Requirement: Public Access to PDF Attachments in Knowledge Articles

sravs
Tera Contributor

3 weeks ago

We have a requirement:

1.We have a public facing article, that has screenshots of steps to finalising a candidates onboarding process. We also have attached 2 PDFs of this process as well, however, when we check the box to 'show attachments' it will show all the screenshot jpegs AND the PDFs. Is there an out of the box way to exclude showing the screenshot jpgs?

2. If the above is not possible, I think an alternate process is to embed the links to the two PDFs in the KB article and have those links open in a new window, but currently I don't think those links are public facing.

I have checked there is not OOO functionality to do this.

I'm trying to do embed the PDF links in the article body , Could anyone give suggesions how to proceed on this?

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mza-guille
Giga Contributor

3 weeks ago

Hi sravs,

For the standard Knowledge article behavior, the "show attachments" option is all-or-nothing for the article attachments. It does not give you an out-of-box filter like "show only PDF attachments but hide JPG/PNG attachments."

For your requirement, I would use this pattern instead:

  1. Keep the screenshots inside the article body as inline images.
  2. Do not rely on "show attachments" if you do not want all files listed together.
  3. Add only the two PDF links in the article body, with clear link text such as "Download onboarding process PDF".
  4. Test the article as a public/unauthenticated user, not only as an admin or logged-in user.

If the PDF links are not public, check the article and knowledge base access first:

  • The knowledge base must allow public read access through the correct User Criteria.
  • The article itself must be visible to public users.
  • The portal/page used to display the knowledge article must also be public.
  • The attachment should remain attached to the article that public users can read.

I would avoid making a broad sys_attachment ACL just to expose PDF files publicly. That can become risky because attachments are used across many tables. If you need custom behavior, a safer custom approach is to update/clone the knowledge article widget or template so it lists only attachments where the file name ends with .pdf for knowledge articles.

So the practical answer is:

  • OOTB show attachments: no file-type filtering.
  • Simple solution: hide the attachment list and put only the PDF links in the article body.
  • Custom solution: customize the portal/widget logic to display only PDF attachments.
  • Security check: always test as a public user to confirm the PDFs open without exposing unintended attachments.