Category Component 26.1
Category Component Help

# Configure Universal Viewing

Universal viewing is an additional View component configuration that allows View to work out how to retrieve your original documents. It allows you to retrieve documents from various sources to view, without requiring you to use complex logic in your front end components to work out how to send the View request.

NOTE: Universal viewing requires more internal communication between your Knowledge Discovery components, which might affect performance.

When you enable universal viewing, you also configure the location of your document store (an Content component or DAH). You also configure a set of reference fields to specify how to retrieve the original documents (by using Distributed Connector or NiFi Ingest, a Web URL, or from the file system).

To enable universal viewing

1. Open the View component configuration file in a text editor.

2. Add a `[UniversalViewing]` configuration section.

3. In the `[UniversalViewing]` section, set `Enabled` to `True` to enable universal viewing.

4. Set `DocumentStoreHost` and `DocumentStorePort` to the host and port of your primary data index component (either the Content component, or DAH). View uses this component to retrieve the index representation of your documents to find the appropriate reference fields.

5. To use NiFi Ingest for viewing, set `ConnectorGroupField` to the name of a document field that contains the connector group for a document.

6. Set one or more of the following parameters to specify the reference fields in your documents that View must use to retrieve the documents from the associated sources:

   `DistributedConnectorReferenceField` | The document reference field that contains a reference that View Server can use to retrieve the document by using the Distributed Connector or NiFi Ingest. To use this option, you must configure the details for the Distributed Connector or NiFi in the `[Viewing]` section. See Configure View to Use a Distributed Connector or NiFi Ingest.
   `FileSystemReferenceField` | The document reference field that contains a reference value that View Server can use to retrieve the document from a local file system or network share.
   `WebURLField` | The document reference field that contains a reference value that View Server can use to retrieve the document from the Web.

7. Save and close the configuration file.

8. Restart the View component for your changes to take effect.

For example:

    [UniversalViewing]
    Enabled=True
    ConnectorGroupField=CONNECTOR_GROUP
    DocumentStoreHost=localhost
    DocumentStorePort=9900
    DistributedConnectorReferenceField=AUTN_IDENTIFIER
    WebURLField=DREREFERENCE
    FileSystemReferenceField=ORIGINAL_LOCATION

When you send a viewing request, the View component uses the requested reference to retrieve the index representation of the document from the document store. It then attempts to find the configured reference fields in the document:

- If the document has the configured `DistributedConnectorReferenceField`, View attempts to retrieve the document by using the Distributed Connector or NiFi Ingest. For this option, you must also configure a Distributed Connector or NiFi in the `[Viewing]` section.
- If the document has the configured `WebURLField` (and does not have the `DistributedConnectorReferenceField`), View Server attempts to retrieve the document from the Web.
- If the document has the configured `FileSystemReferenceField` (and does not have the `DistributedConnectorReferenceField` or `WebURLField`), View attempts to retrieve the document directly from a file system or network share. Your `[Viewing]` configuration must allow View to retrieve the file.

If the document does not contain any of the configured reference fields, View attempts to retrieve the original document by the reference in the request, as usual. If it cannot retrieve the original document by reference, View returns the document title and content from the document store.

Copyright 2025 Open Text
Version 26.1 | Last updated January 2026

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Product: Knowledge Discovery Category Component 26.1

Topic Title: Configure Universal Viewing