Publishing Directly to Central

As an alternative to building a target on MadCap Central, you can publish output directly to Central from the local Flare project. This is possible via a destination file that Flare automatically creates for you. By “publish,” we mean copying your output files to Central, not making that output “live,” which would make it visible to the general public. You would still need to use Central to make that output accessible to end users.

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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 Publish Directly to Central

If it is not already done, upload a Flare project to Central.
Open a target.

Note If you are using Git branching, make sure the appropriate branch is active. When you build and publish the output, it will be for that branch. See Branch Activities for Git.
Select the Publishing tab.
Next to the Central destination, click the Publish check box.

Note This destination is automatically shown on the tab if the project is bound to Central. If it is not bound to Central, you will not see this destination.
Click to save your work.
At the top of the editor, click Build.
When the build finishes successfully, click Publish.

After the target publishes, you can see the result in Central. A Flare icon displays next to builds that originated from Flare. A Central icon displays next to builds that originated from Central. Also, if you had a particular Git branch selected when publishing, it will be shown in the Branch column of the grid.

Command Line

You can also use the command line for this feature. Notice that you need to include your email and Central password in the command. See Building and Publishing Targets Using the Command Line.

How to Use the Command Line to Publish Directly to Central

Open Notepad (to create and save a batch file) or open your command prompt (to run a command immediately).
Type the path to the Flare.app folder where you installed Flare, and press ENTER.

cd\Program Files\MadCap Software\MadCap Flare 20\Flare.app

Note Alternatively, you can use cd c:\Program Files\[rest of the path] instead of cd\Program Files\[rest of the path].

Type the following and press ENTER on your keyboard (entering the correct information in place of the sections in square brackets):
Copy
```
madbuild -project [project] -centralUsername [email address] -centralPassword [password] -target [target]
```
Note If there are spaces anywhere in your path or project name, you need to use quotation marks around it.
Example Your email address is bsmith@fictionsoft.com, and your Central password is R!ffraff22. You have a project called "FictionSoftPro" that you have stored in a folder of the same name at the root level of the C: drive. If you want to publish the target named "Beginner" to Central, you can type this:
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```
madbuild -project c:\fictionsoftpro\fictionsoftpro.flprj -centralUsername bsmith@fictionsoft.com -centralPassword R!ffraff22 -target Beginner
```
Example If the project is located in a folder called "My Projects,” and the target is named "Beginner Online Help" (with spaces between words), you would type this:
Copy
```
madbuild -project "c:\my projects\fictionsoftpro.flprj" -centralUsername bsmith@fictionsoft.com -centralPassword R!ffraff22 -target "Beginner Online Help"
```

What’s Noteworthy?

Note After the project is bound to Central (along with any targets you plan to publish), it is not technically necessary to synchronize changes with Central to have the latest files included in a build that is initiated locally. However, you would need to continue synchronizing in order to see the latest files on Central when using other features (e.g., checklists, builds initiated from Central).

Note MadCap Search and Elasticsearch are supported with this feature. Google Search is not supported. See Setting Up a Search Engine.

Note Build events are supported when publishing directly to Central. However, when building from Central itself, build events are not supported. See Creating Pre- and Post-Build Events.