Sending links to unpublished documents

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You can let users without direct access to Kentico view documents that haven’t been published on the live site. This is useful, for example, when you want someone from outside the system to review a document before it gets published.

  1. In the Pages application, click on the document that you want to send to the user.
  2. Switch to the Properties -> General tab.
  3. Click on the Show preview link. A new window with a preview of the document opens (similar to what you can see in Preview mode).
  4. Copy the address of the document from your browser’s address bar.

You can now send the address to anyone without access to Kentico. For example, by copying the address into an e-mail. 

If you don’t want the link to be functional anymore, use the Generate preview button next to the Show preview link. The system creates a new link and the previous one becomes obsolete.

Viewing documents through the preview URL

Documents viewed through the preview URL behave differently than normal Kentico documents:

  • An info panel at the top of the preview document shows the name of the user who generated the preview URL. For example, a document preview generated under the context of a user with the Global administratorprivilege level shows web parts hidden to a user in the Editor role.
  • Links on the preview document leading to other parts of the website are intentionally disabled with the exception of links leading to other domains.

Preview links are also included in workflow notification emails. In this case, the preview URL is generated in the context of the user who performed the workflow action. 

Configuration

By default, the system generates new preview URLs automatically for documents under workflow whenever the document’s workflow cycle is restarted. That is when the document switches from the Published/Archived step to the Edit step.

You can disable this behavior in Settings -> Content -> Content management by enabling the Allow permanent preview links setting.