Photos and files from site

Adding a photo or a video

Open the job, find the Attachments card, and tap Add photo or video. A menu headed Add to this job comes up with three options:

• Choose from Library: a photo or video that's already on your phone.
• Take Photo: opens the camera so you can take one now.
• Record Video: the same, for a video clip.

Pick one and the app does the rest. It doesn't ask for a title, a description or a category.

What you see while it sends

The button is replaced by a progress row in the same spot. The rest of the job stays as it was, so you can keep reading it, or close the app altogether.

• Preparing…: "Shrinking this so it will send over mobile data." The app resizes photos and re-encodes videos before sending them. On a long 4K video and an older phone this can take tens of seconds, so it shows as its own step.
• Uploading 43%: "You can leave this screen. It will keep going." It means it. The app hands the upload to the phone's own transfer service, so you can lock the phone, put it in your pocket or switch to another app and the upload carries on.

When it's finished, the file appears in the Attachments card. There's no message to dismiss.

When a send is interrupted

The row stays where it is and says what went wrong, using the office system's own message where there is one. Below the message are buttons for what you can do next. It's not a pop-up alert, so the file isn't lost if you tap away.

• Try again: sends the same file again. It has already been shrunk, so the app doesn't prepare it a second time. Use this if you lost signal partway through.
• Discard: gives up on that file and brings back the Add photo or video button.
• Choose another: appears on its own, instead of the other two, when the preparing step failed. That means the problem is the file itself and sending it again would fail the same way, so this button takes you straight back to choosing a file.

An interrupted send starts again from the beginning. It can't pick up where it left off, so a video that stopped at 90% has to send the whole thing again. If your signal is patchy, send the photos first and leave the videos until you're back in good coverage.

"That file is too large"

A technician can send files up to 100 MB each, measured after the app has shrunk them. That's roughly a minute and a half of video. Photos are nowhere near the limit. If a video is too large, trying again won't help. Record a shorter clip instead.

What the office sees

The file is added to the job alongside everything else attached to it: photos that came in with the original email, anything the customer added through their portal link, and anything the office attached from the board. They all appear in the same list, however they arrived.

If the same file arrives twice (say a technician uploads a photo they'd already emailed in), WorkOrders spots that it's the same file and only keeps one copy.

If there's no button

The app only shows Add photo or video when it's connected to a system that can receive the file. Without that, you'll still see any attachments already on the job, but there's no button to add more. If your crew can't see the button and you expected them to, ask us about it. It isn't a setting on the phone.

Anyone on your team can always add files from the job page on the website, and customers can add them through their own portal link. See a work order, start to finish.