Tella Web Connection
Tella Web is an open-source tool that enables individuals and organizations to centralize and manage reports sent by Tella users, including photos, videos, and audio files.
Tella Web is developed internally by our team at Horizontal, the same team responsible for developing Tella's mobile apps. It is a user-friendly solution for backing up media files to a remote server in a safe and private manner. Using a Tella Web server also allows users to pull data (guides, instructions, important messages etc) from the server directly to their Tella
We can provide support for the installation, configuration, and maintenance of a Tella Web instance if you don't have someone within your organization who can do it.
Similarly to all other connections(Uwazi, Google Drive, Nextcloud, Dropbox and Open Data Kit), connecting to Tella Web enhances the security of data collected on Tella by:
- Allowing users to collect data directly inside Tella's encrypted container.
- Ensuring that data is sent directly from Tella to Tella Web, without having to rely on a third-party tool or app.
- Allowing users to back up their data on a remote server, to lower the risk that data is discovered on their mobile device.
- Ensuring that organizations can preserve important information even in the event of device seizure or destruction, and can organize it to use for research, advocacy, or accountability processes.
Tella Web is a great option to collect "reports" from users. Reports can include photos, videos, audio recordings, pdf documents and text. Organizations can also upload PDFs to each Tella Web project and users can access these resources directly from their Tella vault.
Setting up Tella Web involves three steps, which are thoroughly discussed in this section:
- Install Tella Web: This step entails installing the Tella Web server and configuring the domain name to ensure its proper functioning.
- Set up your project(s) on your server: In this step, admins decide how to organize themselves to collect data, create "projects", add "resources" for users to download on their devices and set roles and permissions for users.
- Get people on the ground ready to start submitting reports: Users install Tella on their Android or iPhone device. They then connect to the Tella Web project and start collecting information.
Even though data is transferred to the server securely (SSL), anyone with access to the Tella Web account can view the files. If you need encrypted file transfers, explore Nearby Sharing.
When to Use Tella Web
The Tella Web could be a good alternative if:
- You have the capacity to self-host Tella Web.
- People on the ground will be sending mostly media files, with some text and don't need structured data collection (forms).
- You will be partnering with Horizontal and you want the same organization to help you with installation, configuration, and maintenance of your Tella Web instance and the Tella apps.
If you need help figuring out if Tella Web is best for your use-case, read our guide or contact us!
Install the server
This step consists of installing and configuring Tella Web on the server your organization will be using. This step needs to be completed by the person who is going to be responsible for the system administration (a developer or a system administrator). Technical instructions can be found on our Github.
You can check Tella Web release notes here.
Our team can offer support with the installation, configuration, and maintenance of Tella Web. If you have any question or need support, contact us.
Contact us to get access to our demo server, so you can test Tella Web before installing it on your own server.
Set up your project on your server
Once Tella Web is installed and the first "admin" user created, it’s time to set up the project or projects that the team in the field will share information to.
Take a look at this video tutorial for a demo of how to set up Tella Web.
Admin center
Configure spaces’ settings
Admins of the Tella Web space can enable or disable system-wide settings depending on their own risk assessment and privacy consideration:
- Opt-in to share analytics with Tella team.
- Suspicious login detection:
- If enabled Tella Web will record location for each login IP and approximate location based on IP. If the user is connecting from an unusual location Tella Web will block the login attempt to prevent any unauthorized sing-in and send an email to the user to confirm if was a legitimate login attempt.
- We use a third party service to calculate the country of the IP.
- Tella Web requires an SMTP server to be properly configured and working for this feature to work.
- If disabled Tella Web won't store the IP, won't calculate location nor ping any third party service.
- Feedback:
- When enabled, Tella Web shows a feedback box that allow users to send an anonymous note to the Tella team on any feedback request or bug reports that they might find. It doesn't contain any information about the user or the Tella Web instance.
- To ensure user privacy and anonymity, only essential data is transmitted to our Feedback server through HTTPS POST requests. Logs containing user information (IP address, date and time, and user-agent) are automatically deleted weekly.
- On the Feedback server database, we only store a copy of the text sent by users in the feedback form and which platform it came from (in this case from "Tella Web" without specifying which server installation).
Backup your space
Admins of the Tella Web instance can export all data out of Tella Web by generating a backup. Backups can be used to port the data to another location, including a computer, a USB flash drive, an external disk or a remote server. The action to generate the backup runs in the background and, if triggered, an email notification will be sent to the person who generated the backup when it is ready to download. However, all backups are accessible in the Admin Center to all users with admin access.
The backup is a full export everything in the space: including all Projects, Reports, Users and Resources, plus all metadata. The export is a zip file including a collection of CSVs and folders with with the uploaded media. For now, there is no way to import the backup back into a Tella Web instance from the Admin Center, but each backup includes a .sql file that advanced users can use to import the data to the database directly.
The information included in the backup is highly sensitive, it not only contains all the data (unencrypted) but also information about the Tella Web users. Please proceed with caution when generating the backup.
Managing Projects
Tella Web allows you to create and manage projects, ensuring your reports are organized and accessible.
Projects function like folders where Tella users can submit reports. For instance, you can create projects for specific geographic areas or themes such as police violence, gender-based violence, and environmental abuse.
Each project has its own URL, so a Tella user can be connected to multiple Tella Web projects.
View all available projects
Click on the "Projects" button in the left navigation menu to access the "Projects" screen.
The "Projects" screen displays each existing project as a card.
Create a New Project
On the "Projects" screen, click the "Create project" button. A modal will appear, prompting you to name the new project. Enter the desired name for the project and click "Create." You will be redirected to the "Project settings" screen for the newly created project.
Open a Project
Open the "Projects" screen and click on the desired project card.
This will open the project, where you can access all the reports submitted to the project.
You can open, delete, or download reports (depending on your permissions for this specific project).
Configure projects’ settings
In the "Project settings" screen, you can configure the project:
- The "General" section allows you to rename the project, view project details, and modify the project's URL.
- The "Manage access" section enables you to add or remove users from the project. More info on user roles here
- The "Danger zone" section provides options to delete the project, including all the reports within it.
Delete a Project
In the "Project settings" screen, scroll down to the "Danger zone" section.
Click on the "Delete project" option.
A modal will appear, warning you about the permanent deletion of the project and all its reports. To proceed with the deletion, enter the name of the project correctly (including the right case). Type "DELETE" (in capital letters) to confirm the deletion.
Once confirmed, the project and all its associated reports will be permanently deleted.
Configure the project URL
The project URL is automatically generated when the project is created. To edit the project URL, go to the "General" section in the "Project settings" screen and modify it accordingly. This URL is the one that reporters will use to connect to the project from their apps.
The URL that you'll need to send to the users should look like this https://your-domain.com/p/your-project-name
Managing users
Understanding user roles
Users are an important part of using Tella Web. There are for different roles available to users:
- Reporter: this is a user who can connect to the Tella Web project from a Tella mobile app and upload reports. A reporter needs be assigned to a project in order to be able to upload reports.
- Viewer: this is a user who, in addition to uploading reports from Tella, can also log into Tella Web to view (but not edit or delete) reports. A viewer needs to be assigned to a specific project to have access.
- Editor: this is a user who, like viewers, can upload reports from Tella and log into Tella Web, but who can also edit and delete reports. An editor needs to be assigned to a specific project to have access.
- Admin: an admin can upload reports from Tella and perform all actions on Tella Web, including managing reports, projects, resources and users. An admin has access to all projects.
Here is a detailed view of each role's permission:
Reporter | Viewer | Editor | Admin | |
---|---|---|---|---|
On Tella mobile | ||||
Create and upload reports | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
On Tella Web | ||||
Log in Tella Web | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
View reports | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Edit reports (rename) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Delete reports | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Edit projects (create, rename, edit URL) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Delete projects | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Manage users (create, edit, delete) | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Assign users to project | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Create resources to the space | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Add/remove resources to project | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
View resources assigned a project | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Creating users
On the top bar, above the list of users, server's admin can click on the "Create user" button to create a new user in the server. Email, password, password-confirmation and role are required in order to create users.
On the password field, a password-security-meter helps admins create secure passwords. We estimate password complexity using the zxcvbn library which considers:
- Characters (more than 10)
- Complexity (lowercase, uppercase, numbers, symbols)
- No common patterns like dates, repeats (aaa), sequences (abcd), keyboard patterns (qwertyuiop)
- No common passwords like names, cities, etc.
Managing access to projects
In the "Manage access" section of the "Project settings" screen, admins can assign existing users to the project. Click the "Add users" field. A drop-down menu will display all the users on the server. Scroll through the list or type to search for a user by username. After selecting the users to add to the project, click the "Add" button to save the changes and grant access to the project.
The full list of users who can submit reports to the project includes the users listed on this section plus all the server administrators.
Managing resources
Tella Web allow organizations to securely disseminate resources and materials to their users directly within Tella’s encrypted container. Resources can be used to submit instructions for data collection, messages or guides on how to collect data.