topic Re: Change/disable 4.2 Help link in Splunk Search

Change/disable 4.2 Help link

kevintelford — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:02:16 GMT

We're using Splunk on a network that is cordoned off from the interwebs. Is there a way that we could either disable or change the url that the ?Help link points to for all apps?

Thanks, Kevin

Re: Change/disable 4.2 Help link

netwrkr — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:45:29 GMT

Yes. You would need to modify the AppBar module by hand though.

Specifically, I believe this section

<div class="auxLinks">
    <a class="help" href="${generateSelfHelpLink()}" target="_blank" title="${_('Splunk help')}">${_("Help")}</a>
    <span>|</span>
    <a class="aboutLink" href="#about" title="${_('About Splunk')}">${_("About")}</a>
    <!-- moved Print link into the Actions menu
    <span>|</span>
    <a class="printLink" href="#print" class="last">${_("Print")}</a>
    -->

$SPLUNK_HOME/share/splunk/search_mrsparkle/modules/nav/AppBar.html

Re: Change/disable 4.2 Help link

kevintelford — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:42:33 GMT

Thank you much.

Re: Change/disable 4.2 Help link

yoho — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:39:23 GMT

If you over your mouse over the Help Button, you should see the URL contains the app name you're using as well as the view name but this URL by default, redirects to Splunk documentation. Thus, I believe there is a "softer" way to redirect to your own page. I have not found it out yet, though...

Re: Change/disable 4.2 Help link

yoho — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:41:34 GMT

You can redirect to your own webserver by changing the following parameter in web.conf (as usual can be done at the user, app or system level) :

[settings]
docsCheckerBaseURL = http://quickdraw.splunk.com/help

The webserver will be queried this way :

$docsCheckerBaseURL/$license/$versionNumber/$location/$installType/$skin?locale=$locale

with the following parameters :



$license: {free | pro} the product license level

$versionNumber:  the textual product version label, i.e. 3.4.6

$location:  the keyword identifier for the requesting asset, i.e. 'documentation'

$installType: {trial | prod} the license type, i.e. unpaid trial or fully licensed

$skin:  the current skin theme

$locale:  the user's locale, i.e., en-US

$location is itself built like this (when help button is pressed from an app view) :

[$app_name:$app_version]app.$app_name.$app_view

Re: Change/disable 4.2 Help link

yoho — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 06:33:32 GMT

By going further, I've found that the webserver shouldn't directly answer to splunk with the "Help" HTML page. It should reply with a sort of text file (javascript?) containing these lines:



var helpParams = {url:'http://webserver/myhelppage.html'}; showHelp(helpParams);

It makes the process a bit more complicated but allows your webserver to redirect to different URLs based on the different parameters provided in the initial URL (thus, providing contextual help).