Binding a Project to MadCap Central

You can upload a project to Central from the desktop Flare application. A copy of the project files will therefore reside in the cloud via Central, and you will be able to keep the local and cloud versions of the project synchronized using integrated source control. You will also be able to generate and publish Flare targets using Central.

Permission Required?

For this activity, you must have the following permission setting in Central:

For more information about permissions, see the Central online Help.

How to Upload (Bind) a Project to Central

  1. Open the project in MadCap Flare.
  2. Select View > MadCap Central. The MadCap Central window pane opens.
  3. Be sure to log in if you aren't already.

  4. Click .

    Tip If this button is disabled, try clicking in the window pane first.

  5. In the Bind Project dialog, you can complete these fields, then click OK.

    • Enter project name This shows the name of the project. You can change the name if you want, but in most cases you will probably want to keep the same name.
    • Enter project description You can enter a short description, which can then be seen when anyone views the project profile in Central.

  6. In the success message, click OK. The MadCap Central window pane adjusts, showing properties for the current project.

  7. (Optional) In the local toolbar, click to open Central.

  8. (Optional) In Central, you can click Projects on the left side to open the Projects page. The uploaded project should be shown in the grid. If it isn’t, click to refresh the page.

    Note If your project is dual-bound (see Dual-Bound Projects), be sure you check in or push the project files to your third-party source control provider after you bind to Central. This will ensure that other users who import the project from source control have the most recent version of the project.

    Note When you bind a project to Central, a .gitignore text file is created in your local project folder. Advanced users can edit the .gitignore file with a text editor to control which files or folders can be pushed to your Git repository. You can also specify which files and folders are ignored by Git, and are not pushed to the repository. See Adding and Editing an Ignore File.

    Note If you intend to build a target that links to an outside Flare project (e.g., for the purpose of importing files via Global Project Linking, project merging, or multilingual output), make sure that the other project is also uploaded to Central. Otherwise, the automated imports or merging will not work.

    Note Binding and unbinding is usually straightforward when using the Flare interface. However, if you bind to projects outside of Flare, there is more you should know. See Bind Detection, Disabling Providers, and Unbinding Providers—Git.

    Note Due to security issues, MadCap Software does not support the use of the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol in MadCap Flare when connecting to MadCap Central. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) protocol is supported.