How photos are ordered in a report

A Landscape report template uses a photo block to print photos contained within points or other geography. Typically these are site visit photos contained in site visit points. Before we get into how the report orders these photos, a quick recap of how Landscape handles photos in the first place:

When you take a photo in Landscape Mobile, two things are created: a point (or 'geography') and one or more photos contained within that point.

In a report template, a photo block will display any photos attached to any points, lines, or polygons on a map, alongside other text data that belongs to either the photo or the geography. In understanding how the photo block handles these objects, it's important to remember two things:

1. The report will always sort by the geography first, then by the photos within that geography. In other words, you must always rely on geography fields to order your photos. You cannot rely on a photo field on its own.
2. Geography name, description, label, and photo description are all text fields. They are not numeric. This means that all numbers that you are sorting on must be zero padded (have a zero in front) if you want them to appear in numeric order. You can also sort by 'number' field, which is numeric, sorts predictably, and can be edited with the point renumbering tool.

In the first screenshot above, you can see how Landscape Mobile's auto-numbering system automatically labelled the point as '2', and added the name of 'Photopoint 02'. The name is zero-padded because geography name is the default field that photo blocks are sorted by.

To change the sorting mechanism of your report, navigate to the report template via Settings > Report Templates (must be an administrator to access settings) and click on the photo block. The sorting options for the photo block are displayed on the right. 'Sort Geography' is the primary sorting field for the photo block. 'Sort Photos' only sorts the photos within a single point feature. In other words, if a point contains multiple photos, the 'Sort Photos' option determines the order of those particular photos are printed in a report.

In the following screenshot, you can see that 'Sort Geography' is set to sort by 'Name'. This is the default and preferred field to choose, since Landscape mobile automatically names points so that they are correctly sorted in reports.