Photos: reference shots and proof of this visit

Most software has one photo bucket and no opinion about it. LakeOps has two, because a photo of where the dock goes and a photo proving you pulled it last October are doing completely different work.

Reference photos: the institutional memory

These live on the item and there are two sets: how it looks in the water, and how it is stacked for the winter. They are permanent and they are never pruned.

This is the single most valuable thing you can leave for the next person. Crews turn over. Somebody who has never seen a shoreline can open the item, look at the picture, and know where the dock goes and which way the canopy frame lies on the rack. That knowledge otherwise lives only in the head of whoever has worked the lake longest.

The crew app shows the right set automatically: “where it goes” on a spring stop, “how it stacks” on a fall one, opened by default on any item still pending.

Visit photos: proof of this occurrence

These are added on the job item from the stop screen — what this crew left behind, this visit. They answer a specific question: “you say you pulled my lift last fall, show me.”

Because that question has a natural shelf life, so do these photos. LakeOps keeps every item’s photos from its two most recent completions and clears the older ones, with a floor so nothing ages out early on a quiet account. By the time a set is cleared, the crew has been back and photographed the item again — the newer set has already superseded it.

Which one should the crew take?

Situation	Which photo
First time at a property, or the item changed	Reference — on the item, from the office or the field.
Finished a normal stop	Visit photo on the item you finished, if anything is worth showing.
Something is damaged or not right	Visit photo, plus a note. That pair is what protects you when it comes up in six months.
Skipping an item	Visit photo of why, along with the written reason.

Photos and no signal

Take the picture where the work is, bars or no bars. A photo taken with no signal is kept on the phone and sent when the connection comes back, along with everything else the crew recorded — the badge on the crew app counts it until it has gone. Only the upload waits; the crew does not.

• Each picture lands once. A phone that loses signal halfway through sending tries again, and LakeOps recognizes a picture it already has. That matters most for the shoreline photo: a property has one, and a second copy arriving would replace it.
• Pictures for the same thing keep their order. Two re-shoots of a shoreline taken an hour apart arrive in the order they were taken, so the newer one is the one that stays.
• A file that cannot be accepted does not hold up the rest. Something that is not a photo, or a photo over 20 MB, is marked on the phone as could not be sent, with the reason, and the other pictures carry on.
• A role that cannot send photos right now is told so, and nothing is lost. If the office changed somebody’s role during the day, the phone says Your role can’t send this right now — ask the office, keeps the pictures, and sends them once the role is put right.

See working with no signal.

Who sees them

The office sees both sets on the job and the item. The customer sees what is on their completion page. Reference photos are internal working knowledge — they are for your crews.