Preferred Matching

There may be times when more than one object meets the criteria selected in the book filter. When this happens Author-it uses the priority setting to decide which object is used.

Filtering is based on finding a 100% match between the criteria assigned to an object and the criteria selected in the filter.

• If the filter criteria finds a single variant with a 100% match then that variant object is used.
• If the filter criteria finds more than one object with a 100% match Author-it resolves the conflict by applying the priority setting, and displays the variant with the preferred match icon.
• If no variants are found with a 100% match then the primary object is used.

Let's look at some examples.

Scenario 1:

In our first scenario, the Installing the Software topic has two variants which use a single (Platform) criteria:

When setting the filter to use the Platform = Windows criteria, a 100% match is found, and that variant is used.

Scenario 2:

In our second scenario, the Installing the Software topic has two variants with multiple (Platform and Product) criteria:

Because we've defined multiple criteria Platform = Windows and Product = X1000, both of these must match before Author-it can substitute the primary topic with the variant.

If the filter does not have all criteria selected Author-it won't make a 100% match and will not swap the topic into the book.

Scenario 3:

However in our next scenario, the Installing the Software topic has multiple variants, each with different criteria:

When both criteria are selected in the filter, two variants are found with a 100% match. This results in a conflict as either topic could be used in the book. In this case, the conflict is resolved by choosing the first topic as the Product criteria has the highest priority setting.