Photos and documents from your clients

A client describing a leak over the phone is a client you have to visit to understand, and a certificate of insurance asked for by email is one you chase for a week. With Files from clients on, the note they write about a job on their page carries the photos, and the documents you ask for arrive there too.

Nothing a client sends reaches you unchecked. Every photo is scanned for malware by Microsoft before anyone in your business can open it — and one that fails never reaches you at all.

Turn it on

Files from clients is a tool. Add it on the Tools page; it is on Professional and above, because every file is scanned by Microsoft, which bills us for what it scans. Once it is on, your clients’ page offers photos on every note they write.

What your clients send counts against your business’s storage once it passes its scan, as your own photos and documents do; a file still waiting, or turned away, does not. When your storage is full, a client adding a photo is told This business cannot take photos right now. Your message can still be sent without them. — and their note’s words still go.

What your client does

When they write about a job, or reply on one, Add photos takes up to four — JPEG, PNG or HEIC, up to 5 MB each. Each is sent as they choose it, and the note goes when they press Send. On their note they see Photo being checked until the photo is checked, and then the photo.

What you see

The note arrives as any note from a client does — in For you, and by email to whoever looks after the job. Its photos read Photo being checked until the scan says they are clean, which usually takes a minute or two. Then each appears on the note and in the job’s Photos, marked From the client. They take no place from the job’s own six.

A photo the scan has not answered for in fifteen minutes reads Not checked yet, and stays closed: nobody can open or download it until it is checked. One still not checked after a week is deleted, unopened.

Ask a client for a document

Proof of insurance, an HOA approval, a signed form: on the client’s Work tab, or one of their jobs, Documents asked for → Ask for a document, with what it is, a note if it helps, and the day you need it by. They are told by email, and by text where they agreed to texts, and the request is under Needs you on their page with Send a file — PDFs or photos, up to 15 MB each, one or several.

Each file is scanned as a photo is. When one passes, the request reads Received, the file is under the client’s or job’s Documents — yours, not shared back with them unless you share it — and you are told in For you. Then:

• Accept it, and the request is done.
• Ask again, saying what is still needed — page two is missing — and they are told, and it is on their page again.
• Withdraw it, if you no longer need it: it leaves their page. Anything they sent stays under Documents.

A request whose day passes with nothing sent reads Overdue, and the client is reminded once, the day before. Ask only for what you should hold: never a full card number, a password, or anything you would not want in a file.

A file that could not be accepted

If the scan finds something harmful, the file is deleted where it waits — nobody in your business ever receives it — and your client sees that it could not be accepted. The rest stands: a note’s words and any photos that passed, or a request still waiting for the file it asked for.

What is checked, and by whom

• What it is. A photo is a JPEG, PNG or HEIC, and a document a PDF or a photo, by its own first bytes, not by its name — a program renamed .jpg is refused before it is kept.
• How big it is. Up to 5 MB for a photo on a note and 15 MB for a document, measured when it arrives.
• Whether it is harmful. Microsoft Defender for Storage scans it in a holding area of its own, apart from your files. Until it says the photo is clean, nothing — no person, no preview, no thumbnail — opens it.

Turn it off

Remove the tool and your clients’ page stops offering photos and lists no requests. What was already sent stays on its note, its job and the client’s Documents.