Display External Images in a Report Column

If you store images on a separate server, you can display those images in report columns.

Since you can point to external locations for the image files, you do not need to upload the images using the Images explorer. For instance, you can create a text system attribute for the Accounts standard object to store the URLs to photos of your staff members. You can then display the photos in reports that include the system attribute field.

There are some considerations when configuring column image options.

• Column format image options can only be configured using the report designer. They cannot be configured when viewing a report.
• Some restrictions exist on the external images you can display in reports. Each image file must be smaller than 500K in size, and a maximum of 100 unique images can display each time the report is generated. In addition, to ensure reports run successfully, retrieval of the images times out after 10 seconds.
• External images will display in exported, published, and printed reports. However, they do not display in scheduled reports.
• The image file formats you can use in reports are BMP, EXIF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. If an unsupported file type is encountered when the report runs, the column output displays Invalid Image.

1. Open the report you want to add the image to on the report designer.
2. Right-click the column on the report where you want the image displayed and select Edit Format.
   The Column Format window opens.
3. Click the URL tab, and then select Display Cell Value as Image.
4. To specify a custom size for the images, select the Scale All Images to the Following Size check box and select width and height values between 1 and 500 pixels.
   By default, images are sized to 100x100 pixels.
5. In the text box, enter the URL of the image file.
6. Click OK.
7. Click Save.