installed in several ways depending on your preference and platform. It can be implemented as on-premise too.

How does Inline Manual work once installed?

Once installed, you will see in your app the help widget listing all your topics. You can fully control what topics are visible to your users within the widget - you can display the content dynamically by pushing the most important topics to the top of the list based on the page your user is currently on, display only relevant topics to the page the user is currently on, or hide certain topics when not valid anymore. And if you wish to show only tooltips and automatic walkthroughs, you can hide the help widget completely.

One of the most important Inline Manual feature is segmentation. With segmentation, you can show your topics to all your users or only specific ones based on segments and conditions that you set up. With people tracking, Inline Manual will capture user properties that you will send to us. This information is what you'll use for creating segments and targeting users so that your topics will be visible to the right person at the right time.

How to get set up with Inline Manual?

To get the most out of Inline Manual, you'll want to send your users’ details and behavior, which will then be used for segmentation and targeting. Communicating this to your developers early on will help get you up and running quickly. Here's how to get started:

1. Determine user details and user behavior

In addition to the basics such as name and email, your users may have other details relevant to your application. By identifying your users’ various properties, you can create different segments to target your users with personalized messages.

Come up with a list of user properties and send the list to your developers. Here are some ideas:
- Account creation time,
- Last seen time (auto-generated by Inline Manual Player),
- Subscription plan,
- Role/Title.

Your users also interact with your app in various different ways. You can track their behaviors and target topics based on events that they've completed or not. Talk to your developers about sending to Inline Manual some set of defined namespaces, for example, feature01used and feature02notused. You can then create a segment with a simple rule containing feature01used or feature02notused and target those users with desired guides.

For more ideas, take a look at this article.

2. Create a test site with test topics

We recommend creating a test site and publishing test topics for your devs to ensure that Inline Manual is correctly installed on your site. With Inline Manual version control system, you can safely develop and test on your staging environment and push to production when you're ready to go live. Once Inline Manual is successfully implemented, your devs should be able to view all your topics. You can also instruct them on how to use the Inline Manual Diagnostic Tool and the Player Debug Widget to troubleshoot any issue.

3. Create an Organization and invite your colleagues

You can create or join multiple Organizations to collaborate with various groups of Inline Manual users. These Organizations you belong to have their own unique members, sites, and topics. With Organizations, you can save time, money and effort. If you’re part of the team that will work on tutorials, setting up an organization will allow you to easily share topics for collaboration. Once a topic is assigned to an Organization, every member will have access to it. Working on a tutorial with a team does not require each user to have a paid subscription. Since the topic's owner is the organization, the organization will be the paying entity (with paid plan/subscription) while all of its members are on a free plan.

To create an Organization, click here. Once done, it’s time to invite your team members. Read more about adding members to the Organization here.