How To: Share Photos via Email, Documents, or Share

One of the questions we get asked most often is: How can I share my photo attachments with my customers, or with insurance adjusters?

We actually have 2 ways everyone can share their photo attachments from JobNimbus in a snap, and an extra way if you happen to have the Jobs feature enabled on your account. You can send your photo attachments the following ways:

1. Email
2. Document Templates
3. Contact or Job Share

We’ll go over the steps for each one and the benefits of each method.

(1) Send Pictures Via Email Attachment

The most basic way to send your photo attachments to your customers is by attaching them to emails you send from JobNimbus. This process is really simple:

1. Head over to the contact (or job) where the attachments are and hit “Add Note” either from the Activity tab or the action menu.
2. On the New Note page, you’ll see a checkbox marked “Send Email” check that sucker and you’ll get oodles of new options available.
3. Aside from the Subject line, body content, and recipients, there’s also an Attachments link that you can click on. When you do, you’ll see all your photo attachments (and documents) available to choose from to include in this email.
4. Check the box(es) next to the attachment(s) that you would like to include in the email, then finish out the other fields and click “Add Note” to send.

Your customer or insurance agent, or anyone else for that matter, will get that email with the attachments in tact. Any replies they make to the email will get sent back into JobNimbus and you’ll get notified. Plus, if they add new attachments to the reply, those will get saved in your Attachments tab as well!

There is, however, one limitation to this method: attachments size. See, even though we’re living in 2016, emails still have that nasty attachment size restriction. Some are 50MB, some are 25MB, some are even 10MB! Because of that, we have to restrict the email to only 25MB max between all your attachments, which could limit you depending on how many attachments you plan on sending.

If you’re only sending a few, this shouldn’t be an issue, but if you need to send 10 or more photos then you might need to opt for option 2.

(2) Create a Photos Document

The best way to consolidate all your images into one cohesive, shareable PDF document is by generating a document in JobNimbus and choosing which images you would like to include.

Using our template builder, you can create a document template with a photo attachments variable. This document can be as simple (just the photos and nothing else) or as complex (include other docs, estimates, contract info, contact and job info, etc) as you’d like it to be. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Templates tab in your Settings.
2. Click the “Add Template” button and choose “Create Document Template”
3. Give this template a name like “Photo Attachments”. If you’re doing something more complex, you could give it a name that more closely matches what you’re trying to do.
4. Then, the only thing you need on this template in order to pull in photos is the Photo Attachments variable. You can insert that into the document by using the Insert Template Field dropdown menu in the toolbar, going to Built In Sections and choosing Photo Attachments.
5. If this is all you need, just save the template and you’re ready to move on and create it. Otherwise, you can add more information to this template just like you would a Word document and the photos will be inserted where you leave the variable within the text field.

Now that you have the template created, you’re ready to generate the document as many times as you’d like in one simple step (the setup is the longest part, but the payoff is very nice indeed). Here’s how you generate the document:

1. Head to the contact or job where you have your photo attachments.
2. Use the action menu to choose “Create document”.
3. In the Design Template dropdown, choose the document you just created.
4. JobNimbus detects that there is a photo attachments variable, so it will put all your photos front-and-center with checkboxes next to each one for you to choose which you’d like to include.
5. Once you’ve made your selection (and filled out anything else you might have needed for this document) you can click save it.
6. After saving, you’ll get a preview of how this document looks. You can now send this document by using the Email Document option in the action menu or by following the steps from option 1 above and choosing this document as the attachment to send with the email.

This option is perfect for a ton of photos that you need to send, either as information for the customer or as an important piece of the insurance process. There’s no limit to the amount of photos you can add to your documents so you’re not restricted by size like you are with option 1.

(3) Bonus: Share Photo Attachments Via Contact/Job Share

There’s one other way you can share photos with your customers, insurance adjusters, subcontractors, and more. You can initiate a Contact/Job Share by doing the following:

1. Go to the Contact (or Job if you have Jobs enabled) where your attachments are saved and use the action menu to choose “Share”
2. You’ll get some options to choose from here that will allow you to set which attachments you want to include from what’s already saved (“All attachments” or “Let me choose”, plus an option to show attachments from a Related Contact, if you’re sharing from a Job).
3. Choose your share recipients and then click “Share”, and an email will be sent with a link to view the job details, complete with the attachments that you included in the preferences.

One trick you can use to restrict some of the attachments from being shared is using the “Private Attachments” feature. By default, none of the attachments that are set to Private will be shared on the Share with anyone. That way you can feel free to share all attachments and know that the private ones won’t be shared.

One huge benefit to this method is that the recipient of the Share link will see a “Download All” button in the attachments area where they can get a zip folder full of their attachments from a single download. Pretty nifty.

Conclusion

And there you have it! 2 (or 3) amazingly easy ways to share all the photo attachments you have on your contacts or jobs with only a couple clicks. It’s so easy, anyone on your team could do it in their sleep.

So get sending those attachments and let us know what you think! How can we improve this for you? Leave your suggestions in the comments below!