Replies and recipients
What the reporter is told, and who gets alerted when a signal is raised.
Two wizard steps decide everything that leaves the system: the reply that goes back to the person who sent the message, and the alerts that go to the people who need to act.
Replies to the reporter
The Replies step is where the confirmations and errors are written. Two are required before the step is complete:
- the accepted reply, sent when the message was understood and the event was written, and
- the unknown code reply, sent when the message was well-formed but carried a code the flow does not recognise.
An SMS reply is often the only feedback a Community Health Worker ever receives, and it is what tells them whether to send the message again. Two things are worth being careful about.
Write replies in the reporter's language
Reporters are not portal users and will not have set a language preference. Replies should be written in the language the reporters actually use, which for community reporting in Rwanda generally means Kinyarwanda.
Keep replies short. A reply that runs past the length of one SMS is delivered as several, which costs more and arrives less reliably.
Recipients
The Recipients step decides who is alerted when the flow raises a signal. It needs at least one rule and an alert message before it is complete.
A rule decides which signals reach which group of people. Flows commonly route by EBS family — the grouping defined on the Codes tab — so that different kinds of signal reach different responders rather than everyone receiving everything.
The alert message is what those recipients receive. Unlike the reply to the reporter, its audience is a responder deciding whether to act, so it should carry enough of the signal to make that decision possible.
What publishing checks
The publishing view summarises both steps: how many groups of people the flow alerts, and whether the required replies are written. A flow with no recipients is not publishable — a signal nobody is told about is not surveillance.
Next
When both steps are settled, go to Versions and publishing.