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Unable to Open PDF in AGOL only Download- New as of Feb 29, 2024

CaseyWilson1

At the City of Springfield, we share authoritative pdf maps, like regulatory zoning, with the pubic via our ArcGIS online Hub. Previous to today, February 29, 2024, the pdf behavior when in AGOL and the Hub, is that you have the choice to Open and then download a pdf document. Today, the pdf we uploaded can only be downloaded from the Hub and when in AGOL.

We would like people to be able to view the pdf and not have to download the pdf. Did something change with the February 2024 AGOL update? Is there a setting I need to consider?

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RandallWilliams

Hi All,

This was an intentional change, and I'll tell you why.

In almost all web applications, PDFs are uploaded to the app by a trusted source. ArcGIS Online is different in that we allow our many users to upload their own PDFs and share them broadly. When PDFs are generated and uploaded by a trusted source (eg: the site owner), we can be reasonably assured that the PDF has not been changed with a text editor to introduce malicious JavaScript.

If an unsuspecting user opens a file containing malicious JS that is hosted on our ArcGIS.com domain while they are currently logged in, a browser's cross domain restrictions are effectively defeated. This leaves our users vulnerable to a, common, dangerous, easily exploited and typically severe type of attack called "stored cross-site scripting".

Adobe also recognizes this risk, and offers options to prevent JS execution in Acrobat. Browser plugins also have the ability to block JavaScript - but how effective is relying on an end user to enable this functionality?

We understand that this is an unpopular change.

We strive to achieve a risk aware balance between "security" and "usability". This style of attack is well known and has been thoroughly documented. This is not a hypothetical - it is a real, persistent threat that we are responding to.

We working to identify technologies that can identify and sanitize malicious scripts from PDFs and other files, but this is difficult challenge because PDF files are designed to use JavaScript code. We are also looking into PDF viewers that are either sandboxed or do not support JavaScript at all.

We appreciate your feedback regarding this change - it does not go unheard. We look forward to providing a better, more secure option to providing an in-line experience for serving PDFs in a future release.

JoseBarrios1

Hi Randall,

I want to confirm my understanding of how this change will impact Experience Builder and the use of the Embed widget to access PDF documents. Are we no longer able to embed a PDF hosted in ArcGIS Online and have it open directly within Experience Builder?.

If this is the case, could someone please update the help esri help documentation at this link?

Thanks

All comments

JoshThue

this is exactly what i just spent most of the day dealing with, thinking there must be something wrong w/ the pdf, etc. what an absolute nightmare this application gives me every time i'm unfortunately forced to use it

sidenote: my favorite bug is clicking a date in the calendar when adding an event, only to have it select the day prior to the date i selected. that's the most fun bug i've experienced until today's PDF disaster

JoshThue

RebeccaRichman

Hi @CaseyWilson1 and @JoshThue,

Thanks for the feedback! It looks like this is a expected change, but I have passed your concerns on to the developers, so they are aware of your frustrations.

Rebecca

RandallWilliams

Hi All,

This was an intentional change, and I'll tell you why.

We understand that this is an unpopular change.

CaseyWilson1

Thanks @RebeccaRichman for passing this along to the developers.

CaseyWilson1

@RandallWilliams Thanks for the explanation. Look forward to your continued efforts at pdf viewers. It would have been helpful to have that documented, but now it is! Maybelike if I want to share a pdf with the public, I should post it on the Enterprise Portal and share it as a collaboration. I'll look into that.

RandallWilliams

Heard. Pinged support to provide a kB.

RandallWilliams

That could work - I haven't tested that behavior. If your ArcGIS Enterprise is public facing and the PDF is public anyway, you can just share the URL "by reference" instead of via collaboration, too.

I've noticed that Firefox gives me actions for how I want files to be used.

For me at least, Firefox downloads the file locally then opens the downloaded file. (eg: file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/doc.pdf). That's cool and a lot less dangerous.

Chrome and Edge just download the file but don't open them. I haven't looked for an extension that will do it for those browsers. YMMV.

Amanda.Huber@threeriversparks.org_trpd

Adding our voice to this. This is a very frustrating change that broke a large portion of our public maps workflow. It was not communicated to us, the customers and came by surprise after this last AGOL update. From this thread it sounds like others are just as surprised.

Please re-consider finding a solution that's safe to host. In the meantime we will be scrambling to resolve our broken maps that are consumed daily by the public.

Best,

Amanda Huber

Three Rivers Park District

JamesBurton1

Well dang. That changes my whole plan for our website. I'm glad you understand this an unpopular change... wish we could have found an alternative solution other than breaking an established functionality with zero notice.

JamesBurton1

I'm moving all my PDFs to google cloud where they do open instead of download. A pretty simple work-around.

Amanda.Huber@threeriversparks.org_trpd

That's great for you, but most government organizations are unable to utilize/host in the Google Suite. I know this is an issue for quite a few gov. orgs here in the Midwest.

So far we haven't found another good workaround (no go for Dropbox for our org), but we're still looking.

Would love to hear what others are using to host until/if Esri resolves this issue.

ThomasBucher

Hi @RandallWilliams ,

Do you know if a PDF viewer has been added to Hub? I only ask because I logged into one of my Hub sites and was able to view my documents directly in the web page. The odd thing is that this was only the case for some of our Hub sites while some others were still forcing a download.

Just wondering if there's been any updates over the past two weeks.

Amanda.Huber@threeriversparks.org_trpd

We did some testing on this.
It appears that any PDF that has been updated since the recent AGOL release is now requiring download everywhere and in ArcGIS Hub as well. If it hasn't been updated, it appears to still be 'viewable' in the browser.

ThomasBucher

I see. Thank you for your reply Amanda, that would explain the behavior I'm seeing with our PDFs.

RandallWilliams

The change that we put in was to set the content-disposition header on the uploaded PDF to "attachment" instead of "inline".

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Disposition

We did not go back and retroactively change PDFs uploaded before this update.

davepete22

This is a very unwelcome change. A heads up would have been greatly appreciated, changes entire workflows as others have mentioned.

davepete22

For my situation, I did find a workaround. I was using PDF's linked to in Survey123 and instead of saving my Word doc as a PDF, I saved it as a JPEG instead and that is able to be viewed in browser instead of downloaded. Hope this is an option for some of you.

Amanda.Huber@threeriversparks.org_trpd

This is a great workaround for quickly viewing graphics, but unfortunately screen readers cannot read images like PDFs. So any text on your map is lost for those with accessibility needs.

Alternate text would fill that gap but not be comprehensive as it can't capture everything that's in the map.

Just something to think about!

HectorValleRuiz

I agree with most of the comments. Even though some of the previously mentioned workarounds might help with specific situations, the change is unexpected and a major issue for many consolidated workflows. Let's hope that the alternative PDF Viewers allow to implement a solution soon enough

J_DavidMacLean

Hi there: take care on moving PDFs to Google Cloud. I had many there and things worked fine for a while. Then Google blocked them with a "violation of Terms of Service" (or something similar) message. After that, I started using ArcGIS Online to host them. Worked great until I uploaded a PDF today, finding the same situation as others in this thread. (The nature of "my PDFs": mini-resumes of our GIS Industry-ready students; here's a working example https://bit.ly/COGS2022Grads. ) All the best, Dave

AndrewTurner

@JoshThue on the issue with Hub Events selection - we are getting close to a major update for Hub events that will improve overall usability and will remove bugs like this.

WhitneyPatterson

We're dealing with the same issue as a government organization. We use Box for file retention and I tested hosting a PDF in a public-facing Box folder and using that URL in the embed widget for Experience Builder. However, now I'm running into inconsistencies across internet browsers as to what will be displayed in the embed widget when using that externally hosted URL. Chrome will sometimes initially display the embedded PDF, but then will break and display an error (yes, I have the PDF reader extension installed). Firefox and Edge works and I haven't even begun to test mobile browsers. I'm having similar issues hosting in SharePoint.

In order to be transparent with the public, we have historically relied on the embed widget to display multi-page data and process documentation. Having to configure this documentation in other EXB widgets and formatting for different screen resolutions would be an incredibly time consuming and impractical endeavor as the app currently exists. This change unfortunately renders the embed widget useless for our uses. It would be nice to have options and a road map for this versus taking away a functionality and leaving it to users to first of all discover the issue, and then spend countless hours trying to find a work around.

MapsAreFun

Hi Amanda,
I'm keen to hear if you come up with a solution to this issue. We also have an ESRI site that was designed to deliver PDF maps which has been broken by the upgrade. Previously users could preview the map and decide if they want to download it. As we can no longer preview PDFs in portal it now automatically downloads the PDFs and presents a blank white screen where the map was previously.

Rhonda_Houser

Hi @RandallWilliams

Do you know the date this went into effect for ArcGIS Online? Thanks!

xanderm

February 2024 AGOL update

LoreyStinton

Have there been any changes/updates to allow pdfs to open instead of downloading? The same issue appears to be occurring with buttons/links to pdfs in StoryMaps. For example, within a StoryMap the links to "older" pdfs will open in a new tab but updated pdfs automatically download. The creator of the StoryMap doesn't want the pdfs to automatically download, the pdfs just need to open in a new tab/view.

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