A cross-document link is a link from one page in an Inkdoc to the top of a page in another Inkdoc. You use Habitat’s existing Link URL feature to link to create cross-document links.

Understand EchoInk Library URLs

Page identifiers enable you to create cross-document links from one Inkdoc to the top of a specific page in another Inkdoc.

In EchoInk, each page has a unique URL in the form of an alphanumeric string. The image shows the URL of the Introduction topic of the EchoInk Guide.

You can see this behavior with your Inkdocs. Launch an Inkdoc in your EchoInk web library, click the pages in the TOC that have a page icon, and view the URLs in the URL bar.

The unique alphanumeric string after the in the URL identifies the entire page. For
example, the identifier for the Introduction page of the EchoInk Guide is:

.../p/69bebf96defa472bb4978db3b619a0b2

You can also share links to Inkdoc page URLs in emails, text messages, and even QR codes. To open the link, the recipient will need to have an active EchoInk account in your Organization and be included in the Inkdoc's distribution Audience.

Limitations and Restrictions

The cross-document functionality works only in the EchoInk library.

It doesn’t work for other EchoInk products, like EchoInk Embed or an export format. If you distribute the Inkdoc through multiple channels, consider how you write the link text so users can still find the referenced content, even when the link is static. You may want to consider providing two links—one for EchoInk users and another for non-EchoInk users.

EchoInk for Mobile apps uses only the alphanumeric link functionality.

Cross-document links that don’t use the alphanumeric format will open in a browser window. If your end users primarily use EchoInk mobile apps, check that all the cross-document links use the
alphanumeric format to ensure a seamless reading experience.

Link error reports:

Habitat’s link report functionality only checks internal links set with the Link Page functionality. It doesn’t validate external links set with the Link URL functionality. You must validate all external links as part of your final QA check, and this
includes cross-document links.

You can only link to the top of a page.

You can’t link to any other HTML elements in the page.

Link Maintenance Considerations

If a page identifier is changed, all cross-document links will break because the original page identifier in the link no longer matches the current page identifier. Users will see the error message This exhibit failed to load.

If you use cross-document links, use a workflow that preserves the existing structure to minimize the number of broken links you must fix.

This means that:

• If your normal workflow includes duplicating a page, storing the original as a backup, and making the duplicate the new page, all cross-document links between your Inkdoc and other Inkdocs will be broken. We recommend instead sandboxing the duplicated copy as a backup and modifying the existing page to retain the original page identifier.
• You should communicate with other Habitat authors in your organization about changes to a project’s structure, like any pages in any projects being moved to sandboxes or deleted. You or your team members need to redo any broken cross-document links caused by revising a project’s structure.

Create a Link to Another Inkdoc

1. Use EchoInk for Web to log into your library.
2. Launch the Inkdoc that you want to link to.
3. Click a TOC page with a page icon. 
4. Copy the URL from the URL bar.
5. In Edit mode, select the text that you want to turn into a link.
6. Select Insert Link from the link menu in the toolbar.
7. Change from Link Page to Link URL in the dropdown menu.
8. Paste or enter the URL you copied in Step 4 into the URL: field.
9. Click Add.
10. Click Save.
11. Click Preview and test the link.

Be sure to also test the cross-document links in your published Inkdoc.