Are the costs to send and receive SMS messages included in the price of the Ushahidi platform?
No, the cost to send and receive SMS messages is not included in the price of the Ushahidi platform. Our team will help you to set up an account with one of our supported SMS gateways and the cost will be paid through them.
Does the self service Ushahidi Demo plan have a time limit?
Yes, the Ushahidi Demo self service plan can be used for 1 month.
How is Ushahidi funded?
Ushahidi is a nonprofit, open source, software as a service (SaaS) organization, but we operate as a social enterprise. We are both grant funded and revenue generating.
We build and sell a replicable, scalable, and sustainable software platform called Ushahidi. (And a new emergency management check-in product called TenFour) to both grassroots organizations and international development and humanitarian agencies, but also make the code base to the Ushahidi platform available open source.
Is there a limit to the number of crowdsourced survey responses I can receive?
There is no limit to the number of people or posts via the Ushahidi Basic self service plan, an Enterprise Partnership, or a Grassroots Social Impact License! There is a limit of 25 posts for the Ushahidi Demo self service plan.
What are data sources: embeddable web form, app, email, Twitter, and SMS?
Data collection sources are the different channels that can be used to gather crowdsourced reports in a deployment. We currently enable posts to be completed via embeddable web forms, a native Android and iOS app, Twitter, email, and SMS. SMSsync, Twilio, and Nexmo are SMS gateways that can be configured to transfer inbound messages to a deployment.
What are On-going services?
Ushahidi provides a catalogue of services and expertise available via enterprise partnership in order to support our partners in the use of the Ushahidi platform. On-going services include platform hosting and maintenance, technical support, and others. We want you to focus on your project goals and impact. Our team will worry about the technology.
What are One-time services?
Ushahidi provides a catalogue of services and expertise available via enterprise partnership in order to support our partners in the use of the Ushahidi platform. One-time services available include platform setup, a variety of virtual or in person trainings, survey configuration support, and others. We want you to focus on your project goals and impact. Our team will worry about the technology.
What are private deployments?
Private deployments require a registered user to login before accessing any of the deployment data. Therefore your deployment could be made private within you team or organization.
What are roles and permissions?
Roles and permissions allow you to assign your registered admins on your team different levels of access to the deployment data and settings. An admin can have permissions to five different controls: Manage Users, Manage Posts, Manage Settings, Bulk Data Import, Edit their own posts. For example, some may be granted view-only rights to unpublished posts, while others may have edit rights, and still others may have the ability to change settings such as data sources or survey questions.
What does “Import and Export data” mean?
Data can be uploaded to or downloaded from an Ushahidi platform deployment via CSV file. Existing data sets can be uploaded to a deployment in bulk, and data can be downloaded from the deployment either in full or based on a specific filter criteria.
What is a deployment?
A deployment is an instance of the Ushahidi platform for your particular project.
What is Custom feature development?
Ushahidi can scope out and provide a budget for customizations to the existing Ushahidi platform if desired by Enterprise partners. These customizations can include new features, new data sources, additionally language capabilities, and other requests or features.
What’s a crowdsourced survey?
A crowdsourced survey is a customizable set of questions available for anyone to answer on the platform that, when completed, creates a post accessible on the timeline and map pages. Multiple crowdsourced surveys with different sets of questions can be configured on the same deployment, allowing you to collect and compare different types of information.
What’s a post?
Posts come in two forms: crowdsourced and targeted. A crowdsourced post is a piece of unstructured or semistructured data from a public author via any enabled data source such as web form, mobile application, email, Twitter, or SMS. A targeted post is a piece of unstructured or semistructured data from a particular author, such as the recipient of a targeted SMS survey.
What’s a targeted survey?
A targeted survey is set of questions that can be drafted within the Ushahidi platform and sent to a pre populated list of phone numbers. You can therefore send a survey to your beneficiaries, stakeholders, or field staff (who you have the cell phone numbers for) in order to collect and analyze their answers to targeted questions as part of your project. Currently targeted surveys are available on the Ushahidi platform via SMS only.
What’s a project admin?
An project admin is someone on your team who will manage and run your deployment by logging into the deployment to view and manage unpublished reports, create custom user roles, and edit deployment settings. You may have multiple admins on you staff to run your deployment.
What’s the Ushahidi mobile app?
The Ushahidi mobile app is available via iOS or Android. It allows users to search for deployment, add a deployment, respond to a survey, and view other posts on a deployment.