Exporting Evidence

Package a selection of site photos into a zip archive, download it or email it to your team, and find it again before it expires

A client wants the photos for a claim, an insurer wants the record of a wall before it was covered, a dispute needs everything from one week in March. Rather than saving photos one at a time, pick them out of the gallery and take the whole set as a single zip archive with a list of what is in it.

An export always starts from a gallery. Open the Photos tab on the project or the order the photos belong to, narrow it down, then select.

Exporting needs access to documents. Without it, Export never appears, and Select appears only if you are allowed to manage tags.

Select the photos that go in the pack

Filter, search and sort the gallery until it holds what you want. See Finding photos.
Click Select. A toolbar appears above the grid and counts what you have picked.
Click the photos you want.
Click Export. It is greyed out until at least one photo is selected.

In selection mode, clicking a photo selects it — it does not open. To look at a photo properly, leave selection mode first with Cancel selection. That also clears everything you had picked, so check the photo before you start selecting, not after.

Select all loaded takes only the photos already in the grid, not everything that matches your filters. The gallery starts with 50 and adds more as you scroll to the bottom or press Load more, and the line above the grid says how many are loaded so far. Load your way to the bottom before you use it.

Select all loaded also replaces what you had picked rather than adding to it.

One export carries at most 1,000 photos. Once you reach that the toolbar adds the line You can export up to 1,000 photos at a time, and clicking an unselected photo does nothing — it gives no sign of being refused. Clicking a photo you have already picked still takes it out, so untick photos until you are back under 1,000.

What keeps a selection, and what clears it

Filtering, searching, sorting and changing the tag filter all keep your selection. A photo you picked stays picked even when the filter you are now using no longer shows it, and it still goes into the export.

Moving to a different project or order clears the selection outright and drops you out of selection mode, without asking. Finish one pack before you navigate away.

Choose which version of each photo

Clicking Export opens the Export photos dialog, which restates the count and asks two questions. The first is Files to include:

Photos as shown (with stamp) — the image as the gallery displays it. This is the default, and for a stamped site photo it is the copy with the location, time and note burnt into the picture.
Original camera files — the untouched file the camera produced, kept beside the stamped copy.
Both (originals where available) — every photo as shown, plus the original wherever one is stored.

A photo only has an original camera file when it was captured through a form field with Stamp location & metadata on photos switched on. Every other photo in the gallery — an upload, a workpack attachment, a progress photo — has a single version and no more. See Field Types.

You can tell them apart in the gallery. A photo that has an original carries a small camera badge on its card; hover the badge and it reads Original camera file available.

The selection toolbar counts them for you as soon as some of your selection is missing an original, and the dialog repeats the count beside Original camera files, so you choose a version with the numbers in front of you.

Choosing Original camera files when even one selected photo has no original is refused the moment you press Start export, and nothing is created. Narrow the selection first: Select only photos with originals in the selection toolbar drops every photo that has none. That button appears only once at least one selected photo has an original.

Choose how you receive it

The second question is Delivery.

Download — you take the archive yourself, from this dialog. This is the default.
Email to teammates — the people you pick get an email with a link to the export.

Choosing Email to teammates does not stop you downloading the archive. It adds the email; the file stays downloadable by you and by anyone else on the account who can open the export.

Pick who gets the email

You pick recipients from a list — you cannot type an address. Open Recipients, search by name or email, and click the people you want. Up to 20 per export; the line under the field counts how many you have chosen, and at the limit it reads You have chosen the most we can email at once, 20. Remove someone to add another.

The list holds the people on this account who are already allowed to see these photos, sorted by name. Anyone on the Field or Visitor role is never offered.

Customer and supplier portal users are in that list. People outside your own organisation appear beside your colleagues. Read every name before you email a pack of client photos to what you assumed was an internal list.

Each person gets an email with a View export button. It opens the export's page in Assignar Pay, where they sign in and download the archive; no email carries a direct link to the stored file.

Under Recipients the dialog says A small archive is attached to the email. A large one is sent as a link, and the person has to sign in to open it.

Three messages can stand in place of the list of names:

Loading the people you can email… — the list is still on its way.
We could not load the people you can email. Close this and try again.
There is no one on this account you can email these photos to. Download the archive instead, or ask an owner to give someone access to documents.

Start the export and wait

Press Start export. Cancel is disabled from that moment until the server answers, so you cannot back out of a request you have just sent.

The dialog then counts the photos it is preparing and warns that This can take a minute for large exports. A large pack can also sit waiting its turn before any packing starts.

You do not have to sit there. Press Close and a message confirms Export continues in the background, with Open export page to follow it. Your selection is kept.

After about three minutes the dialog stops watching and says Still preparing. We'll keep working in the background., with a link to the export's own page. The archive is still being built; nothing has gone wrong.

When it is ready you see one of two things:

Download — the dialog reads Your export is ready with the file count and archive size, and a Download button. Pressing it saves the archive, closes the dialog and clears your selection.
Email to teammates — the dialog reads Export ready and confirms how many teammates will get an email with a link. Dismissing it by any route — Done, Escape, the close control, or a click outside — clears your selection.

The dialog forgets your choices. It reopens on Photos as shown (with stamp), Download and no recipients every time, whatever you chose last. Sending five batches to the same five people means picking those people five times.

What is in the archive

The file is named for the date you requested it plus a short code, so two exports taken on the same day never overwrite each other in your downloads folder.

Inside, every photo sits flat at the top of the archive. There are no folders — not by project, not by date, not by source.

An original camera file sits beside its stamped copy, with -raw added to the name before the extension. Two photos that share a file name are numbered -2, -3 and so on, so nothing is lost to a name clash.

Every archive also carries two lists of its own contents, manifest.csv and manifest.json. Each entry names the file and where it sits in the archive, when the record was created, which version it is, the project and orders it belongs to, its tags, where the photo came from, its size and a checksum. Beside those sit the capture details recorded with the photo — the address, the place, the note, and who uploaded it.

Open the CSV in a spreadsheet when you need an index of the pack to hand to a client or attach to a claim.

Seven days, then the archive is gone

An export is available for seven days from the moment you request it — not from the moment the archive finished building. A large pack that spent a while building or waiting therefore has less than seven full days of life left by the time you can download it.

The export's own page shows the date it expires. Once that date passes the archive is deleted, the state reads Export expired, Download archive disappears and Try again takes its place. The record of the export stays; only the file goes.

Nobody is notified before an export expires. If a client is likely to come back for the pack, keep your own copy.

What survives is the record of which photos you sent. The export's page keeps listing them under Photos in this export after the archive is deleted, so you can still see what was in a pack and rebuild it with Try again.

Find an export again

Every export has its own page, headed Evidence export. Reach it from Open export page in the background message, from the notification, from the email a recipient received, or from the export history.

The page updates itself while the archive builds, so there is nothing to refresh. Its state reads:

Preparing export — accepted, waiting its turn.
Building archive — being packed now.
Export ready — the archive exists and can be downloaded.
Export failed — with the reason underneath.
Export expired — the seven days have passed.

Below that it shows Source — the project or order it came from, as a link straight back to that Photos tab — plus Requested by, Requested, Photos, Files and Size, then the expiry date. Size reads Not available until an archive exists, so a queued, building or failed export shows that rather than a zero.

Where the name of the project or order cannot be found, Source reads Source unavailable and is not a link. A requester whose name cannot be found reads Unknown teammate.

An emailed export also lists every address under Emailed to with what happened to it:

Sent as a link — the email went out.
Not sent yet — nothing has gone out to this address. The emails go out one at a time once the archive is built, so this clears itself within a few minutes of the export being ready.
We could not send this email — the send itself failed.
Not sent, because this person no longer has access to these photos — they lost access between your request and the send.
Not sent, because the export did not finish — the archive was never built, so nobody was emailed.
Not sent, because the export expired first — the seven days ran out before the emails went out.

A Sent as a link entry also says why a link went out rather than the archive itself:

Export archives are not sent as attachments, so we sent a link instead.
The archive was too big to attach, so we sent a link instead.
We could not attach the archive, so we sent a link instead.

See which photos went into an export

Every export's page lists the photos it selected, under Photos in this export. This list is a record of the selection, so it stays after the archive has gone — it is the way back to the evidence once a download is no longer possible.

The photos are the live ones, not copies frozen at export time. A photo that has since been archived, or that has moved out of what you can see, drops off the list. When that happens the count says so: Showing 8 of 10 selected photos, with a line naming how many are no longer available. If none of them are still available the list says so outright, and an export taken before the product recorded selections reads This export never recorded which photos it selected.

Click any photo to open it full size, exactly as in the gallery.

Open the export history

The Export history breadcrumb above any export's page opens the full list. It covers every export on the account, not only your own, so you can see who packaged what and where it came from.

Rows are newest first, 25 to a page, with Next page to go further back. There is no search, no filter and no sort — if you are looking for something old, page back to it.

Each row carries Source, Requested by, Requested, Photos, Files, Size, Status, Expires, a Download archive button while the archive is still live, and View to open the export's own page. A failed row prints its reason under the status.

An export whose project or order has since been deleted drops out of this list altogether.

Know when it is ready

When your export is ready, or when it fails, you get a notification linking to its page. Only the person who requested the export is notified — the people you emailed are not, and neither is anyone else on the account.

It arrives under Background tasks in the notifications panel rather than the main list, and it does not add to the count on the bell. It clears itself after about a day, so treat the export history as the durable record.

When the export is refused before it starts

Some checks run the instant you press Start export. When one of them fails nothing is created: the dialog stays on the form with a red message, your selection is untouched, and you can fix the problem and press Start export again.

This export is larger than the 512 MiB archive limit. Select fewer items or export without originals. — the pack is too big before it is even built. Take fewer photos, or switch from Original camera files or Both (originals where available) to Photos as shown (with stamp).
{n} of the {total} selected photos have no original camera file. Choose "Photos as shown" or "Both" to export them. — you asked for Original camera files and part of the selection has none. It reads "has" rather than "have" when only one photo is missing. Change the version, or narrow the selection to photos that have an original and start again.
This photo has no original camera file. Choose "Photos as shown" or "Both" to export it. — the same refusal when you selected a single photo.
Some of the selected photos have no original camera file. Choose "Photos as shown" or "Both" to export them. — a third wording for the same refusal, without the counts.
Each recipient must be an account member who can view this evidence. — someone you picked lost access to these photos while the dialog was open. Remove them from Recipients and start the export again.
Some selected evidence is no longer available. — a photo in your selection has been deleted, or has moved out of your reach. Leave selection mode, reload the gallery and pick again.
Some selected photos have no recorded file size yet, so the export can't be checked against the 512 MiB limit. Try again in a few minutes or leave them out. — one of the photos was uploaded moments ago. Wait a few minutes, or take it out of the selection.

When the export fails while it is building

If the archive itself cannot be built, the dialog shows We couldn't build this export. with the reason underneath. The same reason appears on the export's own page and under the status in the export history, so you can read it later even if you had closed the dialog.

The selection is larger than the 512 MiB archive limit. or The archive came out larger than the 512 MiB limit. — the finished archive did not fit. Split the pack across two exports, or leave the original camera files out.
Some of the selected photos are no longer available. — a photo was deleted, or your access to it changed, while the archive was being packed.
You no longer have access to export this evidence. — your own access changed after you asked for the export.
The export didn't start. Try again. or This export couldn't be started. Try again. — the request was accepted but no work ever began.
Something went wrong while building the archive. — nothing more specific came back.

An export whose work never began sits on its own page reading This export hasn't started. Start a new export from the Photos tab. until an hourly check marks it failed.

Try again does two different things

Try again in the Export photos dialog puts you back on the form with the same photos still selected. Nothing has been re-sent — change what you need to and press Start export yourself.

Try again on an export's own page rebuilds the whole original request as a brand-new export: the same photos, the same version choice, the same recipients. It appears only on an export that failed or expired, never on one that is still coming or still downloadable, and it takes you to the new export's page.

That rebuild is checked again from scratch against today's data. A photo that has since been deleted, or a recipient who has since lost access, will stop it exactly as it would stop a fresh export. A rebuild that cannot start leaves you where you were with a message saying why; where there is no more specific reason it reads We could not start this export again. Try again in a moment.

Finding photos — narrow the gallery before you select, so the pack is right the first time.
Adding and tagging photos — tag photos in bulk, and those tags travel in the archive's manifest.
Field Types — switch on photo stamping, which is what creates the original camera files an export can include.