In this article, we will look into how to upload public documents on UCM/Content Server and embed them on the application as hyperlinks.
In order to upload the public documents, we need to upload the documents on UCM under the Security Group of ‘Public‘.
By default we won’t get access to “Public” security group.

Table of Contents
Creating Job Role for “Public” Security Group
We need to create a Job Role and add the below roles in Role Hierarchy and finally assign it to the user.


With this security setup, we should now be able to see the security group of “Public” while uploading documents on UCM.
Uploading File to Content Server
Navigate to Content Server using the Content Server link:
https://ucf6-zwax-fa-ext.oracledemos.com/cs
Click on New Check-In > Standard Check-In
Fill in Title, select Security Group as “Public” and browse for the document/image that you want to make publicly available.

Once done, click on Check In button.

Click on Content Info hyperlink to get the hyperlink for the image that we just uploaded.

Right click on Filename and copy the link address

https://ucf6-zwax-fa-ext.oracledemos.com/cs/idcplg?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=2850714&dDocName=UCMFA02848243&allowInterrupt=1
Now, as I have uploaded the file publicly you should be able to download the file if you copy-paste the hyperlink to your browser. However, it will stay there till the instance gets refreshed. Once refreshed the hyperlink won’t work. That’s the drawback of this approach though.
Now, if we open the hyperlink, it will directly download the file to our local machine. However, if we want to open the file in the browser only, we need to add a suffix (&noSaveAs=1) at the end.
https://ucf6-zwax-fa-ext.oracledemos.com/cs/idcplg?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=2850714&dDocName=UCMFA02848243&allowInterrupt=1&noSaveAs=1
If I open the hyperlink now, it shows the online preview instead of the download.

In a similar way we can upload pdf documents for online viewing purpose.
Now, this hyperlink can be added as a Page Entry with an Icon under the Me section or added to a BI Report which can be displayed on the dashboard.
Sample for Creating Page Entry with UCM document hyperlink

Use Cases:
- Upload the Company policies/documents which will be shared with all employees.
- Upload the Recruiting career site background image and add the hyperlink to the career site. We cannot directly upload a background image currently on the career site
- Upload the Onboarding Checklist-related documents like policies, code of conduct, terms and conditions, Benefits guide, payroll guide etc.
Advantages of this approach:
- Less maintenance.
- No need for other SharePoint or google drive systems to upload the company documents.
- Once the document is uploaded to the public security group in production, even after P2T refresh, the test instance can still access the production hyperlink without any issue and there is no need to change those hyperlinks unless the policies/documents differ from production to test pods.
Drawbacks of this approach:
- If you want to maintain different documents/images for Test and PROD PODs, then upon P2T Refresh, we need to re-upload the files with the same Content ID and modify the hyperlinks accordingly as the PROD links need to be replaced with Test/Dev hyperlinks.
- If the Instance is down due to maintenance, then these hyperlinks don’t work if they are being used outside of application.