Help in the system
Overview
Help answers the same question on every page: what is this, and how do I work with it? There are three ways in, and all of them show the same content:
- The question mark in the header opens help for the page you are on.
- The F1 key does the same without taking your hands off the keyboard.
- The help centre at
/helpshows the whole set, with search.
Help appears next to your work, not on top of it: the page behind stays visible and usable. That is deliberate — help that forces you to interrupt your work does not get read.
A note on the key choice: ? is already taken by the keyboard shortcut overview. The two surfaces link to each other.
Core tasks
Read help for the current page. Press F1 or click the question mark. If a page has several matching topics, they appear as a selector at the top; the best match comes first.
Look something up. ⌘K (or Ctrl+K) opens the command and search bar. Type a term — matching manual pages appear under Help. Enter opens the page in the drawer; your work stays put.
Browse the whole set. The help centre lists every page of this instance on the left, grouped into manual, modules and administration. Search there also matches page content.
Link to a page. Every help page has its own address of the form /help/<area>/<page> — for example /help/crm/deals. The matching key (crm.deals) is shown at the bottom of each page in the help centre.
Find related wiki articles. With the knowledge module switched on, matching articles from your wiki appear below the help text in the drawer — found via the topic's title and keywords, and only from knowledge spaces you may read. A click opens the article and closes the drawer. If nothing matches, the section stays away.
Dismiss the introduction. The first time you open the drawer, a short hint at the top explains how help works. Once you dismiss it, the system remembers this for your account — on every device, not only in this browser.
Fields in detail
Help is read; it is edited only with the permission for it — under Settings → Help & documentation. The What it does column answers what changes in the system; the grey name behind it is the API field, under which the same thing runs through automation and AI tools.
What the editing surface writes
| Field | Required | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
Language locale | yes | one of the installed languages | Which language version is edited. An edit applies to exactly this one language; the other keeps following the shipped version with every update until it too is edited. |
Content bodyHtml | no | formatted text | The text of the page in this language. It is stored as this instance's customisation — the public documentation stays on the shipped version. |
Status status | no | draft, review, published | How far the page has come. Only published appears for everyone; drafts are visible solely to users with the manage right, marked by the notice above the text. |
Visibility visibility | no | public or internal | Whether the page may go outside. internal never appears publicly and never in the portal assistant. |
Active active | no | yes/no | Whether the page is delivered at all. Off means: not in the drawer, not in the help centre, not in search. |
Interface and automation only
The stock ships with the product and is reconciled on update. These fields settle where a page belongs; they are therefore not maintained in the interface but supplied through the API when a topic of your own is created.
| Field | Values / format | What it does |
|---|---|---|
key | text, max. 120 characters, form <area>.<page> | The stable address of the page — in the app, in the portal, in search, in an AI citation and in every deep link. It is not renamed; a page is superseded, not moved. |
kind | guide, module, admin, developer, reference | What kind of page it is. Usage pages (guide) hang on routes, module and administration pages do not; developer and reference are generated from the code and are read-only. |
audience | staff, portal, both | Who sees the page in the application — staff, portal users or both. |
channels | subset of app, portal, web | Where the content appears. It is the only field deciding that; channel-specific second versions deliberately do not exist. |
moduleKey | feature flag, e.g. module.crm | Which module the page is bound to. If the module is off, the page is off — server-side, not just in the display. |
routeNames | list of route names | For which screens of the application this topic is the context help. That decides what F1 opens. |
pathPrefixes | list of path prefixes | The same via the path; sub- and detail screens inherit the help through it. |
sortOrder | number | Where the page sits within its area in the outline. |
bodyMarkdown | text | The same content as Markdown — the format for API, import and AI tools. |
How help reaches you
| Route | What it does |
|---|---|
| F1 or the question mark | Opens the help matching the current page without leaving your work. |
| Help centre | All pages with search and structure. |
| ⌘K | Jumps from the command bar straight into a topic. |
| AI assistant | Answers usage questions from this help, naming the page. What is not here it does not invent. |
| Reset | Discards this language's customisation and restores the shipped version. The way back when a customisation no longer fits after an update. |
An edited page survives every update: the sync leaves changed language versions alone and only updates what is unchanged.
Tours and hints
The pages of the Basic level come with a tour: at most five short steps that highlight the areas of the page one after another — title, actions, search and filters, list. The tour sits in the header of these help pages and therefore comes in the same language and from the same source as the text. Customising the text in this instance does not change the tour.
| Route | What it does |
|---|---|
| On its own | Anyone invited within the last 30 days sees a page's tour once on the first visit — never again on its own after that. Existing users start tours themselves. |
| Tour of this page | The button at the top of the help (F1 or the question mark) starts the current page's tour again at any time. |
| Next, Back, End tour | Operate the tour; the arrow keys page through it, Esc ends it. The page stays usable meanwhile. |
| Reset all hints | Under My account: tours and dismissed hints appear on their own once more. |
Anyone newly invited also starts in My work with the card Your first steps: at most five tasks matching their role — such as completing the profile, setting up two-factor sign-in or logging the first time. Show me opens the matching page with its tour; the check mark ticks the step off.
Settings & permissions
Reading help requires no permission beyond being signed in. The related wiki articles appear only with the read permission for wiki articles (knowledge.article.view); remembering the introduction, seen tours and the first steps uses the permission for personal interface settings (platform.ui_preference.manage, granted to all roles).
Managing help requires platform.docs.manage. The surface for it sits under Settings → Help & documentation. There you can override any text per language, deactivate a topic, and reset any change back to the shipped version; adding a topic of your own is a route through the API, not through this surface. Only users with that permission also see pages that are still drafts — marked with a draft notice above the text.
Two properties of the editing surface matter, because they are often expected differently. First: a change applies only to the language you edited. If you change the German text, the English one keeps being updated with every release. Second: developer and reference pages are generated from the code and are therefore read-only — a change there would be gone at the next generation run.
Two things help deliberately does not do: it does not show pages for modules that are switched off in this instance, and changes made here stay in this instance — the public documentation keeps showing the shipped version.
FAQ & troubleshooting
There is no help for my page. Then the page has not been described yet. The set grows continuously; the help centre shows what is already available.
The text differs from what I read online. Then it was customised in this instance. The help centre shows Customised in this instance at the bottom of the page in that case.
A tour does not start on its own. Tours start on their own only for newly invited users, and each only once. Tour of this page in the help runs it at any time; Reset all hints in My account lets all of them run on their own once more.
A step of the tour is missing. A step is left out when its area is not visible at the moment — for example the actions when you lack the permission for them. The tour then counts one step less.
F1 does nothing. Some browsers claim F1 for their own help. Use the question mark in the header instead.