The attachment widget looks like a humble “add a file” box, but it is a full document system on every entity: upload many files, organise them, and view them, images, video, audio and multi-page PDFs, in a built-in viewer, without ever leaving the page.
- What you can attach, and how files are organised
- The capabilities hiding behind the simple widget
- The built-in viewer and its keyboard controls
- How attachments belong to their parent document
Attach anything, to anything
Almost every document and master record carries an attachments area: the customer's purchase order on a sales order, a signed delivery photo on a delivery, a spec sheet on a product, a receipt on a claim. The files belong to that record and travel with it.
More than an upload box
Behind the plain widget sits a real file manager. You can:
- Upload many files at once – pick several, or drag and drop them straight onto the widget.
- Reorder them by dragging a sort handle, so the most relevant file leads.
- Rename and caption files, so a list of uploads reads sensibly.
- Archive a file (hide it without deleting, keeping the history) or delete it outright.
- Download a single file, or all of them at once.
The viewer
The real surprise is the built-in viewer: click a file and it opens in place, no download, no new tab, handling each kind of file properly:
- Images (JPEG, PNG) – zoom in (or toggle zoom with the space bar) and pan by dragging a zoomed image around.
- Video and audio – play right in the viewer, with standard controls.
- PDF – read multi-page documents, paging through with Page Up / Page Down or the up and down arrows, and jumping to the first or last page with Home / End.
- Switch between attached documents with the left and right arrow keys, so reviewing a stack of files is all keyboard.
How attachments are stored
Attachments are held as a set tied to their parent record, so any entity can carry them without a bespoke field. Each file keeps its own metadata (name, caption, order, archived state), and the set as a whole belongs to the one document, with multi-tenant isolation so one organisation never sees another's files.
Worked example
On a sales order you attach the customer's emailed PO, a photo of the signed delivery note, and a PDF spec. You drag the PO to the top, caption the photo “signed 12 June”, and review all three in the viewer, zooming the photo, paging through the spec, flicking between them with the arrow keys, without opening a single download.
Edge cases and good practice
- Order matters. Reorder so the most important file leads; it is the first thing the next person sees.
- Archive, do not delete, when a file is superseded but worth keeping for the record.
- Learn the keys. Left/right to switch files, up/down or page keys to turn PDF pages, space to zoom, the viewer is fastest from the keyboard.
Related
- Reference: Internal Notes and Remarks (other shared elements)
- Reference: Platform overview