PDF viewer custom card

Minimize clicks by having PDFs display inline

What it does

Makes any PDF uploaded to the intranet display as an embed on its document page. Or allows the addition of any PDF to any other page to display inline.

Complexity

Installation

All free custom cards are automatically available on ThoughtFarmer and can be added to content templates. (To learn more, see Create and edit default templates and Modify a page template.) Details about the cards can be found on the ThoughtFarmer Admin panel: User interface section > Custom cards page.

Configuration

• PDF Viewer global: No configuration required, the card will automatically take all PDFs uploaded and embed them into the doc page.
• PDF Viewer: Copy the content ID (unique number found in the URL) of a PDF's file details page. Go to the page where you want to embed it, add the PDF Viewer card, and input the copied content ID into the card's settings. For example:
• {"pdfContentId": 8767}

Requirements and limitations

PDF browser plugin

The PDF viewer requires that the user's browser has a compatible plugin available.
Edge, FireFox, Chrome, Safari: All come with their own PDF plugin.

Some mobile browsers may not have an available plugin. If not, users will see a message letting them know they are not able to view the PDF.

Advanced features

Different browser plugins have different feature sets that they support. Most basic PDFs should display without issues. However, some advanced PDF features will require testing for all browsers you wish to use. If a feature in a specific PDF file is not supported, the browser will display a message similar to the following:

The most-used features that may cause this are:

• Fillable forms: Most of the big browsers are starting to support this now. However, each of them have their own interfaces for printing or saving a local copy of the filled-out form.
• Security passwords: If you have locked the PDF or added a security via password mechanism then most PDF plugins will not be able to display it. It must be downloaded and viewed in Adobe Acrobat.
• Annotations: There is mixed support for this. Some annotations will not appear and can only be viewed in the desktop application. This may not produce an error, but instead may simply not be displayed and users will not know it is missing.