Photo Gallery
Browse, search and organise your organisation's shared photo albums.
The Photo Gallery shows every album available to your organisation as a grid of cover thumbnails, each labelled with the album name and the number of photos it holds. From the options menu you can create a new album, filter the grid with a search field, or reorder it by name or by when it was last updated. Tapping an album opens it so you can work with the photos inside.
Overview
| Control | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Header title | Reads Photo Gallery |
| Album grid | One tile per album: cover thumbnail plus Name (count) |
| Three-dot / + button | Opens the options dropdown |
| Add New Album | Opens the new-album form |
| Search | Shows or hides the search field |
| Sort | Opens the sort chooser |
| Back arrow | Returns to the previous screen |
Grid size
The grid re-flows for the device and orientation, so more albums fit on larger screens.
| Device and orientation | Columns |
|---|---|
| iPhone, portrait | 2 |
| iPhone, landscape | 4 |
| iPad, portrait | 4 |
| iPad, landscape | 6 |
Tiles are always square, and the grid re-flows immediately when you rotate the device.
Getting Here
- Open the Photo Gallery from its entry point in the app.
- A loading indicator appears while the album list is fetched for your current organisation.
- Cover thumbnails then download quietly in the background, one album at a time, and each tile fills in as its image arrives.
A tile shows its name and count as soon as the list loads, even before the cover image has arrived. An album with no photos in it keeps an empty tile — that is normal, not a failed download.
Add a New Album
- Tap the three-dot / + button in the header.
- Choose Add New Album.
- Fill in the album details and confirm.
- The gallery reloads from the server so your new album appears in the grid.
Search for an Album
- Tap the options button and choose Search.
- A search field slides into view and the keyboard opens.
- Type any part of an album's name or description. The grid filters as you type, ignoring upper and lower case.
- To finish, choose Search from the options menu again. The field slides away, the text is cleared and the full grid returns.
The search also matches the photo count that follows the album name, so typing a number can narrow a long list quickly.
Sort Albums
- Tap the options button and choose Sort.
- Pick a sort key:
| Key | Orders by |
|---|---|
| Name | Album name, ignoring case |
| Updated Date | When the album was last changed |
- Pick ascending or descending order and confirm. The grid reorders immediately.
Your last sort choice is remembered and reapplied the next time the album list loads, so the gallery opens the way you left it.
Open an Album
- Tap any tile in the grid.
- The album detail screen opens with that album's photos, its name and its identifier.
- When you come back, the gallery quietly refreshes so any changes you made inside the album — added or deleted photos — are reflected in the tile's count and cover.
The number in parentheses after each album name is the count of photos in that album, so you can spot an empty album at a glance.
How This Connects
- Where the albums come from. The album list is fetched from the server for your current organisation each time the screen opens, and again whenever you add an album or return from an album's detail screen. Switching agencies changes which albums you see.
- Where the thumbnails come from. Cover images are downloaded from your organisation's photo storage and cached on the device, so revisiting the gallery is fast and works without a connection. If a cached file is unreadable it is deleted and fetched again.
- Photos are shared with the rest of the app. The photos inside these albums are your organisation's shared photo library, the same images referenced when attaching media to an incident — see Incident Additional Tab — or shared in a conversation, see Chat and Image Preview.
- Creating content for the gallery. Photos you capture and annotate in Photo Drawing are saved to your device library, from where they can be uploaded into an album.
- Screen sleep. The display follows Keep Screen Awake in App Defaults.
- Offline and reconnect. With no connection the grid shows whatever was cached last — names, counts and any thumbnails already downloaded. New albums, new thumbnails and the refresh after adding an album all need a connection and resume automatically once you are back online.
Troubleshooting
| If this happens | What to do |
|---|---|
| The grid is empty | Your organisation has no albums yet, or the list could not be fetched. Check your connection and reopen the screen |
| An alert shows a message from the server | The album list request failed. Note the message, check your connection and try again |
| Tiles show names but no cover images | Thumbnails are still downloading in the background; give it a moment, or reopen the screen once you have a connection |
| A toast says "Token not configured" | The app could not set up its file download session. Check your connection, then reopen the gallery |
| A toast says "TransferUtility not found" | The same download session problem — reopen the gallery, and sign out and in again if it persists |
| Search shows nothing | Clear the field and retype; search matches the album name, description and photo count only |
| The grid has too few columns on an iPad | Rotate the device — column count is set by device and orientation |
| A count looks out of date | Open the album and come back; returning triggers a refresh |
| You cannot find an album someone mentioned | Confirm you are in the right agency; albums belong to one organisation at a time |
Related Pages
⬅️ Previous: PDF Generator | Next: Photo Drawing ➡️