Sending and receiving attachments
Photos, PDFs and MMS in the Inbox — how they're captured, previewed, and pushed onto the job.
Customers send inventories, floor plans, insurance forms and photos of a scratched sideboard. All of it now arrives with the message and stays with it.
What gets captured
- Email attachments on every synced inbound email — including messages that don't match a job. (Those attachments used to be lost with the message; they aren't any more.)
- MMS media on inbound SMS — a photo texted to your VanMan number is downloaded and kept.
- Files you attach to an outbound email from the Inbox or from a job.
Spotting them
A paperclip on the row in the message list means the message has attachments. In the reading pane they appear as chips under the message, each with the file name and size.
Opening them
Click a chip:
- Images and video open in a preview overlay, without leaving the Inbox.
- PDFs and everything else open in a new browser tab.
Either way the file is served through a short-lived signed link, so it can't be shared out of VanMan by copying the URL.
Getting attachments onto the job
Assign the message to a job and its attachments become attachments on that job. That is the whole trick — the photo the customer texted at 7am ends up on the job record the crew can see, rather than in a mailbox nobody opens.
If a customer sends photos of a difficult access, assign the message to the job before the day of the move. The crew opens the job on mobile and the photos are there.
Attaching files to an outgoing message
In the reply or compose panel, use the Attach control. Limits:
| | | | --- | --- | | File types | Images and PDFs | | Files per message | 10 | | Channel | Email only |
Files upload as you pick them and show as removable chips before you send. SMS has no attach control — to send a customer a document, use email.
Very large attachments can be rejected by the receiving mail server even when VanMan accepts them. For a big set of photos, send a few of the important ones rather than everything at full size.
Tutorial: a damage photo from the crew's own phone
The crew texts a photo of a damaged item to the office number mid-job.
It arrives as an SMS with a paperclip. If the sender's number is on a job's contact, you'll also see a suggested badge.
Click the chip — the photo opens in the preview overlay. Confirm it is what you think it is before attaching it to a customer's job.
Assign to job, pick the right one. The photo is now an attachment on the job, timestamped and traceable.
An attachment is evidence, not a record. If there is actual damage, log it properly — see reporting an incident — so it gets triaged and followed up rather than sitting quietly on a job.