Best Practices: Uploading PDF Files

If you are uploading them into a course, I am mostly positive you can use the Slide converter it will put the PDF into a format that cannot be downloaded, but still be an object that people need to scroll through in order for it to be marked complete.

@Annarose.Peterson Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for. Definitely a bit a rookie here so hopefully that wasn’t too obvious of a question 

Hi @jhaynes  the slide converter will as @Annarose.Peterson  describes except that it marks the object as complete the moment it’s launched...we don’t use it for just that reason.

You could use a course authoring tool to add a SCORM wrapper to your PDF docs and set some parameters that would only mark the object as completed once they've viewed x% of content or reach page x, etc.

@jhaynes We use the asset view in coach & share, as it is a much better experience.  You can then load an HTML object link to the asset within the course itself.

Has anyone found a way to serve up a PDF with links? We tried using asset view in coach & share but it makes an image of the PDF and forces the user to download it to interact w/ links.

Then we tried storing the PDFs on a different system and making the C&S assets be links to the source file. Not a great UX obviously.

Anyone have other ways to get straight to a source file? 😉

The only way I was able to achieve that was by hosting the PDF somewhere like AWS or Azure and then link the PDF to the page, or iFrame the PDF onto the page.

@Annarose.Peterson 

“The only way I was able to achieve that was by hosting the PDF somewhere like AWS or Azure and then link the PDF to the page, or iFrame the PDF onto the page.”

I came across this post as I was looking up to see recommended ways to upload information assets to a Channel, the PDF just does’t show up as we wanted and it involves a lot of scrolling for the users. When you said link the PDF to the page or iFrame the PDF onto the page, do you mean you are uploading a link instead of the PDF file as an asset? 

Hi @teresa.mycity.org !  This is the process you would follow if you want to provide a user with a PDF that is not put up in a channel or a course.  For example, you want to provide the user with like a user guide, or marketing material but don’t need to track the usage of the document.