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Photos and attachments

Capture photos on your device and attach them to tasks, repair requests, and shutdown reports.

Required role

Technician, Mapper, Admin, PegotecUser (any mobile-enabled role).

Overview

Photos are essential evidence for maintenance work:

  • Proof-of-work — before/after shots showing condition changes.
  • Evidence for repair requests and shutdown reports.
  • Condition documentation for audit and compliance.

The mobile app has a full photo capture pipeline: take the photo in-app (or pick from the gallery), compress on device, queue for upload, and let the server generate thumbnails for display in the web portal. All of it works offline — photos sit in the outbox until connectivity returns.

Prerequisites

  • The app has camera permission (granted on first use or in OS settings).
  • A task, repair request, or shutdown report is open that accepts photos.

Limits

  • Up to 10 photos per task (repair request, shutdown report).
  • Up to 10 MB per photo on the device side.
  • JPEG and PNG supported.
  • HEIC (iOS default) is converted automatically.
  • No video support.

Capture a photo

From any photo field:

Option A: Use the in-app camera

  1. Tap the camera icon.
  2. The in-app camera opens.
  3. Frame and tap the shutter.
  4. Optionally annotate — tap the pen icon for arrows, boxes, or text captions.
  5. Tap the tick to attach.

The photo appears as a thumbnail in the photo field.

  1. Tap the camera icon.
  2. Tap Gallery.
  3. Pick one or more photos.

When to use each

  • Camera — proof-of-work taken right now, directly on the task.
  • Gallery — photos you captured earlier (maybe before opening the task) or that a colleague shared with you.

Two-pass upload on slow connections

On slow or unreliable connections, the app switches to a dual-quality upload strategy so your submission isn't blocked waiting for photos:

  1. First pass — preview quality. Each photo is compressed aggressively (around 50% JPEG quality) and uploaded quickly. This makes the photo visible on the web portal within seconds so your Supervisor can triage.
  2. Second pass — full quality. Once the preview uploads complete, the app queues a full-resolution version and sends it when bandwidth allows. The full-quality file replaces the preview transparently.

You don't trigger this manually — the app decides based on upload-speed measurements. On fast connections (Wi-Fi, good 4G), the app skips the first pass and uploads full quality directly.

Two things to know:

  • Supervisor-visible previews may look softer for a few minutes after submission on slow sites. They sharpen when the full-quality pass lands.
  • Storage consumption is slightly higher during the gap between passes — both copies exist briefly. On a low-storage device, the cache manager prunes the preview once the full version uploads.

Annotate a photo

The annotation tools are intentionally minimal — enough to point at things, not to build a pitch deck.

  • Arrow — drag to show direction, flow, or the thing-in-question.
  • Box — enclose a specific area of the image.
  • Text — short captions (keep it under a sentence).
  • Undo — step back.
  • Clear — remove all annotations.

Annotations are baked into the image — they can't be edited after you attach.

Remove a photo

Before submit:

  1. Tap the photo thumbnail.
  2. Tap the trash icon.
  3. Confirm.

After submit, photos can't be removed from the mobile app. Ask your Supervisor or Admin to handle this on the web portal side.

How upload works

Photos upload separately from the task form:

  1. You submit the task form.
  2. The form uploads (smaller, faster).
  3. Photos enter the outbox, one at a time.
  4. Each photo:
    • Compresses on-device (reduces size without meaningful quality loss).
    • Uploads over HTTPS.
    • Is processed by the server: thumbnails generated in three sizes (small, medium, full).

If a photo fails to upload, it stays in the outbox and retries on the next sync cycle (every ~15 min or pull-to-refresh).

See Sync and connectivity for the full flow.

Offline capture

Everything works offline:

  • Take the photo.
  • Annotate.
  • Attach.
  • Submit the task.

The Dashboard's Pending uploads badge counts queued photos. When connectivity returns, they trickle up in the background.

What happens on the server

Once uploaded, the server:

  1. Stores the full-resolution photo.
  2. Generates three thumbnail sizes (roughly 200px, 600px, 1200px wide).
  3. Indexes the photo against the task for later retrieval.

Supervisors viewing a task on the web portal see the thumbnails; clicking opens the full-resolution image. Photos are available in the Task Reporting and Task History reports.

Image quality and storage

The on-device compression aims for:

  • Visibly good quality at the sizes used in the portal (up to full HD preview).
  • Small file size (~500 KB–2 MB per photo after compression).
  • Preserved EXIF timestamp (so photos are dated even if taken offline).

If your phone's default camera is set to very high resolution (24 MP+), compression still produces the same target output size. You don't need to dial down the camera manually.

Photo fields vs photo attachments

Some task forms include named photo fields (e.g. "Before photo", "After photo"). These work the same way as generic photos, but they're labelled so the reviewer knows which is which. If the task has both, take the before photo first, execute the work, then take the after photo.

Things to watch for

Take the photo before moving on

Don't finish a task and think "I'll snap the photo on the way out". Take it while you're still at the asset. The mobile app makes it a three-second operation.

Photos count against storage

Queued-but-not-uploaded photos sit in local storage. If the device is nearly full, photo capture starts to fail. Keep Pending uploads clearing regularly.

Landscape vs portrait

Either works. The web portal displays them in the orientation they were captured.

Troubleshooting

Problem See
Photo upload keeps failing Photo upload is failing
Camera permission denied OS settings → app permissions → Camera → allow
Photo looks blurry Retake with flash; or use the gallery picker for a better-lit shot
Too many photos attached Delete some before submitting (limit is 10)
HEIC photo rejected iOS Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible