Support

Find the answers you need with the Ushahidi Platform support documentation.

What does Ushahidi Do?

Ushahidi is a tool for collecting, managing, and visualizing data.
Data can be collected from anyone, anytime, anywhere by SMS, email, web, Twitter, and RSS.
Posts can be managed and triaged with filters and workflows.
Data can be viewed in many ways: on a map, in a list, or as a visualization.

Who is Ushahidi For?

Anyone can use Ushahidi, but traditionally it has been a tool used by Crisis Responders, Human Rights Reporters, and Citizens & Governments (such as election monitoring or corruption reporters). We also serve environmental mappers, asset monitoring, citizen journalism, international development, and many others.

What's New in Version 3?

The biggest change in v3 is the unification of the administrative interface with Modes of action. There is now a single interface. volunteers can now work directly on the data in modes, with permissions on what any particular person can see being set by role-based Permissions. While the guide will go into a full description of each part of the interface, this introduction gives a sample of what is to come:

Reports are now posts: The name change from reports to posts is a recognition that data collected might not just be a traditional ‘report’ of an event.
Surveys: Posts are no longer a fixed form with built in fields. You can customize them by creating many surveys, with different stages and custom fields to collect the data you need.
Posts now have tasks: Each post is now made up of a number of tasks. These can be made required (or not) before the post is published. This lets you build the workflow you need.
One interface for all posts: We no longer have separate views from managing posts and viewing posts.
Messages directly as ‘posts’: The old ‘messages ’ views are gone. New SMS or twitter messages now come in directly as ‘unknown’ posts, meaning they don’t yet belong to a survey, that are ready to be structured, completed, and published quickly and easily.
Collections: Aggregate and save a group of posts, share them via a URL link share
Saved Searches: You can create any search you want, save it, it continues to aggregate information, and the check again later for updates. Saved Searches are available from your deployment’s main menu. Sign up for notifications on your saved search to stay up to date as the posts that are most important to you are submitted to the deployment.
Visualization: Every data set can be viewed as a map, list, bar chart or timeline. Just select the time frame and variables you want to compare at any time.
Customize: Add a description, create a new survey, configure how data flows through your deployment, and more - all from your deployment’s settings.
Security and Permissions: Controlling who has access to system functions and data is a critical aspect of every crowdsourcing platform. Ushahidi v3 is arranged around a role-based security model that conveys permissions to each class of user. These permissions can be customized. The code is also written in a way that allows for clients to more easily extend certain software classes to meet their needs. You can also make your deployment completely password protected, visible only to users with login credentials.
**History of Posts and Messages: **In the process of turning an initial report from the field into a verified, published report, many people may touch the data. Someone may translate it, another may geolocate it, and a third may verify it against other data. Sometimes, additional information needs to get associated with the report, such as an image, document, or other set of messages.
Workflows
- The management of reports through its lifecycle requires management of the state of the report, especially when multiple teams are involved in moving reports from unverified, untranslated states to verified, geolocated reports. Workflows support this management.
- More than 90% of the work in an Ushahidi deployments happens behind the scenes. Unsurprisingly, most of our development efforts went to supporting this (often invisible) process.

Technical Specifications

Better development stack

Ushahidi 3.x is built on a modern PHP stack: dependencies are managed with composer, we’re using Kohana 3 but phasing that out, and we’ve isolated the core logic of the platform standalone Entity and Usecase classes.
The user interface of Ushahidi 3.x is now a separate app (the client) built purely in JS, HTML + CSS using AngularJS and a collection of other libraries. Again this uses a modern stack, with a build pipeline using gulp and browserify.
What’s new (and improved)?
- Dependencies are properly managed and easier to update or replace needed.
- We’re using our own API to build the app, it gets first class support.
- You can work on just the UI without delving into the API code
- Modern libraries mean they’re still being supported, we don’t have the burden of supporting legacy libraries ourselves.

Code is easier to customize

code is more structured making it easier to find what you want
code is doesn’t repeat itself so a change can be made in one place, not need to be copied everywhere else
UI is isolated to the client, allowing work on just the UI without having to delve into the API code

The stack

Back-end: Linux, PHP, Apache/Nginx, MySQL or PostgreSQL

Front-end: AngularJS, Javascript, Html, CSS. Built with NodeJS and Browserify. Using Leaflet for mapping, and a collection of other frontend libraries

Detailed feature list

Account settings

Edit profile
- Email address
- Display name
- Update password
Password recovery

General settings

Site name
Site description
Custom background image upload (image must be >1000px wide)
Delete current background image
Contact email address (visible on site)
Site timezone
Site language
Manage users
- User types
  - Guest (login required, limited privileges)
  - Member (login required, limited privileges)
  - Admin (login required)
- Add users
  - Display name
  - Email address
  - Password
  - Role

Map Settings

Default location
- auto selects creators current location
Default base layer
- Map
- Satellite
- Humanitarian
Default latitude
Default longitude
Default zoom level
Combine nearby reports option

Data collection

Data sources
- Web
- Email
- FrontlineSMS
- Nexmo
- SMSsync
- Twilio
- Twitter
Post type structure
- Add fields
  - Short text
  - Long text
  - Number (decimal)
  - Number (integer)
  - Location
  - Date
  - Date & time
  - Select
  - Radio
  - Checkbox
  - Related post

Data management

Steps
- Add to post type structure
- Step name
- Required or optional setting
- Add fields
  - Short text
  - Long text
  - Number (decimal)
  - Number (integer)
  - Location
  - Date
  - Date & time
  - Select
  - Radio
  - Checkbox
  - Related post
Categories
- Add category
  - Category name
  - Description
  - Icon color
  - Icon name
  - Select roles with permission to see the category
- Delete category
- Edit category
Filters
- Categories
- Collections
- Post types
- Current step
- Status
  - Any
  - Draft
  - Published
- Date range
- Location
  - Radius
    - 1 km
    - 10 km
    - 50 km
    - 100 km
    - 500 km

Data analysis

Saved Searches
- Save specific set of filters
Collections
- Create collection
  - Collection name
  - Description
  - Audience permission
    - Everyone
    - Member
    - Admin
  - Default view
  - Feature collection option
Views
- List view
  - Delete posts
  - Edit posts
  - Add posts to collections
  - Update post step
  - Navigate to individual post
- Map view
  - Filter posts
  - Navigate to individual post
- Bar chart view
  - Graph categories
  - Graph post types
  - Graph status
  - Filter posts included in graph
    - Categories
    - Collections
    - Post types
    - Current step
    - Status
      - Any
      - Draft
      - Published
    - Date range
    - Location
      - Radius
        
        1 km
        
        10 km
        
        50 km
        
        100 km
        
        500 km
- Timeline view
  - Graph posts
  - Graph categories
  - Graph type
  - Graph status
  - Show cumulative totals option
  - Filter posts included in graph
    - Categories
    - Collections
    - Post types
    - Current step
    - Status
      - Any
      - Draft
      - Published
    - Date range
    - Location
      - Radius
        
        1 km
        
        10 km
        
        50 km
        
        100 km
        
        500 km