Feature - EP-3764 File Previews
- Lisa Clancy
Loaded to production in release 5.08.0 on Apr 25, 2023 we are pleased to announce we have added new functionality, that will give you the ability to preview a range of different files uploaded to epaPRO. The previews are available across epaPRO, with contracts being the only area not supported for the time being.
These previews may not be 100% accurate, but will help provide an idea of what the document is before having to download it.
So taking the Apprentice Files section as our example, you will now see View has been added:-
selecting View will open the preview within your default browser.
There will be a Download button bottom left of the screen, which you can use to download the file. Depending on the file type there may also be the download icon (top right) that you usually see on the browser page.
The supported files are:
File Type | Extension | Details |
|---|---|---|
Word documents | .docx .doc .odt .rtf | These will all be rendered as a PDF and the PDF will then be previewed using the browser’s built-in PDF reader. Depending on the structure of the document it may not be previewed perfectly but will provide an idea of the content of the file. |
Text document | .txt | These will be previewed as is |
Excel Spreadsheets | .xlsx .xls .ods .csv | These will be rendered into a preview table. For performance reasons we will only show the first 100 rows and columns A-Z. |
PDF documents | These will be rendered using the browser’s built-in PDF reader. | |
Image files | .png .jpg .gif | These will be rendered as is. |
Video files | .mp4 .ogv | These will be rendered using the browser’s video player. |
Audio files | .mp3 .ogg .wav | These will be rendered using the browser’s audio player. |
Please note that some of these are dependent on the browser’s supported formats. We cannot guarantee all devices or browsers will be able to preview all of the formats supported.
Limitation Previewing Word files
Please Note: Web browsers do not natively support previewing MS Office documents and so the approach we use is to convert the Word document to a PDF file, that we then return to your browser to preview.
Whilst this works relatively well for simple documents, there is a known issue where images, checkboxes, shapes, tables, and other elements of the document may not be scaled down or rendered properly. This is a drawback to the method we use, but was considered acceptable, given the benefits the previewing functionality provides.
Should the system we use improve support for these previews, then it is something that we may be able to improve over time