On this page
A record can have photos: the room, the trip, the listing, the editor's reel thumbnail. Your team sees them on the record and in the lists, and your bot can show them to a lead when it shows options. A photo is a field like any other, so you decide which records have one and whether a lead may see it.
Adding a photo field
Photos live in a field of the type Image. Your records come with none, and none of the templates add sample photos: a photo your bot sent a lead should always be one of yours.
- Open Business setup, then your records' fields page (called "Trip fields" or "Listing fields" in your own words), and choose New field. Owners and admins manage fields.
- Give it a label such as "Photos" and choose the type Image. The type appears only for your records' fields. A question your bot asks cannot be a photo, because a lead cannot send one yet, and a photo cannot be used for matching, filtering or searching.
- Leave Lead can see as it is, or change it. If you have already turned on showing options, a new Image field starts with the switch on, because showing a photo is what it is for. Saving the field is your confirmation. With options off it starts off.
You can have more than one Image field, for example "Photos" and "Floor plans". A lead is shown the first photo of the first Image field they may see that holds one.
A field that already holds photos on any record cannot be renamed or changed to another type. Add a new field instead, so no record loses a photo it holds.
Adding photos to a record
Open a record, or add one (anyone on your team who can edit records can add photos). An Image field shows a box with Choose photos and the words "Drop photos here or choose", and a count such as "2 of 4". A field holds up to four photos: choose several at once, or drop them on the box. Once it holds some, the button reads Add more photos, and if you pick more than fit, the box says how many more fit.
- Any photo your browser can open works. The box says "JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC". An iPhone's HEIC opens only in a browser that can read it, such as Safari. A PDF or a spreadsheet is refused with a plain sentence.
- Photos are turned the right way up and shrunk before they upload. Their longest side becomes at most 2048 pixels, so a 12 MB phone photo uploads in a few seconds. A photo with a see-through background stays a PNG; everything else is saved as a JPEG.
- A phone's location and camera details are removed. The photo that is stored carries no metadata.
- They upload one at a time, each with its progress. A photo that cannot be added is left out with the reason under the box, and the others stay.
- The first photo is the cover. It is the one shown in the list and the one a lead sees first. Use the arrows under a photo to move it earlier or later; moving a photo to the front makes it the cover.
- Remove takes a photo off the record. If you added it a moment ago and have not saved, it is deleted at once; otherwise it is deleted when you save the record.
Save the record to keep the photos. If you close the form first, a photo that was already uploaded is cleared away within a day.
Limits
| Limit | What it is |
|---|---|
| Photos per field | 4 |
| Photos in the whole workspace | 200, counting photos that are uploaded but not yet saved |
| Size of one photo | 5 MB after shrinking (a photo from your phone is a fraction of that) |
| Types stored | JPEG and PNG (what you choose is converted before it uploads) |
When you have used all 200, the box tells you ("You've used all 200 photos") and Choose photos switches off until you remove one you no longer use.
Where photos appear
- The records list shows the cover as a small picture before the name, and on a phone on each card.
- A record's page (Edit, or the preview you open from a lead's match) shows all of its photos.
- A lead's matches show the cover on each card, so you can tell the records apart at a glance.
- The inbox and the lead page show the pictures that went to the lead beside each option, under "Options shown".
Every picture has a description for screen readers made from the record's name and the photo's place, for example "Spiti Valley Slow Roads photo 2".
Pictures in the dashboard are shown through links that stop working after about 15 minutes. If a page has been open for a long time, a picture may be replaced by a grey box saying the preview is unavailable; reload the page and it comes back. Anyone who holds a link can open that one picture until it expires, which is why the links are short-lived and made fresh each time a page loads, and why there is no permanent address for a photo.
What a lead sees
Only photos in an Image field with Lead can see switched on are ever sent. Each option comes with its cover photo; a lead who asks to see an option can get up to three of its photos. Switching the field off stops the next options message from including them, even for options worked out earlier. See Showing options to leads for what arrives on each channel and what happens if a picture cannot be sent.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| "That isn't a photo we can use" | The file is not an image. Choose a JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC photo. |
| "We couldn't open that photo" | The browser cannot read it, often a HEIC in a browser other than Safari. Export it as a JPEG or PNG. |
| "That photo is still over 5 MB after shrinking" or "Over 5 MB" | Even shrunk, the photo is too big. Choose a smaller one. |
| "That photo is too large in pixels" | Choose a smaller one. |
| "Use a JPEG or PNG photo" | The server only stores JPEG and PNG. Photos from the picker already are. |
| "A field holds up to 4 photos" or "Only 2 more photos fit" | Remove one to add another. |
| "You've used all 200 photos" | Remove photos you no longer use. |
| "Too many photos at once" | Wait a minute and try again. |
| A grey box that says the preview is unavailable | The page's links have expired. Reload the page. |