My Photographs is an app for your clients, for iPhone and Android. It puts everything you have shared with a client in one place on their phone: their galleries, their quotes, agreements, invoices and questionnaires, and their next session. Inside, it shows your studio's name, and it works for every photographer on Meridian, including those on their own domain.
There is nothing for you to set up. The app reads the same page as your client's link, Their page, so whatever you add for them shows in the app too.
Where to get it
My Photographs is coming to the App Store and Google Play. Until it is there, your clients open their link in the browser on their phone or computer. It is the same page, with the same galleries and documents, and it already works.
When the app arrives, it needs an iPhone on iOS 15 or later, or an Android phone on Android 7 or later.
Sending your client their link
The app has no account and no password. Your client's link is the key, exactly as it is on the web.
- Open Clients and press your client's name.
- Under Their page, copy the link.
- Send it to your client by email or text.
The link stays the same as you add galleries, invoices and agreements, so you send it once. It is a different link from a single gallery's link: the app only opens a client's page, not one gallery on its own.
Replace this link under Their page stops the old link working, in the browser and in the app. Gallery and invoice links your client already has keep working.
Opening it in the app
The first time your client opens the app, it asks for the link your photographer sent you. They paste it and tap Open. The app checks with Meridian that the address is a live Meridian studio (yours, on your own domain or your Meridian address) before it sends the link anywhere or keeps it.
Tapping the link in your email opens the browser, not the app, so your client pastes it into the app once. After that the app opens straight to their things.
What your client sees
Along the bottom are four tabs:
- Home: "Hello" and their first name, their next session, and everything you have shared. Anything waiting on them (a quote to reply to, an agreement to sign, an invoice to pay, a questionnaire to answer) is at the top, under Over to you.
- Galleries: their galleries, albums and print orders.
- Documents: quotes, agreements, invoices and questionnaires, with a count of how many are waiting on them.
- Sessions: their next session, with its time and place.
Each item says where it stands, in the same words as their page on the web. Tapping one opens it in the phone's own browser window, inside the app. A gallery works there just as it does on the web, so your client can favourite photographs, leave notes and download what your gallery allows. They sign an agreement, pay an invoice or answer a questionnaire the same way. When they close it, the list updates, so a signed agreement or a paid invoice shows at once.
Refresh fetches the latest. Settings turns notifications on or off. Use a different link removes the link and everything saved from the phone.
With no signal
The app keeps the last copy it fetched, so your client can still check what time to arrive at a venue with no signal. It shows "Offline. Showing what was saved on …" with the date. The copy is forgotten after 14 days.
What is kept is the list and the session details, not the photographs. Opening a gallery, an agreement or an invoice needs a connection.
Notifications
If your client taps Notify me, their phone gets a notification:
- when a gallery is ready, alongside the email your A gallery is delivered automation sends;
- the day before their session, alongside the reminder email;
- when an invoice is due, alongside each overdue reminder email.
Each one goes only when the matching email goes, and only to a client who chose it. Nothing is asked when the app first opens: the phone's own question appears only after your client taps Notify me. Not now is remembered, and they can turn notifications on or off later in Settings.
A notification says only your studio's name and what happened, for example "Northlight Photography has delivered your photographs. Tap to see them." It never shows a gallery or invoice name, an amount, a time, a place or a link. Tapping it opens the app at that item.
To stop the phone half of these, open Settings in your panel, then What your clients can do, untick Clients get notifications in the My Photographs app and press Save. The emails still go.
Once any phone gets notifications from a client's link, Their page says how many. One link takes up to six phones. Replace this link turns them all off; your client pastes the new link and taps Notify me again.
Privacy
- No account. Your client never makes a password, and there is nothing to sign up to.
- What the app sends. Only the link, to your own site, to read what that site already shows your client on the web. Before that, once, it asks Meridian whether the link's address is a live studio: only the address (for example yourstudio.com) goes, never the link itself. If your client turns notifications on, the phone's notification code goes to your site too. Your site keeps that code against a scrambled form of the link, never the link itself.
- Nothing else. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no crash reports.
- On the phone. The link and the saved copy are kept in the phone's secure storage (the Keychain on iPhone, the Keystore on Android), and are not copied to a new Android phone. Use a different link deletes them. On an iPhone, deleting the app may not remove them, so suggest Use a different link first.
- Only their first name. Of your client's own details, the app is sent only their first name, for the greeting.
The link opens everything on their page, so treat it like a key. If it may have been passed on, press Replace this link and send the new one.
If it does not open
What the app says, and what to do:
- "That is a link to one gallery or page." Your client pasted a single gallery's link, or an invoice's or agreement's. Send them the link from Their page.
- "That does not look like the link you were sent." What was pasted has no client page link in it. Send the link from Their page again. The app finds the link inside a longer message, and copes with spaces, line breaks, capitals, www. and a missing or http:// start, so your client can paste the whole email or text.
- "That link has expired. Ask your photographer for a new one." The link was replaced, or it has run out. Copy the current one from Their page (press Replace this link first if you need a new one) and send it.
- "Could not reach that site. Check the link and your connection." The phone is offline, or part of the link is missing. Send it again and ask your client to paste all of it.
- "That address is not a Meridian studio, so it was not opened." The link is not one of yours, or it was changed on the way, or your site is not open (Meridian checks the address belongs to a live studio before the app sends the link anywhere). Send it again.
- Something new does not show. Ask your client to tap Refresh.
- Notifications do not come. In Settings the app says why: notifications are turned off in the phone's settings, your studio does not send them through the app, or the link already has six phones. The last is fixed by turning them off on a phone your client no longer uses, or by replacing the link.
- A client of two photographers. The app holds one link at a time, so it shows, and notifies, the photographer whose link is in it.
Alongside
- Clients and their page
- Client galleries
- Automations
- Your overview and notifications, for your own phone