I’ll walk you through the complete solution addressing all three aspects:
1. File Size Limits - Increase and Configure Properly:
First, update your Azure API Management policies to allow larger payloads and longer timeouts:
<policies>
<inbound>
<set-body-size>52428800</set-body-size>
<timeout>300</timeout>
</inbound>
</policies>
This sets max body size to 50MB and timeout to 5 minutes. Also verify your Azure Storage account (where documents are ultimately stored) doesn’t have restrictive limits.
2. Chunked Upload Implementation - Enable in Mobile App:
Modify the mobile app configuration file (typically mobile-config.json or via admin console):
{
"documentUpload": {
"chunkedUploadEnabled": true,
"chunkSize": 5242880,
"maxFileSize": 52428800,
"timeout": 300000
}
}
This enables chunked uploads for files over 5MB, with a max file size of 50MB and 5-minute total timeout. The app will automatically split large files into 5MB chunks and upload them sequentially with resume capability if a chunk fails.
3. Supplier Onboarding Delays - Implement Progress Feedback:
The chunked upload approach solves the technical issue, but you also need to improve the user experience. Enable upload progress notifications so suppliers can see their large files uploading chunk by chunk rather than appearing frozen. In the mobile app settings, enable:
- Real-time progress bars showing chunk completion
- Background upload support (suppliers can continue using the app while files upload)
- Retry logic for failed chunks (automatically retries up to 3 times before failing)
Additional Recommendations:
-
Document Compression: For technical drawings and PDFs, enable automatic compression in the mobile app. This can reduce file sizes by 30-50% without quality loss.
-
Validation Before Upload: Implement client-side file validation to check file size, type, and basic integrity before starting the upload. This prevents wasted bandwidth on invalid files.
-
Monitoring and Alerts: Set up monitoring on your API gateway to track upload success rates and average upload times. Alert if success rate drops below 95%.
-
Supplier Communication: Once implemented, send guidance to suppliers about optimal file formats (PDF over TIFF for documents, compressed images for photos). This helps keep file sizes manageable.
Testing: Before rolling out, test with various file sizes (5MB, 15MB, 25MB, 40MB) on different mobile networks (WiFi, 4G, 5G) to ensure chunked uploads work reliably. We’ve seen upload success rates improve from 45% to 98% after implementing this approach for a similar supplier portal deployment.