Visual aids

A visual aid is an illustration file (image, PDF, Office document, etc.) that you can attach to one or more questions to give the candidate the material they need to answer: an Excel table to analyse, a diagram to interpret, a code snippet to debug, a text to read.

Visual aids are managed centrally on the platform: you declare them once, upload them, then reference them from questions by their identifier. This design lets you:

  • Reuse the same image across multiple questions without duplicating it.
  • Update a file in a single place, with immediate propagation to every question that uses it.
  • Guarantee linguistic consistency: a visual aid is attached to a language, so the French version of a question displays the French table and the English version the English one.

Open the page through the menu Questions module → Visual aids, or directly at /visualaid/AdminVisualAidsWithTable.

Visual aid management page

The table lists every visual aid, with its subject, language, type, name and a preview of the image when applicable.

Accepted file formats

The platform accepts the following extensions:

Category Extensions
Images jpg, jpeg, png, gif, bmp, svg
Office documents doc, docx, xlsx
PDF pdf
Data yml, pbix (Power BI)
Archive zip

Files whose extension is not in this list are rejected on the browser side, before being sent to the server.

💡 Size limit — The maximum file size depends on your server configuration (typically a few megabytes). For large files (Power BI, big PDFs), make sure the end user will be able to download them in an acceptable time — a proctored test will not wait for a slow connection.

Create a visual aid

Creation is done in two steps: declare the metadata (language + subject), then upload the file.

Step 1 — Declaration

  1. From the Visual aid management page, click Add a visual aid in the action bar.

    Visual aid creation modal

  2. In the modal, choose:

    • The language of the visual aid. A visual aid is single-language: if you need the same illustration in several languages, create one visual aid per language.
    • The subject the visual aid is attached to. Used to filter the list and guide authors.

  3. Confirm. The platform creates a record and redirects you to its edit page.

Step 2 — Metadata and upload

On the edit page (titled EDIT A VISUAL AID), the screen is split into two columns:

Visual aid edit page

Left column — Metadata:

  • The identifier (UUID) of the visual aid, shown at the top.
  • Subject — read-only (set at creation).
  • Language — read-only (set at creation).
  • Type — visual aid category (Image, Reference document, etc.). Editable.
  • Name — internal label. Warning: the name is slugified server-side (spaces → dashes, accents removed, etc.); it also becomes the stored file name, which makes it visible to candidates if they ever inspect the HTML. Keep it sober.
  • An information line indicates where the visual aid is used: “This visual aid is not used in any question.” if empty, or the count/list of questions that reference it.

⚠️ Subject and language are locked — If you picked the wrong subject or language at creation, delete the visual aid and recreate it — you can no longer change them here.

Right column — Content:

A drop zone displays “Drop the image or PDF document here” / “Click here to select a file from your computer”.

  • Drag and drop the file into the zone, or
  • Click the zone to open your system’s file picker.

Once the file is chosen, the upload starts automatically. If the extension is valid, the preview appears in the zone:

  • For an image, you see the thumbnail.
  • For a PDF, an embedded preview (iframe) or an “Open in a new tab” link.
  • For other formats (Office, archive, etc.), only a download link is shown.

💡 Replacing a file — Simply drop a new file in the zone: it replaces the previous one. The new version is immediately available to every question that references this visual aid.

Use a visual aid in a question

From the question editor, you reference a visual aid by inserting it via the insertion menu. The question then stores the file path or its identifier, which is resolved at display time on the candidate side.

A visual aid can be referenced from:

  • The question’s statement (question.txt).
  • The answer options (question.ans).
  • The question’s specific parameters (question.spe_det, for example for manipulation questions).

💡 Check usage — A visual aid’s edit page shows at the bottom of the left column whether the aid is used in any question. To explore the questions involved, open the Questions page and filter by subject.

Filters

The Filters panel offers:

  • Search — free text on the (slugified) name or the ID.
  • Type — by visual aid type (Image, Document, etc.).

Sorting is available on each column.

Delete a visual aid

  1. On the visual aid’s row, click the Delete icon.
  2. Confirm on the confirmation page.

⚠️ Visual aid referenced by questions — If the file name of the visual aid is referenced in the text, answers or specific parameters of at least one question, deletion is refused with the error message visa_cantd. Before deleting:

  1. Identify the questions that use the aid (via the Questions page, filtered by subject).
  2. Edit those questions to point to another aid or remove the reference.
  3. Retry the deletion.

Best practices

  • Name your visual aids clearly: sales-table-2024-en rather than image1. The file name becomes public in the rendered HTML — an evocative name avoids confusion and eases debugging.
  • Compress your images before uploading: a candidate page that loads 10 images of 5 MB each is unusable on a mobile connection. Target: 200 KB per JPG image.
  • Keep PDFs to a strict minimum. A complex PDF consumes a lot on the browser side and may make the test inaccessible to candidates running an older browser.
  • One visual aid per language: do not mix languages in the same image. A screenshot of Excel in English is not suitable for the French version of the test.