How to upload and share PDF Documents?

When we first implemented we hosted PDF and documents like that in channels (using Coach & Share) but it was clear that an LMS is just not a good place for this type of thing, so we stopped doing it. We have an AWS bucket and/or Confluence, Sharepoint, etc. for document storage and use that. The LMS is for “formal learning” which basically is courses and learning plans. Interested to see how others have approached this.

​@ponnammal.sundaram I agree with ​@mark that the LMS may not be the best suited platform for document sharing.  However, if you aren’t necessarily concerned with the ‘complete’ record and are set on the LMS for this, you could group the documents in a course by upload or links and make them available using file repository.  Users could enroll and download or view what they want, but without any true content there’s nothing to mark complete or track progress.

Good luck!

Thanks, Mark. And yes, I agree that an LMS shouldn't be looked at as a documentation portal. We are migrating from another customer support platform that currently hosts our downloadable product guides, so I am exploring whether Docebo could serve as a home for those resources alongside our customer training. I will do a small POC and see how it goes. Thanks for sharing your experience!

We implemented something very similar to this for accompanying material for some technical courses that the client didn't want to have on the ILT course it was related too, naming the CBT the same name as the ILT but then adding “(Supporting Materials)” so it was similar but easy enough to know it wasn't the ILT.

We gave it is own catalog and made that catalog viewable to all users. If you use a catalog, you can either let everyone see it or only a certain group/branch etc. see it, whatever fits you need in your case.

To provide more detail - there are two major issues with it, in my experience:

1. Users have to “enroll” into a course just to download a PDF. This is not typical UX and is confusing and annoying to users.
2. Once enrolled, they view it via a strange player, again bad UX for this purpose. You use a “Download” training material but again, bad UX.

At my company people insisted on using it as we didn’t have a better alternative...until they started to actually use it and found out how bad it is, which resulted in no one using it...

Thanks, ​@Jtischler That's a great suggestion, and I have actually used the File Repository within courses for supporting materials. My current requirement is a little different, though. I am looking for a way to present a browsable list of PDF resources, grouped by user role, for learners to download. Since a single guide can span multiple courses (and vice versa), I am looking at options to avoid binding the documents to individual courses if possible.

Yes, I completely agree. Using a course solely to host PDF documents, without any actual learning content, doesn't feel like the ideal learner experience from a UI/UX perspective. Even with the Quick Enroll option enabled, it doesn't fully remove the friction. 

I tried if I can add files to content center and reference it from a Channel. But it's not working. Channel is limited only to course and learning plan display.

Have you considered using Creator for this? Via Creator, you can now share PDF documents that users don’t have to download but can view instead. You could even get creative and use different tabs if you have multiple documents to share that aligned on the same topic. Creator lessons are pretty easy to set up and manage and could be a centralized location to store and share them.

Jen

Depending on where you host your PDF docs, you could use an iframe widget to pull them in from a site like Sharepoint. or you can use the HTML widget with some CSS to create an appendix style list of links to your PDF docs.

Thanks for the suggestion! We don't have Docebo Creator, as we use external authoring tools to develop our learning content. So I am looking for approaches that can be implemented using the standard LMS features we have available.

Thanks ​@lrnlab I was actually exploring something similar. As a workaround, I experimented with using the CDN URLs generated for PDFs uploaded to Content Center in a custom HTML page. It provides a much cleaner browse-and-download experience, but I found that the CDN URL changes whenever the PDF is replaced, so the links would need to be updated. I'm still looking to see if there's a more elegant solution within Docebo.

I actually don’t agree with a lot of the comments above. We HEAVILY use Discover, Coach, and Share to house things like PDFs, Word Docs, Power Points, links, etc. It seems to work great for what we use it for. We use catalogs AND channels. Send me a message if you want to connect and I can hop on a call with you and show you how we have the content structured. 

Hello Kimberly, I hope is all good on your side,😁

I am interested in this, can we connect? I tested this functionality and I want to promote it more because I think this is a great functionality, also Channels work with cohorts, so I think we can control who access what and how the assets are shared. 

Let me know if we can connect, I am excited!

I also agree with Kimberly, but I wonder if you can share the risks you have found, if you have implemented and tested already. Since Docebo have content Center and there is full column for assests I wonder what you have found that identified as risky. 

Thank you, dear Community!

I have learners that need access to even just a few documents in PDF and have resorted to using google drive (could be any cloud drive) and linked that to widgets so that they can for example get a course schedule for aspects of the training we offer that are not 100% in the LMS, but linked.

Inside a course there are ways of sharing docs and so on, but you cannot provide easily docs to people not enrolled in a course. Discover Coach and Share is very expensive to add what I consider many standard features including sharing a document along with URLs and other things that I have to use HTML and a Widget for.

Docebo provide images, videos, and so on to create an environment around the courses/LPs/catalogues, but sort of stops there to provide additional basic tools. I find the LMS amazing, but aspects of it have been ruined by making everything cater to those that can afford the very expensive adds-on components that later on you find you need to do basic things to create an environment for the learners. 

Of course! Feel free to message me!