Attaching Documents to Items

 

PIM Enterprise provides a simple method to manually add document attachments to your items.

Importing Documents

You can import documents into the PIM through the Standard Import method.  You can see the details on how that import works in the Standard Import article.  There are a couple of formatting tips you can use to determine how your documents will look on the website.

Friendly Name:

If you want to show a friendly name instead of the name of the document on the website, you can enter the friendly name and then the name of the file separated by a pipe character in your import sheet.  For instance, if you wanted a particular document to display "Instruction Sheet" on the website, instead of the filename RFD-111.pdf, you would put the following text in the Documents column of your import sheet:

Instruction Sheet|RFD-111.pdf

Multiple Documents with One Item:

If you want to add multiple documents through import, separate them with a semicolon.  This will work with and without friendly names.  For example, to add two documents with friendly names to an item, you would format the Documents column something like this:

Instruction Sheet|RFD-111.pdf;Warranty|RLDW-1345.pdf

The item you attached the document links to would then display Instruction Sheet and Warranty as two separate links.

Attaching Documents in the PIM

Documents can be attached to items through the "Attachments/Tags" tab.  This is done by either pasting the Path/URL to the document into the field and clicking "Add Document URL" or by using the "..." button to browse your local computer for the file.  Once you have specified the location of the file(s), click "Save" near the bottom.

WebAllliance recognizes the following file types for document attachments:

  • .pdf
  • .doc and .docx
  • .xls and .xlsx
  • .txt

The location for the file will change once you click "Save".  This is because a copy of the original is stored in a location-specific to PIM.  The standard location for this is:

\\[GATEWAY SERVER NAME]\PIMRepo\DOCUMENTS

Rearranging Documents

Once you have added your documents, you can rearrange the order of the documents in the PIM to allow them to display in that order on your website.  Simply drag and drop the documents in your list into the order you need and save.  After saving, those documents will stay in that order.  They will publish and live push in the order specified as well.

Detaching the Documents

If you no longer want a document to be attached to the item, simply select the file you want to detach and hit the "DEL" key on the keyboard.  Once you have it detached, click "Save" near the bottom. 

This will only detach the document from the item.  It does NOT delete the file from the PIMRepo folder.  From time to time, you might consider using the "Clean File Repository" feature from the "Tools" menu.  This will remove images or documents from the PIMRepo folders that aren't currently attached to items.