Keeping the Bouwjournaal for your customer

The Bouwjournaal (construction diary) is a photo timeline per project that takes your customer along with the progress of the job — without needing phone calls or separate WhatsApp messages. Indispensable for work your customer cannot see for themselves, as at a construction company or a roofing company.

Posting an update

1. Open the project and go to the Journal tab.
2. Click New update.
3. Add up to 12 photos (png, jpg or webp, max 15 MB per photo).
4. Optionally write a short description of what's been done.
5. Turn Visible to customer on or off (on by default) and optionally mark the update as a Milestone.
6. Click Post.

An update must contain at least text or a photo. An update you start but don't finish is automatically cleaned up after 24 hours.

Visible to customer or internal

Every update gets a label: an eye icon with "Customer" (visible) or a lock icon with "Internal". Internal updates are never visible to the customer, not even via the shareable link — handy for photos or notes meant only for your own team.

Posting an update that's visible to the customer sends a push notification to everyone with portal access to this project — a maximum of once per project per 24 hours, so the customer isn't overwhelmed by multiple updates in a row.

How your customer follows along

There are two ways, working independently of each other:

• Via the customer portal — does your customer have portal access (see Adding and managing a customer)? Then after logging in they see the timeline of their project(s) directly.
• Via a shareable link, without logging in — click Share link on the Journal tab to generate a unique link. You can email this link from the app (with a preview of the email beforehand), send it via chat, or share it another way. Anyone with the link sees the timeline, without needing to log in.

Via the shareable link, the customer always only sees updates marked as visible to customer.

Managing the link

On the Journal tab you can:

• turn the link active or inactive, without changing the link itself,
• generate a new link — the old link then stops working immediately.

An inactive or revoked link shows the customer a friendly notice that the link is no longer valid.

Who can edit an update?

Only the person who created an update, or an administrator, can edit or delete it afterwards. A colleague can't simply change someone else's update.

Frequently asked questions

• Can I also add videos or PDFs to the journal? No, the Bouwjournaal only supports photos.
• My customer doesn't have login details — can they still follow along? Yes, use the shareable link; no account is needed for that.
• Does my customer get a notification for every photo? No, at most one push notification per project per 24 hours, even if you post multiple updates.
• Could my customer see internal updates if they guess a photo link? No, internal updates are always shielded, even via the shareable link.