Overview
How a message becomes a surveillance signal, and the vocabulary used throughout these docs.
Before configuring anything, it helps to know what happens to a message after it is sent. Every concept in the portal maps onto one stage of that journey.
The journey of a signal
A reporter sends a message
A Community Health Worker, LOOKOUT, or another registered reporter sends an SMS. Facility, media, and hotline channels feed the same pipeline.
A flow claims the message
Flows are checked in order. The first one whose claim matches — messages starting with certain words, messages matching a pattern, or the fallback flow — takes responsibility for it.
The sender is identified
The phone number is looked up against a DHIS2 tracked entity attribute. An unrecognised sender is rejected rather than guessed at.
The message is parsed
The flow's grammar describes the shape the message must take and which signal code it carries. A message that does not fit is recorded as an invalid format.
An event is written to DHIS2
Parsed values are mapped onto data elements and an organisation unit, and stored against a program stage.
A reply and alerts go out
The reporter gets a confirmation or an error, and the configured recipient groups are alerted.
Vocabulary
Signal flow — a complete configuration for one kind of message: what it claims, how it is read, what it writes, and who it alerts. Flows are versioned and are either a draft or published.
Claim — the rule that decides whether a flow is responsible for an incoming message. Exactly one flow may be the fallback, and it is always checked last.
Signal code — the code carried in the message that says what is being reported. Codes live in a DHIS2 option set and are read live; the family grouping and the Kinyarwanda description are stored by eCEBS because DHIS2 has nowhere to put them.
EBS family — a grouping over signal codes, defined from an option set, used to organise codes and to drive alerting.
Grammar — the definition of the message shape a flow accepts, including which token carries the signal code.
Mapping — the correspondence between parsed values and DHIS2 data elements and organisation units.
Draft versus published
Only a published flow answers real messages. A draft can be edited freely and is invisible to the pipeline, which makes it the safe place to work.
What you need
Access to the portal requires a DHIS2 account that belongs to the configurator user group. Read Access and login next.