FrontlineSMS

Announcements

• Today, Bridget McGraw will join us as our guest speaker
• Doctors Without Borders using Twilio in Zimbabwe
• Clickatell, another cloud-based SMS alternative to Twilio in South Africa, used by Freedom Fone for SMS features
• Next week, March 30th – Vision Documents due, Ushahidi overview
• April 6, Teams present Vision Documents to Partner Organizations, Freedom Fone overview

Design Notebooks

Let’s review your User Personas from before the break.

Vision Documents

• Your Vision Documents (aka Design Briefs) are due next week, March 30. Use this Vision Document Template as a guide to creating your Vision Documents for your project concepts.
• Each team member will create their own Vision Document, emphasizing their own particular contribution to the team’s project, but including much of the same material, which you’ll work out together with your team.
• After receiving feedback from me, you’ll present a unified team version of your Vision Document to your partner organization the week of April 6 for feedback before beginning your project prototype development the following week.

FrontlineSMS

What is FrontlineSMS?

"FrontlineSMS is a desktop software created to lower barriers to positive social change using mobile technology. By leveraging basic tools already available to most organizations, including those in ‘last-mile’ settings — computers and low-cost modems — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication to any mobile handset. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free; you only pay for the messages you send. Using FrontlineSMS with FrontlineSync, you can also track missed calls for the first time." - FrontlineSMS Overview

Let’s listen to Laura Walker Hudson’s video overview of FrontlineSMS.

Here are some additional info and case studies on FrontlineSMS.

What You’ll Need

• A Mac or PC
• FrontlineSMS Desktop
• A GSM Dongle (e.g. Huawei e173 – pronounced wah-way)
• (if using Huawei e173 on OS 10.10, you may need to download the latest MobilePartner app instead of using the one that comes installed on the Huawei e173)
• A GSM sim card with minutes on it (AT&T Go Phone sims work here in the U.S., as do many others, but in the field, be sure to get one from a local cellular carrier so the number is local for your users

A Quick Demo of a Macbook Pro Setup

1. Register and load up your sim card with minutes
2. Install the sim card in the Huawei e173 dongle
3. Plug in the Huawei e173
4. Load the driver using the MobilePartner app
5. Quit MobilePartner and launch FrontlineSMS
6. Once the light is green n the FrontlineSMS Connections tab, you’re ready to go

A Tour of Features

Receiving SMS Messages

Text the service at (856) 571-9434, Frontline will automatically add callers’ phone numbers to the system contact database. We can use to create Groups later.

Sending SMS Messages

Now let’s send a message from FrontlineSMS to everyone on our contact database.

Working with Groups

• Creating Groups Manually – let’s create separate groups for each project team
• Smart Groups – let’s create another set of groups based on area code

Using Activities

• Auto-replying to received messages – let’s create an auto-reply activity
• Auto-forwarding received messages
• Subscribing & unsubscribing to groups – let’s manually create another group and try subscribing and unsubscribing to it
• SMS Polls – let’s create a simple poll
• Forwarding received messages to URLs – we’ll demonstrate this next week when we introduce Ushahidi

Managing Data & Tracking Usage

• Importing & exporting contacts and messages
• Monitoring usage & reading log files

Guest Presentation

Bridget McGraw – Bridget is an Educational Technologist, digital artist and entrepreneur. She lived and worked in Africa for almost a decade, assisting organizations including TICAH, CEWOD, iHub and Ni Sisi! to develop interactive multimedia solutions for communicating with their communities.

Assignment

Vision Documents

Meet with your team to discuss your project concept. Use this Vision Document Template as a guide to creating your own Vision Documents for your project concepts. These will be due next week, and you’ll the present them as a team to your respective partner organizations the following week after getting feedback from me.

Each team member will create their own Vision Document, emphasizing your own contributions to your team’s project. When you present to your partner organizations, you’ll present a unified Vision Document for your team.

Post your Vision Document as a comment to this page!

*Assignments are due before class begins on Mondays. Be prepared to present your work in class for discussion.