Hyperlinks to files on local computer

Feature Requests
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#1

Greetings - I am trying to build a document management application and I note that Honeycode does not have an efile data type. I also note that in one of your templates you have what appears to be a standard text field with a website URL saved as a text string in that field. When you select that field a popup appears over it with the same hyperlink and when you click this it takes you to the website. The documents I am trying to access are stored locally on by harddrive. I am currently using Excel to track the documents and I just use the CONCATENATE function to build a full DOS path to the document on my computer. I have tried a similar approach in Honeycode using the "file" URL method but I cannot get that to work. I assumed that if the "http" URL worked then the "file" URL type should work as well. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Skip

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#3

Hi Skip! :honeybee:

I tested this out and am seeing the same behavior as you (local file links being seen as plain text rather than URLs).

I'm passing this along to our team as an improvement request to support different hyperlink formats.

Just so our team has more info, could you provide a bit more around your use case?

#6

I have also encountered problems trying to insert hyperlinks to web addresses. For example when I try to insert this address: "https://ico.org.uk" I find that it is not recognised as a hyperlink address. I have tried inserting lots of different valid website addresses to this template but find that they are not recognised within the template as hyperlinks - just read as a string of text. This is causing me a lot of frustration upset as I am trying to convert a template that I have formatted in both Excel and Google Sheets into a honeycode template. All hyperlink addresses work in microsoft and google sheets; however none of these hyperlinks work in honeycode??

#8

Hi Alyssa and thanks for your time response.

The use case is fairly straight forward. I am trying to build a simple document management system to replace the one that I am currently using which is built in Excel. I scan documents, or capture PDF files and save them in a directory structure with simple 5 digit filename (e.g. 20401.pdf). I then have an Excel worksheet where I am capturing the metadata about the documents (e.g., date, document type, document category, document originator, a comment field, etc.). There is a single line in the Excel spreadsheet for each document and one of the metadata fields stores the five digit file name. In another field I concatenate the full DOS path to the directory where the document is stored and append the filename and file extension to create a link to the document file which is stored on the hard drive on my computer. The directories where the documents are stored and the Excel file itself are all mirrored to a cloud-based storage server for offsite redundant backup. I can use Excel multi-field filtering to locate the document(s) I want to view and then I simple click on the cell with the file link DOS path and the document is launched in Acrobat reader or whatever app is associated with the file type. It works great, however, I now have several hundred documents in the system and Excel is starting to get a little sluggish and taking longer to do a save or search. I can build a similar app in Honeycode. Storing the metadata fields is easy and I already have that largely completed, but, unless I can construct a "live link" in Honeycode that will open and launch a locally stored file - like Honeycode currently does with an http URL type, then the rest of the application has little use. I thought that since Honeycode supports launching an "http" website URL that it would also launch the "file" URL as well - but - apparently not.

Based on my experience with other low code application platforms I would assume that the ability to handle an efile data type - by either storing the document on an AWS storage service, or, providing a link to a locally stored file will be a "must have" feature for many customers.

Thanks again,
Skip H - Principal Consultant
Glastonbury Consulting, LLC
Alpharetta, GA 30004

#9

Hi @kevi-ef1e, welcome to the community and thanks for chiming in here! :honeybee:

Your feedback is helpful for us to have - I'm adding your notes to the improvement request to support different hyperlink formats.

@Kenn-95a0 Thank you, Skip, for your use case details as well. This allows our team to understand your flow and how you would like to be using Honeycode. As yours revolves more around files specifically, I'll also relate your notes to another improvement request we've received around attachment support.

For your last comment on storing on documents on an AWS service, you can store files on other AWS services such as S3, and link them into your Honeycode app. You can also connect Honeycode data to these services with either with Honeycode APIs or Amazon AppFlow. Just areas to explore, but meanwhile our team will be evaluating the hyperlink support request. :honey_pot: