[Feature Request] [v7.2] Link Image to Existing File

[esforim]

Version: 7.2

Issue: Each image that get uploaded is added to EspoCRM, this will slowly be an accumulated filesize and file amounts issue slowly over time.

Request: Can choose an old image as the file image/photo.

Reproduce:
1. Create a image field
2. Upload the same image to two different records.
3. Look at file ID/file of the image, they are different ID so it mean that 2 of the same file is created and is uploaded to EspoCRM.

Proposal: We can choose existing image and the record photo/image is link to that upload image, similar to "Documents", instead of creating new file.

User Case:
Records have multiple branch, franchise or business location, for example:
Business A - City 1
Business A - City 2
Business A - City 3

We would want each of these record to have a Logo in their "(Photo) Logo Field", with Logo if they are the same business, then they will share the same logo (in most case). But if we upload each logo for these records, it will be now 3 same images uploaded and it become 3 different files on the data/cache. This mean triple the size. Logo is fairly small in most case (if it PNG or SVG) but it will slowly add up.

Thank you.

[emillod]

esforim so you want basically something like duplicates matching?
It's also matter of permissions to attachment, etc

[esforim]

I just want to be able to use the same Picture for multiple Company/Business, because they all use the same logo. And some of them have 20-30 franchise/branch. For example, let say a popular brand like McDonald, there thousands and thousands of branch/franchise but they all use the same logo.

Logo file are quite small so filesize isn't too much of an issue, but number of files, indexing and duplicated file slowly add up to be big in filesize and # numbers of file in CRM.

This is same issue with Email as well, but that is another matter.

[emillod]

esforim
you could use hash of attachment, create beforeSave hook which would search by hash, if there is a file with the same hash, you can simply create new record of attachment which will be an alias to found attachment, if there is no file which the same hash, you'll create new attachment with file..

That's an idea

[esforim]

A very good idea but a task that will be in the long queue before I get to it
Maybe I give this Chat AI a try