Citizen Space includes a PDF document embedder which can be accessed from the rich text (or WYSIWYG) editor from any consultation. This provides in-built document display functionality within the application for PDF documents. It is also possible to use a third-party document viewer such as Google Viewer to embed documents.
Where can I use this functionality?
The document embedder can be used anywhere there is a rich text editor available. This includes the consultation overview page and within the survey questions themselves. A great way of ensuring that consultations are interesting and engaging is to include documents between the actual consultation questions themselves. This can be achieved through the addition of an 'additional text' component or alternatively a 'fact bank'. Documents embedded between a question and the answer component can for example, provide useful context for respondents.
How do I upload a document into my rich text editor?
The first thing you need to do is upload your document to Citizen Space's document library. This is done by clicking the 'document viewer' icon when using any rich text editor within the app:
This will bring up another window:
Click the 'Upload' tab and then select 'Choose file' just below it. You'll need to browse to the file on your computer. Once you've found it, click on 'Send it to the Server'. Click 'OK', and the document will now be included in the page that you were editing.
Additional information
How does the document embedder work?
The embedder uses either Adobe Reader or the PDF reader built into the user's browser to display the document. If the browser doesn’t support PDF embedding, it will automatically show you a link to download the document.
Does the embedder include a scroll bar and zoom functionality?
This depends on the browser you are using to view the document. Most modern browsers will display a scroll bar and zoom functionality as available. Adobe Reader doesn't tend to include grab buttons as standard.
Is there anything else I need to do?
In order to ensure an alternative option for downloading the document is always available, we recommend providing a 'download this document' link underneath the embedded PDF.
Click the link icon from the rich text editor.
When you go to add a link to some text, on the first tab of the link managing window you'll see a 'Browse Server' button and if you select it, you can choose to link to any PDFs which have already been embedded in the consultation (since they've already been uploaded to the Citizen Space server).
For accessibility reasons, we'd also recommend stating the file type and size after the link, as well as a warning if the link opens in a new tab/window.
