Frequently Asked Questions

You upload your PDF in HelpRange and we give you a secure link to that PDF, which you can share. When a user opens a given link in a browser, then he/she can view it or download it (if you did not disable the ability to "download & print"). If it is being viewed in the browser then we can track usage statistics (heat maps, read pages, IP address, browser used, and more...) and show you all of that in a form of analytics stats in HelpRange. If you allow for PDF download, then we can't control and track downloaded PDF, because it is just a file.

First of all, if you are using HelpRange to prevent people from copying/downloading your documents, then you should probably use "Very secure upload" instead of the ordinary "Upload PDF" button in HelpRange. This way HelpRange can use a more secure way of storing and displaying your PDF - it is using end-to-end encryption. But you need to know that "Very secure upload" is very slow, because proper encryption takes a lot of time and it depends on the size and the complexity of given PDF file (PDF which is greater than 15MB in size may be processed probably after upload in the background until it will appear in your directory, but for bigger files you can wait even few hours or more, moreover there is lower PDF file size limit in this case). Please do not try to upload again your file if it did not appear in your directory, because encryption can take even longer. That's why if you are not truly paranoid about protection and security of your PDF files we recommend to use the very fast ordinary "Upload PDF" button.

Given you uploaded your PDF in HelpRange, we give you a lot of access controls over your PDF. First of all, you can disable the ability to "download & print" your PDF. This way you are allowing the user to view your PDF only using your link, so you don't lose access controls to it and you can use another HelpRange function: ability to revoke access to given PDF link at any time.

However, you need to be aware that no such method from preventing people from copying your materials is perfect. So we cannot guarantee that your document will not be copied. For example we can imagine a situation where your document will be copied by making screenshots of a screen displaying your document.

Please go to "Guests" tab. Here you can add guests (as email addresses) who are outside of your organization. You can easily assign and control access to documents for them. Every time you assign some document for a given guest HelpRange will send an email message with a link where guests will need to authenticate (using one time password sent to given email address) to see assigned documents. Those guests may be your students, people who paid for your materials and so on. Only Admins can control access to documents for guests.

You can share your specific PDF link only with a single user. You can disable forwarding a given PDF link, so that only the first user who opens it, will be able to open it again, any other user who will try to open this link will be blocked (including the owner of the file). So if you are the owner of the file, then you should not open the given PDF link, because sharing this link with other users won't work. To disable forwarding a PDF link, please go to Settings/Links for a given PDF file and set "Disallow forwarding" for a given link. We disallow forwarding PDF links based on the device characteristics on which PDF link was opened the first time.

It is simple: you set an expiration date for a given link of your PDF file. After the expiration date link will expire so anybody who will want to access your PDF using this link won't be able to do that.

You allow for accessing PDF files in HelpRange using shared links. You can create as many such links for a given PDF file as you want. Every such link can be labeled by the user/group assigned to it. So you can track who exactly opened and viewed your PDF.

There is no way you can be sure by 100%. But, we are enabling many methods to only allow a given group of people to view your materials. Except for disabling the ability to "download & print" your documents, you can set expiration dates, passcodes or you can allow only users having given an IP address to view your PDFs.

This is simple in HelpRange. You are just setting "Only one user can view at the same time" for the given link. It should limit the number of users accessing a given link to one.

This is super simple: you just upload a PDF file with the same name to the same directory.

There are three possibilities. First one is to create a dedicated link for a given user/group. Second one is to add query params to the given PDF link. For example if your link is "https://wwww.helprange.com/view/somelinkid", then you can add for example query param "?user=someid" to it, to share "https://wwww.helprange.com/view/somelinkid?user=someid". Last one is to ask about users' email before they view your document (go to Links/Settings and check "Ask about email"). Moreover, you can download whole list of provided emails as a CSV file for a given link.

Yes, you can. You can ask about users' email before they view your document (go to Links/Settings and check "Ask about email"). To avoid legal issues, you can provide your own custom HTML consent box which will be used below our checkbox (you can set your own template in your Settings, but you need to be admin of the team). Moreover, you can download whole list of provided emails as a CSV file for a given link.

Currently the default limit is 80MB for ordinary PDF file upload and 40MB for very secure upload. If you want to upload bigger PDFs please contact us.

Yes, this is very simple in HelpRange: go to Links/Settings and provide your requested views limit for the given link.

Engagement score is a rough estimate how "engaged" a given user was when viewing a document. Basically, it is calculated as a ratio of number of pages given user viewed for at least few seconds to total number of pages, but this ratio is normalized by total number of pages for given document, so that it is easier to score given amount of "points" per page for longer documents. Maximum value is 100.

Heatmaps are being generated basing on: mouse movements, scrolling and mouse clicks. Red dots mark clicks. Purple color area means that user was spending some time on given area, red means a click, yellow is just a boundary of purple, it does not mean much, the same with green. Aggregated heatmaps are on the stats page, individual ones are in the Recordings

You can use your domain by embedding your PDF link on your website. Please go to Settings/Links for given document and then click on "Embed on site" button. Here you can copy/paste given embed code on your website for your custom url.