Folder structures and file storage

Store every project document in one place, organise it with folders, and control exactly who sees each file.

Every project, contact, and personal inbox in Reonic can hold files: images, PDFs, planning files, spreadsheets, and more. Files attach to one of four homes (a residential project, a commercial project, a customer contact, or your own personal inbox). Without any setup, files sit in a flat list. With folders and folder templates you give that list structure, and with sharing controls you decide who inside your company and which customers can see each file.

Who this is for

Installer admins managing folder templates and workspace-wide file-access settings.
Account managers doing the daily work: uploading documents, organising folders, moving files between projects, and marking files customer-visible.
Field workers capturing photos and scans on the Mobile App.
Admins deleting protected files that account managers can't.

Before you start

You need Editor access (or higher) on the project, contact, or personal inbox you're working in.
Allowed file types on the documentation uploader are images, PDFs, CSV, and Excel. Video is not accepted on documentation uploads.

Add folders per project (no setup needed)

In any project's Files view you can create folders and move files into them at any time.

Open the project's Files tab.
Click New folder.
Fill in a name (required), an optional description, and a colour (text and background) so the folder stands out.
(Optional) To restrict the folder to specific users or teams, open its Sharing and access popover and turn off Allow access to all external users (on by default), then pick who keeps access. See Share files and control who sees them below.
Click Save. The folder appears in the file list.

To move files into a folder, open the destination folder first, then drag files onto it (or use the move-to-folder action). Folders are a single level: a folder holds files, not other folders. For finer organisation inside a folder, use a naming convention.

Setting up the same folders manually on every project gets tedious. Folder templates solve that.

Define folder templates once, use them everywhere

Folder templates let you define a folder structure once and have it appear automatically in every project. Template setup lives in Settings > Organization > Folder management and requires an admin role.

Open Settings > Organization > Folder management.
Pick the area the template applies to: Residential projects, Commercial projects, contact files, or personal inbox. Each has its own template scope, so a residential template does not carry over to commercial projects.
Click Create folder, enter a name (for example Site survey, Contract documents, Installation photos, Handover), and pick a colour.
Click Save. The new folders appear automatically the first time someone opens a project's file view.

Re-import a template after you change it

When you open a new project's file view for the first time and it has no folders yet, the template folders appear in it automatically, with no action needed. To pull in a template update on a project that already has folders, use the Import folders from settings button on the file view header.

Re-import is safe to run repeatedly. It updates the existing folders' names and colours to match the latest template. It does not duplicate folders or move the files already inside them. Your files stay exactly where they are.

Note: Sharing settings don't carry over from the template. A cloned folder copies only its name, description, colour, and owner, not the sharing or visibility settings. Every cloned folder starts not customer-visible, unrestricted, and with no shares, so set any per-folder sharing on the project itself, not on the template.

Pro tip: Set up folder templates before you have many active projects. They retro-fit cleanly, but each new folder shows up empty in old projects, and the team has to learn the new layout twice.

Upload files to a project

The most common way to add files is drag-and-drop in the Portal.

Open the project's Files tab (open a folder first if you want the files to land there).
Drag files onto the drop zone, or click it to open the file picker.
Each file uploads with its own progress indicator. Images may be compressed automatically, depending on your workspace settings.
Files appear in the list once uploaded.

You can also capture files away from your desk:

On the Mobile App, field workers take photos, pick from the photo library, run a LiDAR room scan (iOS), or record a voice memo straight into a project. Captures are held on the device offline and sync when the connection returns.
Via WhatsApp, send a photo, PDF, or document to the Reonic WhatsApp assistant, and it routes the file to the project you're discussing, or to your personal inbox if no project is set.

Note: Video files are not accepted on documentation uploads. The drop zone, the Mobile App, and the WhatsApp assistant all reject video. The only place Reonic takes video is the separate drone-photogrammetry flow, which is not project documentation.

Move a file from your inbox to a project

Files that arrive in your personal inbox (for example via WhatsApp, before you knew the project) can be moved onto a project.

Open your personal file inbox in the Portal.
Find the file and choose Move to project.
Pick the destination residential or commercial project.
Confirm. The file moves to the end of that project's file list.

Any sharing you set on the file in your inbox carries over. You can move files out of your own inbox onto a project, not the other way around, and not between two projects directly.

Find a file

Organise and find files with three tools:

Folders (and folder templates) for structure, as described above.
A consistent naming convention inside a folder for finer grouping.
Search on the file list to find a file by name.

The Sharing and access popover on each file carries two separate controls. Keep them distinct.

By default a file is open to your external users, and you restrict it by picking who keeps access.

Open the file and click Sharing and access.
Under Share with external users & teams, find Allow access to all external users. It is on by default. Turn it off.
The people picker appears. Add the users (and teams, if your workspace has teams) who should keep access.
Close the popover. It saves automatically. The file is now hidden from anyone not on the shared lists.

Sharing is additive: adding a team doesn't remove existing user shares. You can also restrict a whole folder the same way (turn off Allow access to all external users on the folder), and every file inside inherits the restriction. Sharing with individual users always works. If your workspace does not have teams and you want to share with a team, contact your Reonic account manager.

Open the file and click Sharing and access.
Under End-customer access, turn on Share with customer.
Click Save. The file appears in the customer portal's file area for that project.

Note: Turning on Share with customer for the first file on a project also switches that project's whole customer portal on, which shows the customer every other customer-visible file on the project. Decide whether you want the whole project portal active before you flip the first file. Turning a file's visibility back off later does not switch the project portal off again. You turn that off separately at the project level.

Tighten visibility for external users (admin)

Your workspace has two settings that govern what external users (customers and partners with portal access) see. An admin configures them directly on the Settings > Company settings > Features > Project related features page. You do not need to contact Reonic.

File access control on means external users see only files that are customer-visible, sit in an unrestricted folder, or are explicitly shared with them.
Not sharing with externals by default means files uploaded by external users start visible only to the person who uploaded them, so a customer's upload isn't visible to every member of staff. This sub-toggle becomes available once File access control is on; turning File access control off again clears it.

To change your workspace's posture (open, filtered, or strict), an admin flips these toggles on the Settings > Company settings > Features > Project related features page. The change takes effect immediately for external-user file views.

Ask the customer to upload a file

When you need a document from the customer (a power of attorney, an ID photo, a utility bill, a meter photo), send a file request through the customer portal.

Open the project's File requests area and choose Request a file.
Fill in a title (what you're asking for), an optional description, the allowed file types, and whether to allow many files.
Click Publish, then Send via email. Reonic emails the customer a link to their upload page.
The customer opens the link and uploads the file or files. Uploaded files are marked customer-visible and recorded as customer-uploaded.
Review the uploads and mark the request complete so the customer no longer sees it as outstanding.

The customer uploads straight from the emailed link. The same customer-portal behaviour applies here too, since files arriving through a request are marked customer-visible.

Note: Some file requests appear automatically rather than one at a time. Site-photo requirements (Roof, Meter cabinet, and the like) are spawned onto a project from your workspace's templates based on the project's packages, so a customer may see requests you didn't create individually. You still create ad-hoc, one-off requests with the flow above.

Mark up an image

Image files can be annotated in place with pen marks, shapes, text, and crop, on the Portal and on the Mobile App.

Open the image and choose Edit.
Use the toolkit: pen (with stroke width), shapes (circle, square, arrow), text, lines (solid or dashed), a solar polygon for roof outlining, crop, and zoom. Use undo and redo as you go.
Click Save. The annotated version is stored alongside the original, and everyone who opens the file from then on sees the annotated version.

The original is always kept. Each save replaces the previous annotated copy, so there is no edit history. To discard annotations and fall back to the original, contact your Reonic account manager.

Download a folder as a ZIP

Download every file in a folder at once instead of one by one.

Open the project's Files view, find the folder, and choose Download folder as ZIP.
Small folders bundle and download immediately.
Large folders prepare the archive first. Watch the status move through Pending to Ready (or Failed), then click the download link when it's ready.

A folder can hold up to 1,000 files for a ZIP export. The finished download link works for about a day, so re-trigger the export if you need it again later.

Photos captured against installation checklist items are included in the export too. They show up in the Files view and bundle into the folder ZIP, so a project's checklist images aren't left behind. Read the uploader or upload date off the file list before you export, since the archive holds the files themselves only.

Delete a file

Deletion is permanent: there is no trash and no undo.

Open the file list, find the file's row, and open its actions.
Click Delete. The file and its annotated copy are removed.

Some files are protected (subsidy documents, files marked protected, and signed offers). A protected file shows its delete action disabled with a "Protected file" tooltip for non-admins. An admin can delete it after confirming an irreversible-action dialog. A signed offer can never be deleted by anyone, including admins. If you only want a file out of one project, move it instead of deleting it.

Things to know

Folders are a single level. A folder holds files, not other folders. Use a naming convention for finer structure.
Organise with folders, templates, naming, and search. These are the tools for grouping and finding files.
Folder templates are per-area. Residential, commercial, contact, and personal each have their own template set, and they don't cross over.
Re-importing a template only touches folder names and colours. Your files stay where they are.
Download links last about a day. A link you share externally works for roughly a day, so re-trigger the export if you need it again later.
Same-name uploads create a new file. Uploading a file with the same name adds a new file rather than replacing the previous one.
iPhone photos (HEIC/HEIF) upload fine. Reonic converts them to JPEG automatically on the way in, so they preview and download like any other photo. You don't need to convert them first.
Up to 200 files per upload session, and a folder ZIP export bundles up to 1,000 files.
Customers upload through a file request. Send a file request and the customer uploads against it, or they download from their own file area in the customer portal.

Need help?

Step-by-step questions about this flow. Contact your Reonic account manager.
Feature requests or something missing. Drop a note to your account manager.
Bug reports. Describe what you were doing and what happened in your support email.

Last updated on August 4, 2026

Folder structures and file storage

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