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Available in our cloud or self hosted on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and z/OS systems
Deliver the right information to the right people
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See for yourself what you gain with HelpServer
Product
What you gain with HelpServer
Deliver the right information to the right people

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One of the best ways to increase efficiency is to deliver personalized and targeted content over the web to the person who needs it
With HelpServer, you have a unique approach to supporting dynamic content and ensuring that tailored information reaches your targeted audience. There is no need to write scripts or to develop programming skills. Instead, the dynamic character of the content relies on conditions you define in the system. These can be based on events and behavior in your organization's processes or on the roles, the preferences, or the experience people have in your company.
Once the conditions are defined, you apply these as markers to different areas of your content or you split up a topic into dynamic chunks of information. You can even use tags in a topic to mark words, sentences, or paragraphs that need to be displayed or printed conditionally. This is the way to produce multiple results from one source.
HelpServer keeps all the chunks of content nicely together in its Workbench, which greatly facilitates maintenance and translation.
When your users browse the content, HelpServer checks the conditions against their profile, the occurrence of predefined events, or variable/value pairs entered in the URL or provided by an exit routine. Next, the server dynamically compiles the chunks of content in function of the conditions. Thus, people can browse, export, or print tailored content without having to hunt for it.
With this feature your authors do not require any technical skills. So, there is no downtime waiting for scriptwriters to get the job done. Anyone with basic word processing skills can create dynamic content. Armed with the ability to easily deploy content in the user's own language, authors can now focus on content creation instead of on management and formatting activities.
The HelpServer cloud
The HelpServer cloud

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Content authoring without hassles
Today's data centers require a great deal of nursing. Cloud computing is a vision of the data center of tomorrow. It is a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training and retraining personnel, or licensing new software. It is an infrastructure that is billed like a utility for dynamic service movement, growth, and protection.
For our customers, it means
• | No up-front investment in servers or software licensing, | |
• | Flexibility and scalability, | |
We offer SaaS as a cloud-computing service model to support web-based content authoring solutions. While traditional business applications and platforms have become ever more complicated and expensive, cloud-computing models have all the earmarks of a disruptive innovation: it is enterprise technology packaged to fit best the needs of small businesses and start-ups.
Request a trial in the HelpServer cloud and take full advantage of the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product.
Key features
Key features

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What you get is a comprehensive solution
HelpServer's features allow you to create and maintain content and help projects in a team or as a single author. You can start small and simple and go gradually beyond conventional content management.
Which solution to choose
Which solution to choose

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Client server
• | HelpServer involves two kinds of clients. | |
| • | Your authors use a Workbench to create and maintain the content. They can install it on their pc or use a web browser plugin. | |
| • | Your end-users use their web browser (without any plugin) to consult that content. | |
Whether it is in the office or at home, each client accesses its server seamlessly over the Internet or Intranet.
• | The server component controls the data source that holds your content. In other words, it serves your authors in creating content and your end-users in consuming content. | |
The server is designed to handle a virtual unlimited number of concurrent clients. Obviously, with a high load of concurrent requests, the performance and response times can become unpredictable.
Self hosted or cloud hosted
You can self host HelpServer or have it hosted in our cloud. There is no difference in features. If you choose to self host and you expect a high workload, provide a robust hardware and network configuration at the server side.
If you need to jump in or out our cloud, it's possible to transport your content.
Why HelpServer
Why HelpServer

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People like HelpServer because...
• | The intuitive, multi-platform authoring tool, equipped with simple yet powerful functions. | |
HelpServer's content authoring tool, the Workbench, provides the framework for organizing and editing all the elements of a content management system or a help project on multiple platforms. It's a clean and beginners-friendly tool.
• | HelpServer provides structure, organization, and easy access to a wealth of information. | |
This makes using documentation on the web pleasantly surprising and generates substantial Return On Investment.
We are dedicated to service and support and to smoothly manage all your support queries we use an interactive web based service and support center. We recommend every customer to use this facility. It is included in the maintenance plan.
FAQ
Frequently ask questions

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This FAQ answers a handful of the most common questions people have when they are looking for systems to support content management, documentation management, knowledge management, and user assistance.
Documentation
Documentation

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Authoring and administration
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Authoring, to teach yourself the various functions of HelpServer's authoring tool.
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License agreements
License agreements

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Please email to to request the license agreements.
Request a trial
Request a trial version

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The trial version lasts 30 days and it includes all features and full online access to the documentation. It is not meant for production work.
Prices
Prices

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Please email to and try to answer the following questions in your mail. We reply as soon as possible to propose an agreeable price.
• | What types of content do you produce? | |
For example product manuals, user guides, catalogues, web based content, help and training systems, ...
• | Do you localize content to other languages? | |
• | Does your content require frequent updates? | |
• | Do you have multiple contributors to the content? | |
• | Is your content distributed in files or is it centralized and accessible over the Internet? | |
• | Do you want to use HelpServer in the cloud or do you prefer self hosting? | |
About us
Company
Company

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Our company 
The company behind HelpServer is 4.ST - Services Systems Software Support Technologies in Belgium, Europe. Since the foundation of 4.ST in 1987, we have been an important provider of highly respected products to implement multi-platform help and content management systems resulting in an improved quality of the user assistance and in an enhanced productivity of the end users and programming professionals.
With our broad background in help and content management systems we strive to leverage leading-edge technology to provide your enterprise with solutions to increase productivity and efficiency at the organization and the end-user level.
We are focused on improving the quality and enhancing the functionality of our products with a strong emphasis on customer service and feedback.
Our mission
When we started drawing the blueprints for a new system for web-based content management and help our mission was:
• | To enhance the quality of content to better support the end-users’ needs. | |
• | To get this job done without increasing the complexity of the content author’s job. | |
• | To provide this as a comprehensive enterprise solution with an eye to the future. | |
After years of research and development we succeeded. The result turned out to be a shift from a traditional software model to a web-based approach that introduced another way to organize and use enterprise content.
Partners
Partners

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Partners are vital to HelpServer. An outstanding product accompanied by exceptional partners will help to excel in solution delivery and to achieve customer satisfaction.
Join our team if you wish to be part of this success story.
Next companies have taken the advantage of this opportunity.
• | IBM PartnerWorld for ISVs | |
We have been a member in the IBM PartnerWorld for ISVs program since 1997. For more information on this program go to IBM PartnerWorld for ISVs
LBi Software is a HelpServer implementation and integration partner.
LBi Software develops custom applications when off-the-shelf software and major enterprise (HCM/ERP/CRM) applications do not fit the need.
Careers
Careers

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We do not currently have any open positions. We are always interested to hear more about you.
Email your resume to
Service and support
Service and support

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About our Service & Support center
We offer our customers and prospects the ability to communicate directly with our support team using an interactive web-based Service & Support center. It is actually a HelpServer Workbench running in your web browser that remotely accesses our service database over the Internet.
Your entire communication is stored in dedicated folders on our server database. Furthermore, with our service & support center you communicate directly with the entire HelpServer support team, and your question is automatically delegated to the engineer with the appropriate skill and expertise. Over the years, this approach has proven to be the most effective way to deal with our customers' questions and problems.
Registering to the Service & support center
Access to the Service & Support center is restricted to registered customers and prospects. Contact to request a registration. We suggest that you request one registration per trial version and the moment you have acquired a permanent license you can request a registration per author.
The working principles are explained in working in the Service & Support center
Contact
Contact

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4.ST - Services Systems Software Support Technologies
Romeinse straat 10 B4
B-3001 Leuven Belgium
Phone: +32 16 40.40.54
Email to
Events
Current Events
Events

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Currently there are no new events planned.
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Collaborative authoring

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HelpServer provides a unique team-authoring environment that uses a shared, object-based content database that provides excellent support for day-to-day collaborative authoring activities. A virtually unlimited number of authors can use HelpServer's Workbench as a team to create, maintain, translate, review, and publish content in real time over the Internet.
There is no third-party tool involved. The HelpServer Workbench uses an automatic check out/check in procedure with exclusive locks for editing. This prevents authors from working concurrently on the same object. While an author makes changes, the others are only able to view the changed object. When the author has finished, he can release the object for use by others.
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