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Parature Download Module

In this article I will talk about uploading, organising and publishing files for downloading.

In common situations, companies might need to support their customers by providing information via Downloading files to troubleshoot an issue or maybe prevent an issue. Knowledge Base articles are not enough and downloading files are necessary for any company that wants to provide an efficient diverse customer support.


Let's say we have a company called Kiwi Bikers that specialises in selling motorbikes. Kiwi Bikers wants to provide the sales brochures for all bikes that are available in the showroom for public use. Also, the company wants to give private access to all bike owners to download Owner's Manual.
So the customer support portal should contain two types of downloads, one opened for downloading public files for public visitors and two, is limited access to download private files for existing customers. Private files can only be accessed by registering an account and logging in to the portal.

Before we start uploading files, we need to configure the hierarchy of the files to make it easier for visitors to navigate and find their files quickly.

Here is how I am going to logically organise my folders.

 

Be aware that My Knowledge Base folder has to be your root folder in order to give access to your visitors (either Private or Public).

To create a new folder, select My Knowledge Base -your root folder- and click on New.

 

Enter your folder name and the description.

 

    You can sort your files under this folder alphabetically, by date, or by popularity.

 

If the customer portal is live and you still need some time to organise your folders, you can set the Folder Privacy to Private until you finish, then you can come back and set it to Public later.

Note: This action applies to all files and subfolders.

 

Click Save when you finish.

Repeat the same steps and until you are satisfied.

Here is my end result.

 

 

Now let's add some dummy PDF files.
To create new downloadable files, you can upload your files individually or in bulk.
To upload one file, click on New File.

 

 

Specify your file location by uploading it from your local hard drive or from an external URL.

 



The file title is shown on the portal but not the file name.
If you want to upload this file to multiple folders at the same time, hold CTRL key and select the desired folders.

 

 

The next section is about the EULA and the security of the file.

 

 

The first field specifies the EULA. I'll talk about creating EULA in the end of this article.
As you can see, you can only define one EULA per file.
Next you, you can decide whether to publish the file as soon as you click Save or keep it in Draft until you're ready to publish it.

The next field is assigning a SLA from existing SLAs.
The last field is regarding assigning the File to an existing Product. Click Fast Forward and select your product from the Product Catalogue.

In the last section, you can specify the access of the file. In this example, only logged in customers are able to download files from the portal as I will show later.

 

Click Save, then you'll see all the uploaded(s) files in a table.

 

 

You can change the settings for any file at any time.

 

In case of you don't know the meaning of EULA, simply it stands for end-user license agreement. According to Wikipedia's definition, it is a contract between the licensor and purchaser. In Parature, you can write your own EULA, to limit the usage of the downloadable files. For example, you can define 2 EULAs, the first one is for public files and the second is for private files. The first one would agree with user to distribute the file but not manipulating or amending the file in anyway. The second EULA would agree with users to not distribute the file to anyone.

 

To create EULA, Click on EULA.

 

Click Create EULA

 

 

Fill all fields and click Save.

 

The last thing I want to show is how the browser would show the file to public visitors.

 

 

I know this page looks completely ugly but that's due to the CSS styles. The portal is shipped with no CSS styling and you can design and change it in any way you want.
Roshan, my colleague, will write an article about changing the styles of the portal in the future.

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