Work you can hand over

Work you can hand over

How Omniris lets you share captures with colleagues and clients, deliver finished work, and connect it to the other systems you use, with every hand-over recorded and protected files handled the same careful way on every path.

Summary

Drone work is only useful once it reaches the people who need it: a colleague who checks it, a client who paid for it, a designer who works from it, a crew who acts on it. Omniris gives you several ways to hand work over. Each one is built for a different kind of recipient, and each one leaves a record of what was shared, with whom and when.

Some files in Omniris are protected: encrypted in storage with OpenTDF, an open standard for files that carry their own access rules. Throughout this paper, and in one table near the end, we say exactly what happens to protected files on each path: whether they are opened for the recipient, kept encrypted, or not sent at all.

Sharing inside Omniris

Your vault is your private storage in Omniris: folders of photos, videos, maps, 3D models and documents. Nobody else can see into it until you share something.

Sharing codes

To share a folder with another Omniris user, open the Sharing page, pick the folder (or your whole vault) and choose a level of access. You can also right-click any folder and choose Share. Omniris makes a sharing code: sixteen letters and digits, such as K7QD-2MXR-9TWA-4HLE. Send it to the person by any means you like. They enter it on their own Sharing page under Shared With Me.

• Each code works once. After someone redeems it, nobody else can use it. You cannot redeem your own code.
• You can only share what is yours. A code covers a folder in your own vault (for an organization's owner, the organization's vault), and everything inside it.
• It is recorded. Making a code and redeeming it are written into the custody history of every file in the folder.

A shared folder appears in the recipient's sidebar and on their Shared With Me list, which shows who shared it and the access level. They can hide it from the sidebar, or remove their own access at any time. Your own list shows each code, whether it has been redeemed, and by whom.

Snapshots

A snapshot is a read-only copy of a folder tree that points at the same stored files as the original, so nothing is duplicated. The recipient sees it in their own vault, with their own custody history for each copy, starting with a note of where it came from. Its files can be viewed and downloaded but not changed, not even by the person who holds them. Snapshots are also how a pilot delivers work to a client (see From pilot to client).

Transfers

A transfer moves files, rather than sharing them. When the recipient redeems the code, Omniris checks that their storage has room, then moves the files one by one, with a progress view they can follow. Each file keeps its custody history, which records the transfer. Failed files can be retried. When the transfer finishes, the code is closed automatically.

Files under a legal hold or a retention policy (rules that stop evidence being changed or removed) never change vault. If a folder holds any, you are warned with the list before the code is made, and those files stay with you while everything else moves. A delivered snapshot cannot be transferred.

Revoking access

• Revoke a code at any time from your Sharing page. Someone who already redeemed it loses access at once. If the share included protected files, they are also taken off each file's key list in the background (you can follow it under Removing Access), so encrypted copies they downloaded stop opening. Anything they already saved in opened form cannot be recalled. A snapshot you shared is removed from their vault.
• Delete a revoked code to clear it from your list.
• Recipients can remove their own access. They need a new code to get it back.
• If the recipient has placed a legal hold or retention policy on copies in a snapshot, those copies stay in their vault when it is revoked, and they are told how many. Findings they recorded on a revoked delivery are kept in a folder called "Revoked deliveries".

Protected files in a shared folder

When you share a folder that holds protected files with Read Only or Full Access, the recipient is given the right to open them, and the files are updated so that right is built into each one. This runs in the background; the recipient can follow it under Granting Permission. A snapshot recipient is given the same right. In a transfer, protected files are moved and stay protected, now under the new owner.

Organizations and members

An organization is a company account with one shared vault. Managers invite people by email (the invitation is valid for 30 days) and choose each person's role:

Managers change a viewer's folders at any time; clearing the list removes all of that viewer's access. Removing a member ends their access and keeps the record of their membership. If an organization is deactivated, its vault becomes read-only for everyone.

Sharing outside Omniris

Most people you work with will not have an Omniris account. For them there are public links: web addresses that open in any browser, on a computer or a phone, with nothing to install and no sign-in. There are three kinds.

Choices when you make a link

• Access. View Only or View + Download. View Only is the default.
• Password, optional. A visitor gets 10 tries every 15 minutes, then must wait. Changing the password signs out everyone who had entered the old one.
• Expiration: never, 1 day, 7 days (the default), 30 days or 90 days.
• Include findings, offered where you use findings (the issues you have recorded on a site; see Findings you can act on). Off by default. When on, the recipient sees the complete record of each finding inside what you shared, including people's names and comments, read-only, and can ask for a signed certificate of one.

Only the owner of a folder can publish it. In an organization's vault, that means the organization's managers; pilots and viewers cannot put organization folders on a public link.

What the recipient sees

The link opens a page with the label you gave it and your name (never your email address). If there is a password, they enter it first. Then:

• Photos appear as a gallery of thumbnails, by folder. Opening one shows it large, with the capture details Omniris holds, such as date, location, camera and weather.
• Videos play in the page.
• Maps (GeoTIFFs, the standard format for map-aligned images) open zoomable, loading only the part in view, so even a very large orthomosaic opens quickly.
• 3D results open in the 3D viewer: photo-built models, Gaussian splats (photo-real 3D scenes) and point clouds. A .3dmodel package (below) opens there too, and 360° panoramas open in their own viewer.
• AI detections on a photo are shown with it. Where a person has checked and corrected them, the page says who and when, and shows the corrected version.

Every download through a public link is written into that file's custody history before the file is sent. If the record cannot be written, the download does not happen.

Every photo, video, map or 3D model a visitor opens on the page is written into that file's custody history as a view, the same way views are recorded everywhere in Omniris: on a best-effort basis, merged per visitor, per file, per 10 minutes, and shown on certificates as counts. The record says whether the link was view only or view and download, so it shows which column of the table above the visitor was served from.

Views, expiry and revoking

• Views are counted once per visitor per browser session. Your list of links shows each link's view count.
• A view limit can be set when you send a job to a client (see From pilot to client). It stops new visitors once reached; someone already looking is not cut off mid-page.
• An expired or revoked link shows only a page saying the link is no longer valid. Nothing about the folder or its storage is revealed.
• Manage every link in one place: the Public Links tab on your Sharing page lists each link with its access, password, expiry, view count and status (Active, Expired or Revoked). From there you can copy or open a link, revoke it, or delete it. The links on a folder are also listed in that folder's Public Link dialog.

Every link address ends in 24 random characters, so it cannot be guessed. Treat a link like a key, though: anyone who has it can open it, which is why a password and an expiry date are worth setting.

Site Navigator links

Site Navigator is the Omniris map view of one site over time (see the site management white paper). A Site Navigator link shares that view instead of a folder. You choose:

• the customer and site;
• which dates, and whether to share future flights too, so new flights appear on the link as they are processed;
• which layers: for example the orthomosaic, surface and terrain models, and vegetation or thermal maps;
• whether to include the source images each flight was made from, and findings;
• View Only or View + Download;
• the maximum detail: full resolution, or about 2 in (5 cm), 4 in (10 cm) or 1 ft (30 cm) per pixel;
• an optional password and an expiry, as for a folder link.

The recipient gets the map with exactly those dates and layers, and nothing else in your vault. They can switch between dates and use many of the same tools you do: measure stockpile volumes and get a volume report, draw elevation profiles, compare two dates, read vegetation index values by zone, read temperatures on thermal maps, and look through the findings you shared. Nothing they do is saved into your account. On a View + Download link, a Files view also lets them download the shared maps (as GeoTIFF, or converted to JPG or PNG) and, if you shared them, the source images.

Maximum detail limits how far the recipient can zoom in; measurements still use the full-resolution data. You can edit a Site Navigator link later: its dates, layers, source images, detail, access, password and findings, but not its site or its expiry. Recipients pick up the change the next time the page loads. When you revoke one, maps already open in someone's browser stop within 10 minutes.

Each map layer a recipient puts on the map is written into that layer's custody history as a view, recorded the same best-effort way as every other view.

Delivering work

Sharing gives someone access to work that stays in Omniris. Delivering means preparing it to leave: a tidy package, a download, or a standard catalog that other software can open.

Sharing packages

A processed map job produces many files, not all of which a client needs. A sharing package is a clean folder holding only the ones you pick. Right-click the job's results folder and choose Create Sharing Package, then tick:

• the map layers to include: the colour orthomosaic, the surface and terrain models, and, for multispectral flights, the vegetation indices (NDVI, NDRE) and individual bands;
• whether to include the 3D model, as one .3dmodel file;
• a name for the package folder.

The package is made beside the results, with each layer given a plain name, such as RGB or DSM. Each copy carries its custody history, and the copy is recorded on both the original and the new file. Your full results stay as they were. Share the package by code or public link, or transfer it, like any other folder. A package made inside a protected folder is protected too.

The .3dmodel file

A 3D model is normally thousands of small files. A .3dmodel file holds them all in one, so a model can be handed over, moved or kept as a single item. Omniris opens it in the 3D viewer directly, reading only the parts the view needs, so it does not have to be unpacked or downloaded first, including on a public link. It is a standard ZIP archive underneath: rename it to .zip and any computer can open it.

Downloads in the browser

• One file: its Download button. A protected file is opened for you on the way, if you are allowed to open it, so you receive a usable file.
• A folder, or a selection of files: Omniris streams them as one ZIP file. In Chrome and Edge the ZIP is written straight to your disk, so there is no size limit. Other browsers assemble it in memory, up to 2 GB.
• Interruptions are expected. If the connection drops, or stalls for 90 seconds, the download resumes from the last complete file instead of starting again.
• Recorded. Every download is written into the custody history of each file it contains.

Downloads with the desktop app

The Omniris desktop app (for Windows, macOS and Linux) downloads to a folder on your computer instead of to a ZIP:

• A folder keeps its structure on your disk. Files download three at a time.
• A file already on your disk with the same size is skipped, so a repeated download only fetches what is new.
• A Downloads panel shows progress, speed and time left, with pause, resume and cancel. The queue is kept on disk: if the app or the computer restarts, the download carries on by itself.
• Protected files are opened on the way for people allowed to open them, exactly as for a single download in the browser.

STAC bundles

On a finished map job, the STAC bundle button downloads the job's results as one ZIP that is also a STAC catalog (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog, the open standard for describing map data). Unzipped, it opens as it is in QGIS 3.40 or later and other STAC tools: each map, point cloud and 3D model is listed with its footprint on the Earth (where the file makes it knowable), the time range the photos were taken in and, where Omniris has recorded one, a checksum that proves the file is unchanged. No account or connection back to Omniris is needed to use it.

Other exports

From pilot to client

When a client hires a pilot through Omniris, the results travel inside Omniris from the pilot's vault to the client's. The files never leave Omniris on the way.

Re-delivery. When a pilot submits again after a rejection, the new delivery replaces the previous one, and the client's work moves with it: findings they recorded, and corrections they made to AI detections, follow to the matching new files. If the client has placed a legal hold or retention policy on the earlier delivery, or the job is under a legal hold, the earlier delivery is kept and the new one arrives beside it.

Protected deliveries. If the delivered folder holds protected files, the client is given the right to open them when the results are submitted. The files stay encrypted in storage.

Invoicing. On the Omniris cloud and the data center edition, accepting results generates and sends the invoice for the job automatically. On-premises installs do not invoice.

Delivering to your own clients

Pilots also run jobs for clients of their own, who may not use Omniris at all. For these, Submit to Client on the job makes a public link to the job's delivery folder and opens a ready-written email in the pilot's own email program, addressed to the client, so it comes from the pilot's address and signature. The pilot chooses:

• View + Download (the default) or View only;
• an optional password;
• an expiry: never, 7, 30 (the default) or 90 days;
• a maximum number of views.

Submit to Client can be used at any point in the job, and again later. Each new send makes a new link and switches the previous one off, so only one link to the client's work is live at a time; the dialog warns about this before it happens. The pilot closes the job with Mark complete.

Integrations

Integrations send your work, or news about it, into the other systems your teams already use.

The findings API

An API (application programming interface) lets another program talk to Omniris directly. The Omniris API is built around findings: the issues recorded on your sites, each with a location, a status, evidence and a custody history. A work-order system, a GIS or a script can read your findings and, if you allow it, update them.

• Keys. An organization's managers, or the owner of a personal vault, create API tokens under Findings, Settings, API tokens. Each token has a name and an access level: Read, or Read and write. The token is shown once; Omniris keeps only a scrambled form of it (a one-way hash) and cannot show it again. Revoking a token is permanent.
• Scope. A token sees exactly one organization or one personal vault, and nothing else. A finding moved elsewhere disappears from its view at once. Evidence is shown only while its file is still in that organization or vault.
• Read. List and search findings; follow a change feed that returns only what changed since the last call, including findings deleted or moved away; read a finding's full history; fetch evidence pictures; export up to 20,000 findings as GeoJSON, CSV or KML.
• Write (Read and write tokens only). Change status, severity, category or assignee; add comments; attach evidence files up to 25 MB.
• Certificates. Any token can request a signed, timestamped custody certificate of a finding, as described in Evidence you can prove.
• On the record. Every change a token makes appears in the finding's history under the token's name, and in its custody record.
• Safe to retry. Each write carries a request key; sending the same request again within 24 hours returns the first answer instead of changing anything twice.
• Turned off when its maker leaves. A token stops working if the person who made it leaves the organization, loses the manager role or is deactivated, or if the organization is deactivated. The organization's managers are emailed.

The API never returns storage locations, and a token cannot open protected evidence pictures (a token is not a person, so it has no right to decrypt).

Findings webhooks

A webhook is a message Omniris sends to your system the moment something happens, so it does not have to keep asking. Webhooks are set up under Findings, Settings, Webhooks, by the same people who manage tokens.

• Events: a finding created, updated, assigned, moved to another stage, given new evidence, deleted, moved away or erased. Large automatic changes arrive as one batch message instead of hundreds.
• Filters: each webhook picks its events and can be limited to certain sites, categories, stages or a minimum severity.
• Signed: every message carries a signature made with a secret only you and Omniris hold, so your system can prove it came from Omniris and was not replayed.
• Lean: messages carry the finding's details but no links, storage locations or secrets. Your system fetches anything more through the API.
• Delivered reliably: your system has 10 seconds to answer. A failed delivery is retried after 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, then every 6 hours, up to 12 attempts. Five failures in a row pause the webhook for 15 minutes. A delivery log keeps every message for 30 days, with Redeliver to send one again, and a button that sends a one-off sample event to check your setup.
• Targets: secure web addresses (https) on the public internet. An on-premises install can also deliver to systems on its own network that have been allow-listed.

Procore and Autodesk Forma

Connect a Procore or Autodesk account from the Integrations tab of your Account page, and link each site to a project. Then Send to Procore or Send to Forma on any file or folder sends it to the project's documents, and findings stay in step with Procore Observations or Forma Issues in both directions. Procore can also show an Omniris site inside Procore itself, once you have allowed it. The full story is in From design to measured progress.

Publish to ArcGIS

Publish to ArcGIS sends GeoTIFF maps from Omniris into your own ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise. Right-click a folder, or open the menu of a single GeoTIFF, and choose it; then give your portal's address and sign in with your ArcGIS user name and password, or an ArcGIS API key.

• Every GeoTIFF in the folder and its sub-folders is sent; other files are left out.
• Each map becomes a hosted imagery layer in your portal, under your ArcGIS account, in content folders that follow the Omniris folder names. On ArcGIS Enterprise with raster analytics, Omniris creates an image service instead.
• Files go one at a time, with progress for each. You can cancel the job.
• Each layer is named after the file, plus a short unique code, so publishing the same map again adds a new layer and never overwrites one you already have.
• The dialog remembers your portal and sign-in in your browser, for next time.
• Protected files are not sent. They are listed back to you by name. If a folder holds only protected maps, nothing is sent and the dialog says why.
• On an on-premises install, publishing to an ArcGIS Enterprise portal on your own network works without an internet connection.

Drone-maker flight apps

A drone maker's flight app can connect with a partner key and read a pilot's active jobs: the job details and the flight areas, as KML or GeoJSON, so a flight plan can start from the job itself. This connection is read-only.

Protected files on every path

A protected file is stored encrypted, and only people given the right can open it. Each way of handing work over treats protected files in one of three ways: the recipient is given the right to open them, the files are kept encrypted, or they are not sent at all. Here is every path in one place.

The companion papers on security, encryption and data control and Evidence you can prove describe protection, custody and legal holds in full.

Limits

Every hand-over path has edges. These are the ones worth knowing.

Sharing inside Omniris

• A sharing code works once, for one person. To share with three people, make three codes.
• You can share only folders in your own vault (for an organization's owner, the organization's vault). Organization members use roles instead.
• A transfer needs room in the recipient's storage. Files under a legal hold or retention policy never move.
• A snapshot is frozen at the moment it is made. It does not pick up later changes to the original folder.
• Organization invitations expire after 30 days.

Public links

• Anyone with a link can open it. Protected files in a linked folder, 3D models included, are opened for its visitors (see the table above).
• A folder link's access level, password and expiry are set when it is made. To change them, revoke the link and make a new one. Site Navigator links can be edited.
• A view limit can be set only through Submit to Client. It stops new visitors, not people already viewing.
• View-only photos are shown at up to 4,096 pixels on the long side.
• A map converted to JPG or PNG on a public link stays ready for 24 hours.
• A password allows 10 tries every 15 minutes from one place.

Site Navigator links

• The site must be set up in Site Manager first.
• Only maps you produced yourself, or maps in your own personal vault, can be included. Maps without a date, and protected maps, cannot.
• The site and the expiry of a link cannot be changed later; make a new link instead.
• Each link has an hourly allowance for heavier tools, such as volume calculations. A visitor who uses it up is asked to wait.
• After you revoke a link, maps already open stop within 10 minutes.

Delivery and downloads

• Delivered results can be viewed, but not downloaded, until the client accepts them.
• Submit to Client keeps one live link per job. Sending again switches the earlier link off.
• A folder ZIP in a browser other than Chrome or Edge is limited to 2 GB. Use Chrome, Edge or the desktop app for anything larger.
• Folder and selection ZIPs leave protected files out and list them; STAC bundles carry them in their encrypted form. Download protected files one at a time, or with the desktop app, to receive them opened.

Integrations

• The API covers findings. A token can make up to 600 requests a minute, attach evidence files up to 25 MB, and export up to 20,000 findings at a time. A token can add comments but not edit or delete them.
• A webhook receiver must answer within 10 seconds. After 12 failed attempts a delivery stops being retried; it can still be sent again by hand from the delivery log for 30 days.
• Publish to ArcGIS sends GeoTIFFs only, one at a time, and never protected files.
• The drone-maker connection is read-only.

Where it matters

Glossary

API (application programming interface)

A way for another program to talk to Omniris directly, without a person clicking.

API token

The secret key a program uses to reach the findings API. It belongs to one organization or one personal vault.

Custody history

The tamper-evident record of everything that happened to a file: who uploaded, viewed, shared, downloaded or changed it, and when.

Finding

An issue recorded on a site, with a location, a status, evidence and its own history.

GeoTIFF

An image file that also records exactly where on Earth it lies; the standard format for maps such as orthomosaics and elevation models.

Legal hold, retention policy

Rules that stop files being changed, moved or deleted, for a case or for a set period.

Organization

A company account with one shared vault and members in the roles manager, pilot or viewer.

Protected file

A file stored encrypted with OpenTDF, which only people given the right can open.

Public link

A web address that opens shared work in any browser, without an Omniris account.

Sharing code

A one-time code that gives another Omniris account access to one of your folders.

Sharing package

A clean folder holding only the map layers, and optionally the 3D model, you chose to hand over.

Site Navigator

The Omniris map view of one site across its flights and dates.

Snapshot

A frozen, read-only copy of a folder in someone else's vault, pointing at the same stored files.

STAC

SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog: an open standard for describing map data, read by QGIS and other tools.

Vault

Your private storage in Omniris.

Webhook

A message Omniris sends to your system as soon as something changes.

.3dmodel

One file holding a whole 3D model; a standard ZIP archive that Omniris can view without unpacking.