Troubleshooting Quick view issues

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

This article addresses common issues encountered when previewing items in the Quick view tab.

The Quick view lets you inspect an item’s rendered content directly in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) without leaving the Coveo Administration Console. Issues can range from missing or broken content to unexpected rendering behavior, depending on the source type and how the original content is structured.

The following sections cover specific symptoms and their resolutions:

"Quick view" tab is missing

Context and symptoms
Indexing by reference results details panel | Coveo
Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Your file type default action for the given file extension may be set to Index metadata. If so, the body of items of that file type isn’t retrieved during indexing. Item descriptions and quickviews can’t be generated as they rely on the body of items.

Resolution

  1. In your source configuration, click the Items tab.

  2. In the File types section, click Extensions.

  3. Locate the file extension of the items with empty descriptions and missing quickviews.

  4. If the Default action column value for that file extension is Index metadata, click it, and then select Index content and metadata in the dropdown. If the file extension is part of a list of extensions sharing the same configuration, remove it from that list and create a new file type configuration for it with the desired default action.

  5. Click Save and rebuild source.

Missing or unexpected item content

If you have items missing part of their expected content or displaying unexpected content in the Quick view tab, check the following cases for cause and resolution guidelines:

Web scraping issue

Context and symptoms

You’ve indexed content using a Web source or a Sitemap source.

  • In the Quick view of an item, sections of the actual web page are missing.

  • You have one or multiple web scraping configurations configured on your source.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

A web scraping configuration may be removing the missing sections.

Resolution

On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, review your source’s web scraping configurations:

  • Check that web scraping configurations appear in an order that makes sense. In single-match mode (Web sources only), the first matching configuration is applied to the page, and the following are ignored.

  • In the Configuration info settings of the applied web scraping configuration, try changing or adding a rule to exclude your page.

  • In the Elements to exclude tab of the applied web scraping configuration, try making your selector more restrictive to avoid removing sections from your page.

See the Web source or Sitemap source documentation for details on these settings.

Indexing pipeline extension issue

Context and symptoms
Likely cause and resolution

Cause

An indexing pipeline extension (IPE) may be removing the missing sections.

Resolution

Review the logs for the items affected by the extensions. Make necessary adjustments to the extension script or conditions.

Quick view displays HTML tags

Context and symptoms

In the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), an item’s Quick view displays HTML tags that come from the original content system.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

Coveo interprets the item’s body as text rather than HTML.

Resolution

Create a mapping rule to have Coveo interpret the item body as HTML.

Quick view displays authentication page

Context and symptoms

You’ve indexed content using a Web source or a Sitemap source.

  • In the Quick view of an item, you notice that the content of a login page is displayed instead of the content of the page specified by the URI. This symptom will likely repeat itself over many items.

  • Accessing the page to be indexed in a browser redirects you to the login page.

Likely cause and resolution

Causes

This is likely due to one of the following:

  • The page to index is protected and form authentication isn’t set up.

  • Form authentication failed. The access credentials may have changed or the source’s authentication information may be improperly set up. As a result, Coveo couldn’t log in and index your content.

Resolution

First make sure that the source’s authentication information is accurate and properly set up:

  1. Request the login page authentication credentials from the web server administrator.

  2. On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, open your source and set up form authentication with the Login page address and the provided username and password.

  3. Set the Validation method to Redirection to URL and the Value to the Login page address value.

  4. Rebuild your source.

  5. Validate that the item now contains the proper content.

If the Quick view still displays the authentication page, consider making the following adjustments:

  • Changing the validation method and associated values to a more reliable combination.

  • Increasing the loading delay.

  • Setting up a custom login sequence.

See the Web source or Sitemap source documentation for details on these settings.

Dynamic content is missing

Context and symptoms

You’ve indexed content using a Web source or a Sitemap source.

  • In the Quick view of an item, sections of the actual web page are missing.

  • Your web page contains dynamically rendered content (for example, responses to JavaScript API calls).

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The source may be crawling your page before all its dynamic content is rendered.

Resolution

On the Sources (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page, open your source. On the Advanced settings subtab, make sure Execute JavaScript on pages is enabled. Increase the Time the crawler waits before considering a page as fully rendered value, if necessary.

See the Web source or Sitemap source documentation for details on these settings.

PDF is copy-protected

Context and symptoms

When viewing a PDF item in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), you notice the following:

  • There’s no description.

  • The Quick view shows Original document is copy protected, quick view is not available.

    Copy-protected PDF | Coveo
Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The PDF is password-protected.

Document security on document in file system | Coveo

Therefore, the source can’t retrieve the document binary content it needs to generate the description and the Quick view.

Resolution

  1. If acceptable, remove the password protection on the PDF in the file system.

  2. Rebuild your source.

SharePoint Online content is missing

Context and symptoms

You’ve indexed SharePoint Online pages using a SharePoint Online source. In the Quick view of a page item, the content added using the Embed web part isn’t displayed.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The Embed web part content is added to the page as an <iframe> tag. The SharePoint Online source retrieves the page HTML through the SharePoint Online API and indexes it as is (that is, with the <iframe> tag). Coveo doesn’t fetch the iframe content to index it. Consequently, the body of the page item, as displayed in the Quick view, doesn’t include the Embed web part content.

For example, if you embed a YouTube video in a SharePoint Online page, the video isn’t displayed in the Quick view. Only information about the video included in the <iframe> tag (for example, the video title) is indexed and searchable.

Resolution

The described behavior is the expected one. As a workaround, you may consider integrating the content of the external page into the SharePoint Online page, in a text section or comment.

SharePoint Online site items show HTML tags or unexpected characters

Context and symptoms

When accessing the Quick view of a page item, HTML tags or unexpected characters are displayed.

Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The SharePoint Online connector retrieves the CanvasContent1 field value of the SharePoint Online API response and indexes it as is. The CanvasContent1 field value contains the HTML content of the page, including web parts and their configurations. Certain web parts (for example, the Code Snippet web part) may generate content in the CanvasContent1 field that the Quick view isn’t able to handle. Additionally, the Quick view doesn’t replicate the SharePoint Online page CSS styles. For all these reasons, the quality of the Quick view varies from one SharePoint Online page to another.

Resolution

A possible solution may be to replace the web part (for example, the Code Snippet web part) with a more basic one in the SharePoint Online page.

Images are broken

Context and symptoms

In the Quick view of an item, images are broken.

Broken image in the Quick view
Likely cause and resolution

Cause

The connector retrieves web page HTML as is and doesn’t retrieve the images referenced in the HTML. The Content Browser Quick view displays this HTML without any alteration. This means it doesn’t replace relative paths, such as <img src="/sites/…​/myimage.jpg">, with the corresponding absolute paths, such as <img src="https://…​/myimage.jpg">. As a result, when web pages contain images that are referenced using relative paths, the images can’t be displayed in the Content Browser Quick view.

Images that require authentication to be viewed also appear broken when browsing the web page item Quick view in the Content Browser.

Resolution

None. This is a known limitation of the Content Browser Quick view.

The Quick view is intended to provide a preview of the item content, not a full rendering of the web page. To view the full web page, users can open the original document by clicking the item clickable URI link in the search results.

Quick view doesn’t play YouTube videos

Context and symptoms

You’ve indexed content using a YouTube source. When reviewing a video item’s Quick view in the Content Browser (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au), the Quick view displays the video’s description, but the player reads An error occurred. Unable to execute JavaScript.

Quick view of a YouTube video item | Coveo
Likely cause and resolution

Cause

This is expected. YouTube videos can’t be played in the Quick view tab for security reasons.

Resolution

To play a video, close the item properties panel. Back in the Content Browser, select the item, and then click Open in the Action bar. This will open YouTube in a new tab.