Guide To TestStand Documentation

[RayFarmer]

On this Web page under the New Users are links to the various documentation but these links are not very helpful as there just send you to www.ni.com/manuals which cover every manual for every NI product. You are actually quicker doing a basic search for TestStand manuals than using these links. What should happen is you should be directed to the relevant document. ie for the TestStand Reference manual 2010 you would be directed here.

[RayFarmer]

All the TestStand manuals are at this location

[Callie]

Ray,

When we post the shipping help files on ni.com, we intentionally do not link to the specific PDF page for a manual because that location might change over the course of time in which the help topic is posted on ni.com, and the link would thus be broken.

You have a good point that the link requires you to take a small extra step to search for what you want. By searching for the information though, you might find additional information that is relevant to you, might find the answer in a search result instead of the direct PDF page, and also might become aware of just how many resources we provide on ni.com.

When you click the link in the shipping help on disk, the link opens the PDF of the manual directly.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or need more information.

Callie Jones
TestStand Documentation Team

[RayFarmer]

Hi,

I appreciate that you don't want too use links that could easily be broken but using the link www.ni.com/manuals is too general. So maybe this is a criticism of the site because you should beable to type in www.ni.com/manuals/teststand or even www.ni.com/manuals/teststand/current and be given links to the manuals used for teststand. After all if it can be done on the Training web page why can't it be done here.

regards

Ray Farmer

[Jervin Justin]

Hi Ray,

Do you mean something like the page here?

http://search.ni.com/nisearch/app/main/p/bot/no/ap/tech/lang/en/pg/1/sn/catnav:pm,n1:c,n8:4.33/

[RayFarmer]

Yes, exactly. It takes three clicks from www.ni.com/manuals to get to that page. Is that a link that is likely to change?

[HarshaBhushan]

Firstly, let me acknowledge that this post has been open for long. 

Our documentation strategy has changed since then. We now maintain evergreen manuals instead of version specific ones. I'll be closing this idea. If there are other ideas/feedback based on current state of things, please create a new post. 

I'm summarizing the current state of things:

• We no longer create and maintain version specific user manuals. We've moved to evergreen user manuals. TestStand manual is here and the link is unlikely to change for a really long time.
• We continue to ship an offline version of this manual along with each release.
• You can also click on Help>>NI TestStand Help in the sequence editor to launch the manual (either online or offline depending on internet connectivity and the preference set on your machine)
• The search on ni.com for 'TestStand user manual' will give you the link to it