{"id":2651,"date":"2011-04-22T14:33:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T14:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/powershell\/2011\/04\/22\/keeping-help-helpful-use-online-and-redirectable-links\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T13:05:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:05:47","slug":"keeping-help-helpful-use-online-and-redirectable-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/keeping-help-helpful-use-online-and-redirectable-links\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Help Helpful: Use -Online and Redirectable Links"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When you refer to Windows PowerShell help topics, such as&nbsp;in tools and&nbsp;blog posts, be sure to refer to the most recent version of the help topics.&nbsp;Few things are&nbsp;less helpful&nbsp;or more confusing&nbsp;than&nbsp;sending a reader to a topic that is missing a parameter or includes an example that doesn&#8217;t work. <\/p>\n<p>To be sure that you&#8217;re always referring to the newest help topics, refer to the online help topics in the TechNet library.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In tools, use&nbsp;a Get-Help -Online command.<\/li>\n<li>In web pages, use the redirectable &#8220;forwarding&#8221; links (also known as &#8220;FWLinks&#8221;)&nbsp;to the help topics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The redirectable links will always be current. Even if a help topic page moves or changes, the redirectable link always connects to the newest version of the help topic. <\/p>\n<p>You can find redirectable links to all Windows PowerShell 2.0 core help topics in the CSV file that is attached to the following blog post: <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/powershell\/archive\/2009\/07\/21\/urls-for-powershell-core-help-topics.aspx\">http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/powershell\/archive\/2009\/07\/21\/urls-for-powershell-core-help-topics.aspx<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>All redirectable&nbsp;links have the format:&nbsp;<strong>http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkID=&lt;LinkID&gt;<\/strong>, where only the LinkID varies. If you see a raw URL link, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/dd819454.aspx\">http:\/\/technet.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/dd819454.aspx<\/a>, or worse, a help topic that is copied&nbsp;so it isn&#8217;t updated, please notify the author that their topics are likely to be obsolete and point them to the redirectable links. <\/p>\n<p>To make it easy to find the redirectable link to any topic, create a function that reads the CSV file and displays the redirectable link. Here&#8217;s the one I use:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: courier new,courier\">function get-fwlink<br \/>{<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; param ([string]$title)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: courier new,courier\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $a = import-csv -path .\\PowerShellHelpURLs.csv -Header Type, TopicName, URL<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $b = $a | where {$_.TopicName -like &#8220;*$title*&#8221;}<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; foreach ($match in $b)<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; {<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; write-host &#8220;&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $match.TopicName<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $match.URL<br \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; }<br \/>}<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: courier new,courier\">PS C:\\ps-test&gt; get-fwlink keyword<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: courier new,courier\">about_Language_Keywords<br \/><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkID=136588\"><span style=\"font-family: courier new,courier\">http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkID=136588<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><code class=\"csharp\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">Even if you're getting old and obsolete, your links will always be current.<\/span><\/code><\/p>\n<p><code class=\"csharp\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\">June Blender [MSFT]<br \/>Windows PowerShell Documentation<br \/>Twitter: juneb_get_help<\/span><\/code><\/p>\n<p><code class=\"csharp\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial\"><\/span><\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you refer to Windows PowerShell help topics, such as&nbsp;in tools and&nbsp;blog posts, be sure to refer to the most recent version of the help topics.&nbsp;Few things are&nbsp;less helpful&nbsp;or more confusing&nbsp;than&nbsp;sending a reader to a topic that is missing a parameter or includes an example that doesn&#8217;t work. To be sure that you&#8217;re always referring [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":13641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[174,64],"class_list":["post-2651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-powershell","tag-get-help","tag-help-file"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>When you refer to Windows PowerShell help topics, such as&nbsp;in tools and&nbsp;blog posts, be sure to refer to the most recent version of the help topics.&nbsp;Few things are&nbsp;less helpful&nbsp;or more confusing&nbsp;than&nbsp;sending a reader to a topic that is missing a parameter or includes an example that doesn&#8217;t work. To be sure that you&#8217;re always referring [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}