Help for IBM Knowledge Center

IBM Knowledge Center provides a way to deliver product documentation for use on an intranet or a disconnected client. If you have access to the Internet, take advantage of the full range of features available on the IBM Knowledge Center hosted site at http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/.

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Accessibility

Accessibility features help users who have a disability, such as restricted mobility or limited vision, to use information technology products successfully. Documentation is provided in HTML so that it is easily accessible through assistive technology.

With the accessibility features of IBM Knowledge Center, you can do the following tasks:

  • Use screen-reader software and digital speech synthesizers to hear what is displayed on the screen. Consult the product documentation of the assistive technology for details on using assistive technologies with HTML-based information.
  • Use screen magnifiers to magnify what is displayed on the screen.
  • Operate specific or equivalent features by using only the keyboard.

Keys help:

  • To move through the user interface controls, links, and subject areas, press the Tab key. To return to the previous control, link, or subject area, press Shift+Tab. Control keys vary, depending on the browser or operating system. For example, the operating system on recent Macintosh machines uses Ctrl+Opt instead of Shift+Alt and Chrome browsers use Alt instead of Shift+Alt.
  • To go directly to the content area, press Shift+Alt+V.
  • To go directly to the search field, press Shift+Alt+X.
  • To go to the navigation area, press Shift+Alt+Z.
  • To go directly to the Table of Contents tab, press Shift+Alt+T.
  • To go directly to the Search Results tab, press Shift+Alt+S.
  • To print the content that is in focus, press Shift+Alt+P.
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Viewing content in your own language

By default, IBM Knowledge Center shows content in the language that is specified in the Languages setting for your browser. For example, if your browser is set to French, then you see French content if it exists. If content does not exist in your preferred language, that content is shown in English. You can also set your language preference in IBM Knowledge Center by selecting a language from the language list.

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Searching in IBM Knowledge Center

When you enter search terms into the search field, IBM Knowledge Center returns a list of pages that contain all the terms you used.

You can use operators to refine your searches.
Quotations
Use quotation marks to search for an exact word or set of words (database management system).
Wildcards
Use an asterisk (*) in a search string as a placeholder for any missing or wildcard words in a phrase. Place the phrase in quotation marks for a more precise result (DB2 * table).
OR
To search for pages that have one of two or more terms, include OR (capitalized) between the terms. Without OR, only pages that have all the terms in the string are returned in the search results.
Minus signs
Use a minus sign (hyphen) before a word to exclude results that include that word. For example, to search for business management without the word process, use business -process management as a search string.
INTITLE:
Use INTITLE:term to search for the term in the page title only.

Each search displays results in ranked order. To see more than the first 20 search results, click Next 20 results to show 40 results. Click again to see 60 results in a single list, and so on.

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Narrowing search results by selecting products

If your IBM Knowledge Center contains more than one product or version, you can reduce the scope of a search to focus on one or more of those products or versions. Click the Add Products... link that is under the Search field. Select a product from that list to add a product filter to the search scope. Click Done to apply your search scope. Only results from the version, product, or products that you selected are returned. The product you selected is shown on the search bar.

By default, IBM Knowledge Center tracks products as you browse content and follow links. This is called auto-select. To turn it off so that product filters are not added as you browse, clear the Auto-select check box. Auto-select does not add a product if you come to a topic through search; however, if you click a topic in the navigation tree after a search, the context is set to the collection that contains that topic.

To broaden the scope of your search, click Add products, select another version or product, and click Done. Click Clear All to remove all the selected products from the search scope.

The product filters remain active until you select another option.

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Other search tools

To find information more quickly, limit your search results by defining filtering options under Search Results. Only the search results that match your filter selections are returned. In addition to using products, you can filter your search results in the following ways:
Date range
See only topics added or changed in the last week, month, or year, or define your own range of dates.
Tasks
Limit results to specific task types, such as installing, migrating, or troubleshooting. Only documents that are defined as that task type are included in search results. Results might be incomplete if some documents have not been assigned task types.
Operating systems
Limit your search to documents that are relevant for the selected operating system and version.
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Browsing content

To browse content, click Table of Contents or press Shift+Alt+T, then select a product, version, and topic. Expand the contents tree to see more content. When you select a version of a product, the browse scope adjusts to show the contents of the collection that you have chosen. You can move back up the tree by clicking the link in the contents tree that has an arrow.

You can also browse content from any topic. For example, you can browse content from search results. When you click a search result, the topic opens and the Table of Contents shows the content structure for the collection in which that topic appears. In the Table of Contents, you can then find related topics in that collection.

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Printing content

To print the topic that is shown in the content pane, click the printer icon in the action bar.
To print a topic and its subtopics, right-click a topic in the Table of Contents and select Print this topic and its subtopics.

Printing might not be enabled in all versions or editions of IBM Knowledge Center.