Publishing Directly to Flare Online

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

[Menu Proxy — Headings — Online — Depth3 ]

Permission Required?

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

For more information about permissions, see the documentation for Flare Online.

How to Publish Directly to Flare Online

If it is not already done, upload a local project from Flare Desktop to Flare Online.
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 Flare Online destination, click the Publish check box.

Note This destination is automatically shown on the tab if the project is bound to Flare Online. If it is not bound to Flare Online, 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 Flare Online. A Flare Desktop icon displays next to builds that originated from Flare Desktop. A Flare Online icon displays next to builds that originated from Flare Online. 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 Flare Online password in the command. See Building and Publishing Targets Using the Command Line.

How to Use the Command Line to Publish Directly to Flare Online

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 Desktop, and press ENTER.

cd\Program Files\MadCap Software\MadCap Flare 21\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 Flare Online 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 Flare Online, you can type this:
Copy
```
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 Flare Online (along with any targets you plan to publish), it is not technically necessary to synchronize changes with Flare Online 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 in Flare Online when using other features (e.g., checklists, builds initiated from Flare Online).

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 Flare Online. However, when building from Flare Online itself, build events are not supported. See Creating Pre- and Post-Build Events.