iFormBuilder Company
Table of Contents
- What is Media Storage Location?
- How do I Edit Media Configuration?
- Selecting Media Storage Location
- Accessing the Media
- No Authentication: CloudFiles Public, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and AWS S3 Public
- Authentication Required: Private Media, OneDrive and SharePoint
What is Media Storage Location?
Within the Company Info tab, scroll to the bottom of the page to see Media Storage Location. This is where you can link in to different media storage applications, including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint and AWS S3. You can also store your media (images, audio, signatures) on our content network. Once a selection is made, all new media will be directed to that location.
PLEASE NOTE: Changing the location does NOT move any of the existing files you may have already created. If any service besides S3 is selected and results in a failure, S3 will be used as a failover storage location.
How do I Edit Media Configuration?
STEP 1. Click on "Edit Media Configuration".
STEP 2. You will see a page that looks similar to the image below. You will then have the following options:
- Link or Re-Link: When the button says Link, click here to link an account. You will then be asked to log in to that application and accept permission for iFormBuilder to access the account. Once an account has been Linked, the buttons turns to Re-Link. Re-link will allow you to change the external account you are linked to.
- Unlink: Clicking here will disconnect the 2 accounts.
There are 4 icons to be aware of when linking an account.
The application has been successfully linked.
The application is not linked.
Error in the connection with that app.
The current place where media is being stored.
Selecting Media Storage Location
To select where you want the media stored that is collected from each completed record, click Select as Media Storage Location.
- Storage Site is only available for Sharepoint media location. You can select from the dropdown of the different Sharepoint Sites created in the linked Sharepoint account. The default selected will be the "Root" Sharepoint Site.
- Storage path in "App" is the directory in where the images will be saved in that app. For example, if "iForm/iFormImages" is entered in storage path, it will look for a folder called "iFormImages" within the top level folder "iForm". If one does not exist, it will create the folder automatically. Please make sure to only enter a path structure in this field.
- If you are using Sharepoint, the storage path is going to start with the top level folder in "Site Contents".
- Storage structure: Within your storage path, you can further define the folder structure that iFormBuilder will create when it saves media from various forms. The Path will start with what you entered in the "Storage Path" field.
- Path/ Profile ID/ Form Name/ File Name will save media to a specific directory based on profile ID and form name. For example, If you have media uploaded from many different forms, each will have a separate folder within a higher level profile folder.
- Path/ File Name will upload all the media into one folder that you selected within the storage path, regardless of what form the media belongs to.
With some apps, like Box, you can share connections with other profiles. By checking Share connection across profiles checkbox (requires dedicated database) the other profiles on your database will be able to use the same account without linking each profile directly. All profiles that are sharing the connection can save as well as reference media on the account.
You can switch your media storage anytime.
PLEASE NOTE: You can not transfer media already stored on one location to a different location automatically. If you have any questions regarding this, please reach out to us.
Accessing the Media
There are a couple ways in which you can get access to the URL of the data:
- POST endpoints
- Admin Portal
- API
There are some differences in workflow depending on which media location you choose.
No Authentication: CloudFiles Public, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and AWS S3 Public
When media is uploaded to any of these storage locations, the file becomes public. While it is public, the filename is filled with random characters so no one can guess it, for example in DropBox the URL would look like https://dl.dropbox.com/s/tgu0zoevodda5vh/field_1676411560ae527611de4.jpg?dl=0. What this means is that the media is easier to use for downstream purposes such as Webmerge where it pulls the image from the URL and places it in the document. There is no need for Authentication.
One thing to note about Google Drive is that the url does not end with an extension (ie .png or .jpeg) like other urls. For example, Box’s URL looks like https://app.box.com/shared/static/2q6yxvi7q4qsnsdk.png where Google Drive has https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=abcdefghhi&ext=jpeg . Notice that there is a parameter called ‘ext’ that defines what the extension of the file is.
Authentication Required: CloudFiles Private Media, OneDrive and SharePoint
These media locations require authentication to access. The authentication happens either when logging in through the admin portal or API. The URL will look something like OneDriveApi://70E468EA324B!5035.jpeg. Notice how the URL does not follow the standard format. This format lets our server know where to pull the media in the respective storage location.
What this authentication means is that data being used downstream may need to take additional steps to get the media. For example, webmerge would not work because webmerge doesn’t have a means of authenticating with our server to download media. In our API, our GET record response only returns the URL like the example above. With that URL, you will need to do a GET media request to access the image.
You can switch your media storage anytime. PLEASE NOTE: You can not transfer media already stored on one location to a different location automatically. You will have to assign the records and then upload them again in order to save to the new location.
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