TheNeedle

TheNeedle

TheNeedle Platform helps communities turn information into action with an intuitive and accessible crowdsourcing and mapping tool.
By enabling the rapid collection, management and analysis of crowdsourced information from NPS-OSINT and other sources, TheNeedle empowers everyone—individuals, community groups, governments, activists, organizations—to create meaningful change.

Managing People on your deployment

Roles

This feature allows you to set up and manage default and custom roles and permissions for different user groups on your deployment. Each deployment has a default “Admin” and "Member" role, which cannot be deleted, but can be edited. The default “Admin” role allows for full control over ALL functionality on your deployment, while the default "Member" role only grants access to edit their own posts.

Setup Guide

To access the roles management page,

• On the left hand menu bar, click on Settings
• Then, click on Roles
• You’ll be redirected to a page with a list of all existing roles - default & custom roles (created by admins if any exist).

Add Role

To add a custom user role,

• Click on the yellow Add icon
• Add the following details
  • Name: Provide a name for this new custom role
  • Description: Provide a brief description of what/who this custom role has been created for
  • Set your permissions. Below is a brief breakdown of what permissions get granted to users on selecting the options provided.
    • Manage Users: Allows for;
      • Viewing Users
      • Adding, Editing, Deleting Users
      • and Changing roles for Users
    • Manage Posts: Allows for;
      • Viewing posts
      • Editing and Deleting Posts
      • Publishing posts (Setting specific audiences to view )
      • Adding posts to collections
      • Creating new collections
    • Manage Settings: Allows for managing;
      • General Settings
      • Map Settings
      • Data Sources
      • Surveys
      • Categories
    • Bulk Data import and Export: Allows for upload of data via CSV files and exporting files.
    • Edit their own posts: Allows for editing of posts submitted by user
    • Manage collections and saved searches: Allows for
      • Addition posts to all saved searches/collections on
      • Removing posts from all saved searches/collections
      • Editing all saved searches/collections
      • Deleting all saved searches/collections
  • Click on Save.

Edit Role

To edit a role

• Click on a role from the list provided to you.
• On redirection to the edit page, make your desired changes to the role (i.e fill out details as directed in the Add role section)
• Click on Save to update the role.

Delete Role

• To delete a role
• Click on a role from the Roles management list page
• Then, click on the Delete This Role button at the bottom of the page
• A pop up box will appear on the top of the page, prompting you to confirm whether you would like to delete the custom role. If
  • You would like to proceed with deletion, click on Delete
  • You would not like to proceed with deletion, click on Cancel

Users

Setup guide

To access the User management page,

• On the left hand menu bar, click on Settings
• Then, click on Users.
• You’ll be redirected to a page with a list of all existing users on your deployment
• From here, you can search for users either by name or by custom role

Adding new users

To add a new user,

• Click on the yellow icon as shown below
• Fill out the details below
  • Display Name: This is the name that will be displayed
  • Email address: This is the email address that will be tied to this new user’s account, and will be used to log in.
  • Password: Set a strong and secure password for your new user. Each password must have at least 7 characters
  • Role: Choose the level of administration access you would like this user to have
• Click on Save to create one.

Editing users

To edit a user,

• Click on the user you intend to edit from the user list page
• You should be able to edit the user’s display name, email address, password and user role from this page.
• Click on save when done.

Changing User roles

You can change multiple users’ roles at once from the user management page.

• Tick the checkbox on the left, adjacent to the user(s) whose role you would like to change from the user list page
• This action will activate the previously inactive Change Role dropdown button on the top menu bar.
• Click on this dropdown and select the role you would like to assign your users to.
• A pop up box will appear, prompting you to confirm whether you would like to change the roles of your user(s)
  • Click on OK to change your user(s) role
  • If you’d like to cancel the role change process, click on Cancel.

Deleting users

Similarly, you can delete multiple users at once from the user management page, or from the individual user edit page.
To delete a user

• From the individual user edit page
  • Click on the user you intend to edit from the user list page.
  • Click on Delete User.
  • A pop up box will appear on the top of the page, prompting you to confirm whether you would like to delete your user
    • Click on Delete to delete your user
    • If you’d like to cancel the user deletion process, click on Cancel.
  • From the User management page
    • Tick the checkbox on the left, adjacent to the user(s) you would like to delete from the user list page
    • This action will activate the previously inactive Delete button on the top menu bar. Click on it to initiate the deletion process.
    • A pop up box will appear, prompting you to confirm whether you would like to delete your user(s)
      • Click on DELETE to delete your user(s)
      • If you’d like to cancel the user deletion process, click on Cancel.

Modes for visualizing and managing data on your deployment

TheNeedle platform provides you with modes to not only visualise your data in different ways, but to also manage it.
We designed “modes” for the discrete and specific actions users need to take within the platform, in a bid to make the platform to be more intuitive and action-oriented for different user types on a deployment. Ordinary viewers of deployment can access three different modes as shown below:-

• Map view
• Data view
• Activity view

Signed in users(with the necessary permissions) can access four different modes as shown below:-

• Map view
• Data view
• Activity view
• Settings page

Your TheNeedle deployment defaults to the map mode for anyone who visits your homepage(as illustrated above). To change your current mode, select any of the options provided to you from the menu on your left.

Map View

This mode displays all published posts on a map.

• Each post appears as an icon on the map. In the event that you opted to combine nearby posts on your Map settings page, posts adjacent to each other on the map will cluster together, displaying a number denoting number of posts combined.
• Clicking on each individual post displays a small pop up box with the post title and description.
• You should also be able to zoom in and out of the map as desired.

You also get a breakdown of incoming posts by source, as shown below.

Data View

The Data view allows you to view, triage, and manage posts coming into your deployment as a chronological list of events over time. It provides a split pane that lists post summaries on the left pane, and post details and editing features in the right.
From here, you should be able to:

• Add new posts
• View individual post details
• Edit posts to either change existing structures or assign posts from Twitter, SMS and/or email to a survey
• You can also
  • Add posts to collections
  • Publish posts
  • Put posts under review
  • Archive posts
  • Share posts
  • Delete posts
• Get notified when new posts arrive
• Perform bulk actions( publishing, putting under review, archiving, adding to collections and deleting) on multiple posts at a time

NB: Data displayed on this page is dependent on permissions granted to the user viewing this page

Activity View

This mode gives you a summary of how people are interacting with your deployment over time.
You can compare

• Activity over time

You can filter post count in a line chart over time by:-

• All posts
• Categories that the posts belong to
• Surveys that the posts were submitted to
• Status i.e whether they’re published or not

You can opt to view your post counts on the graph as cumulative totals.

• Activity by Volume
• You can filter post count in a bar chart by volume by:-
  • Categories that the posts belong to
  • Surveys that the posts were submitted to
  • Status i.e whether they’re published or not

Managing Data in your deployment

A post is a report of a single instance of something in the deployment. It can be made up of many fields, such as Title, Description, Date, Links, and/or location. TheNeedle allows for collection of posts via

• Web (NPS-OSINT): You can setup a feed from nps-osint.co.za based on specific keywords, search terms, and/or artificial intelligence message classifiers.

This chapter will describe how to manage data coming in from these different sources.

Setup Guides

Viewing Posts

Posts on your deployment can be categorised into two types of data:-

• Structured: Incoming posts from the web platform and smartphone applications are classified as structured posts, since they adhere to the structure of surveys created on your deployment.
• Unstructured/Unknown: Incoming messages from SMS, Twitter and Email are classified as unknown posts, since they do not adhere to the structure of surveys created on your deployment. This means that these messages come in their raw form, and have to be manually structured by admins/anyone with permissions to edit posts, to fit into the structure of your survey. E.g an SMS message “Hello, my name is Angela” will need to be broken down into a title, a description, properly categorised etc.

You can view posts in either Map, Data or Activity mode. We'd previously discussed each of these modes separately in Chapter 5.
For purposes of managing your data, we recommend using Data Mode. From this page, You should be able to see the following:-

• A list of all posts in chronological order of when they were submitted into the platform. You can opt to change the order of the posts either through options provided in the search filter ( we'll dive into filtering posts in the next section )
• Post visibility Status: You can tell if a post is public or only visible to a specific audience
• Post source (is it from the NPS-OSINT or another source?).
• Structured posts via web/smartphones will have their respective source label on them.
• Unstructured posts will have a label denoting their source, as seen below with this sample NPS-OSINT message
• When the post was submitted: Hovering over the timestamp of the post will give additional details on specific timing as shown below.
• Individual Post descriptions on the left pane, and post details _on selection of a post card on the right pane
• When viewing post details on the right pane, you'll be able to see additional details such as location, categories, and tasks.
• If you’re an admin/your user role permits, you’ll should also be able to see the Edit button on the top right hand corner of your page

NB: Locked posts - The platform allows for post locking, to avoid duplication of efforts. If someone on your team is currently editing a post, it is locked and made unavailable for you to edit. In this case, the edit button will not be visible to you, despite having adequate permissions. We'll dive deeper into post locking in section 6.4.2 of this manual. Every post has a three dotted icon as shown below. Depending on what permissions are granted to the person viewing, this button allows you to Add your post to a collection (public) Share this post (public) via facebook, twitter, embed on another website or export it to a CSV file. Edit your post (limited by role) Publish your post (limited by role) Put your post under review, setting visibility to only members of your team (limited by role) Archive your post (limited by role) Delete your post (limited by role)

A search filter that allows you to sort posts by Date of creation Post date i.e date when it was assigned to a survey Date updated

filter reports by Saved searches, Status, Surveys, Categories, Data source, Date range, Location or any other user determined parameters. More on filters in section 6.2

Please note that information displayed to users on each of these pages is dependent on permissions granted to registered/non registered users by the deployment administrator e.g Published posts, Unknown posts and My posts, and menu bars allowing for editing and deletion are only visible to logged in users with necessary granted permissions( See more on Roles in Section 4.1 of this manual)

Credits

This platform is based on the Ushahidi platform please see their website at http://www.ushahidi.com/