We rebuilt every link and embed in Documate around one idea: whatever you paste, a web page, another page, a file or a video, it behaves the same way. Paste it and pick a look, change that look whenever you like, and see link previews on hover.
One behaviour for everything means less to learn and no surprises: what works for one link works for all of them.
Paste a link, choose how it looks
Paste any URL and a small menu appears: leave it as a plain link, or show it as a chip, as a card with title, description and image, or as a full embed. Documate fetches the page details for you, so the card is ready in a moment.
The same menu appears for links to Documate pages, which can become a compact chip, a card or a full-width embed of the page, and for files stored in ServiceNow.
💡 Pro tip: paste a YouTube link and choose the embed. The video plays right on the page, and keeps playing when you expand it.
Change the display whenever you like
Nothing is locked in. Hover over any chip, card or embed, open its toolbar and pick a different display: a link becomes a card, a card becomes an embed, a file becomes an inline image or video, and back again.
💡 Pro tip: drag the edge of a card or embed to resize it, and reset it to the default size from the same menu.
Link previews on hover
Link previews work on anything linked. Hover and a card appears: title, description and image for a web link; a live preview of the target page for a Documate link, even one from another workspace; a thumbnail and file details for an attachment; the key fields of a ServiceNow record.
💡 Pro tip: previews respect ServiceNow permissions. A record the reader is not allowed to open shows a plain placeholder instead of its details, so you can link freely.
A few more improvements
🖼 Full-screen preview: the Expand action opens the same full-screen viewer for images, videos, audio, PDFs and Office files, with arrows to move between the files on the page.
🔎 Search: embeds and mentions keep a readable label and their address in the text version of a page, so search results and AI assistants can make sense of them.
🛡️ Missing files: when a linked file has been deleted, the page shows a clear “file unavailable” placeholder with a Replace option, so the fix is one click away.
🔗 Link text: the words of a link stay exactly as you wrote them when you turn it into a page reference, a file or a ServiceNow record.
🕒 Timestamps: lists and previews show relative times with a small clock icon, so “3 hours ago” is easy to spot.
What’s next?
We are not done with links yet! The next release rounds off the linking experience: one panel where you create, edit and repoint every link, ServiceNow records found as you type, and filtered ServiceNow lists on your pages.
We want your feedback!
This release touches something you use on every page: links. Which display do you reach for most, chip, card or embed? Is there a target you would like to paste that Documate does not recognise yet? Tell us. Your answers decide what we polish next.