A rendition is the viewable copy of your original document that Vault creates once you upload a document so that you can view, annotate, and apply additional modifications while in Vault. You can manage a document’s renditions by uploading a new rendition or deleting an existing rendition. You can also download or re-render the viewable rendition. A list of renditions appears in the fields panel of the Doc Info page, under Renditions.

Rendition Types

Depending on your application and your Vault’s configuration, there may be a variety of rendition types available. The type Viewable Rendition is available by default in all applications. Vault auto-generates the Viewable Rendition.

How to Upload Renditions

Renditions in Vault are either automatically generated or manually uploaded.

To upload a new rendition:

  1. From the Renditions area, click Add.
  2. Choose the rendition type.
  3. Click Choose File and select the file to attach as a rendition. See upload guidelines below.
  4. Optional: If you have the appropriate permissions, click Upload using Vault File Manager.
  5. Click Upload.

How to Delete Renditions

To delete renditions, click the X icon for the rendition to delete and confirm the action.

For most rendition types, you can re-add deleted renditions. For viewable renditions, you can either use the Re-render Document option to generate a new rendition in Vault or upload a new PDF file as the viewable rendition.

How to Download Renditions

To download a rendition, click the Download Document icon in the Renditions area or use the download icon at the top of the fields panel. Vault records all downloads in the audit trail. You can download any rendition type at any size with Upload using Vault File Manager.

Re-Rendering Documents

We regularly update the rendering technology used to auto-generate viewable renditions in Vault. Sometimes, these updates introduce new supported file formats. When a release like this occurs, Vault does not automatically re-render files, meaning that there may be documents in your Vault with missing renditions which the system would now render correctly.

Occasionally, you may need to modify rendition settings to produce a better quality rendition. Re-render allows you to do this.

How to Re-Render

From the document’s Actions menu, select Re-render Document. Vault then presents you with a list of common issues for rendition failure. By selecting relevant issues based on the rendition error message received, Vault is better able to understand the specific rendition problem and will attempt to render a more accurate viewable rendition using different settings. If you don’t select any issues, Vault will simply try to re-render the document using the existing rendition settings. Users with the Vault Owner Actions: Re-render permission can re-render both the latest and previous versions of documents.

Annotations in Re-Rendered Documents

By default, Vault automatically preserves annotations when re-rendering a document. You may need to reposition the annotations if the resulting rendition differs significantly. For example, the rendition may differ with a change in the viewable rendition settings. The rendition may also differ if Merge Field values are added or removed. In such cases, re-rendering a document can reduce its page count or page size. If the Preserve my annotations setting is selected, Vault will convert any annotations on trimmed pages or areas to page-level annotations on a surviving page. A warning appears in the dialog box before a re-render that may result in converted annotations. Vault records any such conversions in the audit trail.

If you wish to discard annotations upon re-rendering, deselect the Preserve my annotations setting in the Re-Render Document dialog.

Viewable Rendition Settings

PDF/A-1b

By default, Vault renders documents as PDFs. Admins can configure rendition settings to render documents as PDF/A-1b compliant. If PDF/A-1b renditions are enabled, Vault will no longer render documents as standard PDFs.

Protected PDF Renditions

By default, Vault-generated PDF renditions are unprotected. Admins can configure rendition settings to render protected documents with safeguards applied to restrict the PDF rendition from being altered. When protected renditions are enabled, Vault no longer renders documents as unprotected PDFs.

Preserve Annotations

As a Vault Owner, you can use the Preserve my annotations setting to keep the annotations in the new rendition. You may need to reposition the annotations if your new rendition is very different from the old one.

Only users with the Delete permission through their Document Role security settings can see and turn this setting off because doing so will trigger a re-render action that deletes annotations.

Rendition Profiles

Rendition Profiles allow you to manage Vault-wide rendition settings. For instance, if you have separate Microsoft Word templates for two locales and the Table of Contents bookmarks should be generated differently for each, selecting locale-specific rendition profiles makes it possible to render both of the documents without changing Vault-wide rendition settings.

Selecting a Rendition Profile

Select the profile in the Rendition Profile field when Adding Documents, or prior to rendering or re-rendering a PDF document.

A Default rendition profile, which applies the Vault-wide rendition settings to the document, is always available for selection and is set as the default field value.

If necessary, once a document has been rendered, you can re-render the document from the Actions menu and choose from a set of troubleshooting issues. If you change a rendition setting via the Re-Render Document dialog when manually re-rendering, the Rendition Profile may change to Custom if an applicable setting is altered.

Admins can configure Rendition Profiles, including automatic selection of a default Rendition Profile, or conditional selection under specified criteria. For example, Admins can configure Vault to automatically apply a specific Rendition Profile when a document’s Country field has a particular value. In addition, Admins can adjust the default rendition profile settings to apply Vault-wide settings where custom rendition profiles are not used.

Limitations

Vault imposes some limits when uploading files:

  • Files must be under 500 GB in size.
  • You cannot upload zero (0) byte files.
  • Files uploaded as a Viewable Rendition must be PDFs.
  • Files uploaded as a Viewable Rendition must be uner 4 GB in size.

Vault blocks any changes to renditions (adding, removing, re-rendering, etc.) for archived documents.

The following permissions control your ability to work with renditions:

Type Permission Label Controls
Security Profile Document: Download Rendition Ability to download renditions of any type, including viewable renditions
Security Profile Vault Owner Actions: Re-render Ability to re-render a document without the Manage Viewable Rendition document role permission; users with the Vault Owner security profile do not need to be assigned to any role on the document.
Document Role View Content Ability to view and download renditions of any type, including viewable renditions
Document Role View Document Ability to view document fields, settings, and metadata
Document Role Edit Fields Ability to upload and delete renditions of any type other than viewable rendition
Document Role Manage Viewable Rendition Ability to replace an existing viewable rendition by uploading a file or re-rendering the source file and ability to delete an existing viewable rendition
Document Role Delete Displays the Preserve my annotations setting when re-rendering a viewable rendition that includes annotations.