How to customize the WP admin default help contents

Question

I will be needing to customize the WP admin default help contents to be tailored specifically to a client in navigating his custom dashboard

What are the hooks and sample codes to use in restructuring its menu and the contents?

Answer 1

Files to look at: wp-admin/includes/wp-current-screen.php and wp-admin/admin-header.php

If we take a look at admin-header.php we can see that $current_screen->render_screen_meta(); is the one responsible for rendering the contextual help on screens. It gets the global $current_screen which is set via WP_Screen class.

It has methods like get_help_tabs,get_help_tab,add_help_tab,remove_help_tab,remove_help_tabs , set_help_sidebar which sets and removes the tabs we see. Check the following code for sample.

/* 
We can hook into admin_head-{$page_hook}. admin_head fires after the 
default contextual help tabs have been added.
*/
add_action('admin_head-index.php', 'wpse_226724_add_help_tab');
function wpse_226724_add_help_tab () {

    $screen = get_current_screen();

    //checking whether we are on dashboard main page or not
    if ( $screen->id != 'dashboard' )
        return;

    //You can remove all default tabs using this
    //$screen->remove_help_tabs();

    //Adding tab with an id overview it gets replaced if tab is already available with same id
    $screen->add_help_tab( array(
        'id' => 'overview',
        'title' => __('WPSE'),
        'content' => '<p>'
        . __( 'Welcome to the WPSE community. Get a taste of WordPress!', 'text_domain' )
        . '</p>',
    ) );
}

We can use get_help_tabs to re-order the tabs. Default tabs available on main dashboard page (wp-admin/index.php) are:

• overview

• help-navigation

• help-layout

• help-content

And one sidebar help