HowNow Smart Links are a great way to link to areas/documents/records of HowNow outside of HowNow (ie Word/Excel Documents) to ensure that there is only one version of a document (the one existing in HowNow) and avoids sending copies of emails around your firm. The recipient of a Smart Link must have access to HowNow to open the link.
The HowNow Smart Links add-in is installed from HowNow > File > System Tools > General > HowNow Add-in Manager.
Within HowNow you can right click on any document or record and either email it as a Smart Link or copy the Smart Link for that item to the Clipboard which you can then paste anywhere that accepts hyperlinks.
A HowNow Smart Link can be added manually anywhere you can add a hyperlink, however the hyperlink address is a little different to normal hyperlinks. A HowNow Smart Link address is formed differently depending on what you are trying to link to.
- Knowledge Items
A Knowledge Item Smart Link requires the Title of the Document to be used however any spaces in the title need to be replaced with %20 as Windows needs to see the Hyperlink as a normal web hyperlink.
For example if you wanted to create a link to the Blank Word Document in HowNow Knowledge the address would look like the following...
hownow://Blank%20Word%20Document/
By default any Smart Link to a Knowledge Item will always open the current edition, however you can link to a non-current edition of an item by adding ;EDITION=x (replacing x with the Edition Number) after the Document Title but before the forward slash (/).
eg. hownow://Blank%20Word%20Document;EDITION=2/
- Record Items
When linking to a Record Item, you only need to know the Record ID. You can find out a Record's ID by either hovering your mouse over the File Type icon for the record or right clicking on a record and clicking Profile. In the top right corner of the record profile is the Record ID.
A Record Smart Link Address looks like the example below. The '_r' is required to ensure HowNow knows it's looking for a Record ID.
hownow://_r12345/ - HowNow Command Links
With a HowNow Smart Link you can also send commands to HowNow.
All of the currently available Command Links Addresses are listed below.
hownow://_c/O/ Opens HowNow to the Organisation Tab.
hownow://_c/K/ Opens HowNow to the Knowledge Tab.
hownow://_c/K/add/ Opens the HowNow New Item Profile in Knowledge (Will give the user an error if they aren't an Administrator or Author)
hownow://_c/K/news/ Opens HowNow to the current users News List.
hownow://_c/K/review/ Opens HowNow to the current users Review List.
hownow://_c/K/reports/expiring/ Opens the Expiring Documents Report Window.
hownow://_c/R/ Opens HowNow to the Records Tab
hownow://_c/R/review/ Opens HowNow to the Rocords Tab and views the current users Review List.
hownow://_c/C/ Opens HowNow to the Contacts Tab.
hownow://_c/J/ Opens HowNow to the Jobs Tab.
hownow://_c/J/assignedto/ Opens HowNow to the Jobs Tab and sets the filter to jobs assigned to the current user.
hownow://_c/T/ Opens HowNow to the Tasks Tab.
hownow://_c/T/assignedto/ Opens HowNow to the Tasks Tab and sets the filter to tasks assigned to the current user.