Sharing photos with families and staff
Photos in your media library stay private until you choose to share them. This article explains how sharing works, how to turn it on, and what families and staff see once you do. It's written for admins setting up photo sharing for a season.
How sharing works
Sharing has two layers, and both have to be switched on before anyone sees a photo.
Season sharing - the master switch for a whole season. Until you turn it on, families and staff see nothing and get no notifications
Folder visibility - decides who can see each folder once season sharing is on
Think of season sharing as unlocking the door and folder visibility as deciding which rooms each person can enter.
If families say they can't see the photos you uploaded, it's almost always because season sharing is off or the folder's visibility is set to hidden. Both layers need to line up.
Turning on sharing for a season
Open a season's settings in your media library to switch on Family sharing, Staff sharing, or both. Before you turn family sharing on, Campfront tells you how many folders will become visible to enrolled families, and notes any folders you've set up by hand that won't change.
Setting who sees each folder
Open a folder's settings to control its visibility. Each folder has a Family visibility and a Staff visibility setting. By default a folder inherits from the folder above it, so you can set sharing once at the top and let everything below follow.
Family visibility options:
Hidden - no families see this folder
Enrolled families - families of campers in that session
All families in season - families of any camper enrolled that season
Specific sessions - families of campers in the sessions you pick
Specific camper groups - families of campers in the groups you pick
Tagged campers' families - families see only the photos their own camper appears in
Staff visibility works the same way, with All staff in season, Specific departments, and Tagged staff.
The tagged options lean on knowing who's in each photo, which comes from facial recognition. Read "Facial recognition and AI photo tagging" to set that up.
If you change a folder's sharing and its subfolders have their own custom settings, Campfront offers to reset them so they inherit from the parent again.
Locking a folder
Turn on Lock folder in a folder's settings to stop new photos being uploaded there. This is handy once a session's photos are final. Locking changes uploads only, not who can view the folder.
How families and staff are notified
When you upload photos with notifications turned on, Campfront sends one email per upload once it finishes. Families and staff get a message with a few sample photos and a link to view the rest. Campfront only emails the people a photo is shared with, and it skips anyone who's turned off photo notifications in their own settings.
If you upload with notifications off, nobody is emailed. The photos simply appear the next time people visit their portal.
What families and staff see
Families see a Media area in their portal with pictures of their own campers, newest first. They can filter to a specific camper, search, and download. Families can download print quality of the photos their camper is tagged in, and a smaller size for everything else. A parent can also remove their camper from a photo if they'd rather not have them tagged.
Staff see the photos shared with them for the seasons they worked.
Whether the Media area shows up in the family or staff portal at all is part of your portal section settings.