Adding photos and documents to an Action

When to add attachments

Attachments are what turn an Action from a short written description into something a colleague can actually see and understand. Add them whenever visual context helps the person picking the work up:

• A photo of the snag itself, so the operative knows exactly what they're looking at
• A close-up showing the extent of the damage
• A drawing extract highlighting the area in question
• A supplier spec sheet that someone needs to refer to
• A photo of the finished work so the closer has evidence the job was done

Each Action can have as many attachments as you need, and they all show up in one grid on the detail page regardless of how they were added.

What you can upload

PDFs are converted to an image automatically so they show up alongside the photos in the grid. If you've got a spreadsheet or Word document to share, attach it through a comment instead — comments accept Office documents as well.

Adding files from the Attachments card

1. 1

   Open the Action.

2. 2

   Find the Attachments card on the detail page.

3. 3

   Click the upload button on the card.

4. 4

   Pick one or more files from your computer.

5. 5

   Optionally mark the images up before they upload (see below).

6. 6

   The files upload and appear in the grid straight away.

Dropping files onto the page

You don't have to go through the Attachments card — the whole Action detail page accepts drag-and-drop uploads. Drag a photo or PDF from your computer, drop it anywhere on the page, and an overlay appears to confirm the upload. Release and the file uploads as an attachment.

This is especially handy when you're working with a file in one window and the Action open in another — just drag it across.

Marking up a photo before you upload

Before you upload any image, you can mark it up with arrows, circles, text labels, and freehand sketches. This is the quickest way to make a photo actually useful — a plain wall shot with no annotation is a lot less helpful than the same shot with a red arrow pointing at the crack.

The markup tools give you:

• Pan, Arrow, Rectangle, Circle, Freehand, and Text tools
• A palette of nine colours
• Zoom in and out with the mouse wheel or the zoom buttons

Your annotations are saved as part of the image, so when anyone opens the attachment later they see the marked-up version straight away. You can also re-open the markup editor from a thumbnail to add or change marks after the image has been uploaded.

What the Attachments card shows

Every attachment appears in the grid as a thumbnail. For each one you'll see:

• A preview of the image
• An indicator if the image has been marked up
• A delete button (visible on hover, subject to your permissions)

Attachments on the card come from three places:

• The source image from a bulk-create flow, if the Action was raised that way
• Files you uploaded directly to the Action
• Files attached through comments

They all show up together so you've got a single visual overview of everything related to the Action.

Viewing a full-size image

Click any thumbnail to open it full-screen in a carousel. The carousel gives you:

• Left and right arrows to flick through the Action's other attachments
• The full image with any markup layered on top
• A close button to return to the detail page

This is the right view for getting a proper look at the detail, especially on big inspection photos where the thumbnail doesn't tell you much.

Removing an attachment

Hover over a thumbnail and click the delete button to remove an attachment. Who can delete depends on who uploaded it:

• Admins and Super Admins can delete any attachment
• Everyone else can delete only attachments they uploaded themselves

The source image from a bulk-create flow is locked — nobody can delete it, because it's the canonical record of where the Action originally came from.

Downloading an attachment

Click the download icon on a thumbnail to open the attachment in a new browser tab. From there you can save it to your computer, print it, or drop it into an email.

Real-world examples

• Capturing a defect — take a wide shot of the room, mark it up with an arrow pointing at the damage and a text label describing it, and upload that as the first attachment
• Handover evidence — once the work is done, the operative uploads a photo of the finished result before marking the Action Resolved
• Design clarification — on an RFI, drop in the relevant drawing extract and a photo of the actual site condition side by side

Next steps

• Comments — for adding text updates with their own attachments.
• Raising many Actions from a photo or PDF — for the flow that creates source images.
• Tracking what's happened on an Action — for how new attachments show up live when your colleagues upload them.