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Supporting Online Help

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Note

Manual authoring of XML-based help is very difficult. The PlatyPS module allows you to write help in Markdown and then convert it to XML-based help. This makes it much easier to write and maintain help. PlatyPS can also create the Updateable Help packages for you. For more information, see Create XML-based help using PlatyPS.

Beginning in PowerShell 3.0, there are two ways to support the Get-Help Online feature for PowerShell commands. This topic explains how to implement this feature for different command types.

About Online Help

Online help has always been a vital part of PowerShell. Although the Get-Help cmdlet displays help topics at the command prompt, many users prefer the experience of reading online, including color-coding, hyperlinks, and sharing ideas in Community Content and wiki-based documents. Most importantly, before the advent of Updatable Help, online help provided the most up-to-date version of the help files.

With the advent of Updatable Help in PowerShell 3.0, online help still plays a vital role. In addition to the flexible user experience, online help provides help to users who don't or can't use Updatable Help to download help topics.

How Get-Help -Online Works

To help users find the online help topics for commands, the Get-Help command has an Online parameter that opens the online version of help topic for a command in the user's default internet browser.

For example, the following command opens the online help topic for the Invoke-Command cmdlet.

Get-Help Invoke-Command -Online

To implement Get-Help -Online, the Get-Help cmdlet looks for a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for the online version help topic in the following locations.

  • The first link in the Related Links section of the help topic for the command. The help topic must be installed on the user's computer. This feature was introduced in PowerShell 2.0.

  • The HelpUri property of any command. The HelpUri property is accessible even when the help topic for the command isn't installed on the user's computer. This feature was introduced in PowerShell 3.0.

    Get-Help looks for a URI in the first entry in the Related Links section before getting the HelpUri property value. If the property value is incorrect or has changed, you can override it by entering a different value in the first related link. However, the first related link works only when the help topics are installed on the user's computer.

You can support Get-Help -Online for any command by adding a valid URI to the first entry in the Related Links section of the XML-based help topic for the command. This option is valid only in XML-based help topics and works only when the help topic is installed on the user's computer. When the help topic is installed and the URI is populated, this value takes precedence over the HelpUri property of the command.

To support this feature, the URI must appear in the maml:uri element under the first maml:relatedLinks/maml:navigationLink element in the maml:relatedLinks element.

The following XML shows the correct placement of the URI. The Online version: text in the maml:linkText element is a best practice, but it's not required.

<maml:relatedLinks>
    <maml:navigationLink>
        <maml:linkText>Online version:</maml:linkText>
        <maml:uri>https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=113279</maml:uri>
    </maml:navigationLink>
    <maml:navigationLink>
        <maml:linkText>about_History</maml:linkText>
        <maml:uri/>
    </maml:navigationLink>
</maml:relatedLinks>

Adding the HelpUri property to a command

This section shows how to add the HelpUri property to commands of different types.

Adding a HelpUri Property to a Cmdlet

For cmdlets written in C#, add a HelpUri attribute to the Cmdlet class. The value of the attribute must be a URI that begins with http or https.

The following code shows the HelpUri attribute of the Get-History cmdlet class.

[Cmdlet(VerbsCommon.Get, "History", HelpUri = "https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=001122")]

Adding a HelpUri property to an advanced function

For advanced functions, add a HelpUri property to the CmdletBinding attribute. The value of the property must be a URI that begins with "http" or "https".

The following code shows the HelpUri attribute of the New-Calendar function

function New-Calendar {
    [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true,
    HelpURI="https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=01122")]

Adding a HelpUri attribute to a cim command

For CIM commands, add a HelpUri attribute to the CmdletMetadata element in the CDXML file. The value of the attribute must be a URI that begins with http or https.

The following code shows the HelpUri attribute of the Start-Debug CIM command

<CmdletMetadata Verb="Debug" HelpUri="https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=001122"/>

Adding a HelpUri attribute to a workflow

For workflows that are written in the PowerShell language, add an .ExternalHelp comment directive to the workflow code. The value of the directive must be a URI that begins with http or https.

Note

The HelpUri property isn't supported for XAML-based workflows in PowerShell.

The following code shows the .ExternalHelp directive in a workflow file.

# .ExternalHelp "https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=138338"