Admin User Guide · Communications Module

Every channel.
Every message.
One command center.

The AWE Initiative Communications module is the platform's outbound and real-time voice — push-to-talk radio channels, push notifications and broadcasts, community surveys, and role-based contact directories, all reachable from one admin surface.

📻 Push-to-Talk 📣 Messaging & Broadcasts 📋 Surveys 📇 Contact Directories
544
PTT channels
610
Archived recordings
3
Surveys deployed
53
Users reachable
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Overview

Communications at a glance

Four surfaces that turn the platform from a monitoring tool into a two-way conversation with responders, users, and communities.

Communications module dashboard
Communications → the landing dashboard: PTT (Push-to-Talk), Messaging, Surveys, and Contacts

Every other module tells you what's happening. Communications is where you act on it — key a radio channel to coordinate a live response, push a broadcast to every user in a community, run a survey to gauge sentiment on a budget decision, or find the one named contact who owns a category of complaint in a specific ward.

📻
Push-to-Talk
Real-time voice channels for responders and admins, with live transmission, usage analytics, and a full recording archive.
📣
Messaging
Compose and send push notifications to users and responders, build reusable templates, and review full delivery history.
📋
Surveys
Create, distribute, and analyze surveys — from quick community feedback polls to multi-question assessments.
📇
Contacts
Role-based contact directories per community, with a full leadership organogram from Chairman down to Category Heads.

Two directions of communication, one module. PTT and Messaging push information out — live voice or push notifications. Surveys and Contacts pull information in — structured feedback and the named people responsible for acting on it. Together they close the loop that Event Processing and Responder Management open.

Module 01

Push-to-Talk

Real-time voice channels for responders and admins — live radio, usage analytics, and a searchable recording archive.

PTT gives the platform a radio layer alongside its data layer. Channels can be created per event, per team, or as standing community channels; every transmission is recorded automatically and surfaces in both the live channel view and the searchable Archive.

PTT Channels main screen
PTT Channels → 544 total channels, 366 active, 402 total members, with a live Admin PTT Radio panel for transmitting directly

Talking on a channel

The Admin PTT Radio panel is a live radio built into the browser — join a channel, see who else is online, and press-to-transmit with real-time signal, latency, and online-member indicators.

Not just monitoring — participating. An admin can key into any channel and talk directly to responders in the field, the same way a dispatcher would key a physical radio, without leaving the admin console.

Creating a channel

Every channel gets a name, description, type, color, and participant cap, with the option to keep it persistent after all members leave — useful for standing team or community channels rather than one-off event channels.

Create New Channel modal
Create New Channel → name, description, type, color, max participants, and persistence toggle
Manage channel members screen
Manage members → current members with live listening status, plus a searchable list of on-duty responders to add

Usage analytics

PTT Analytics turns raw transmissions into usage patterns — total transmissions and airtime over a date range, top transmitters, per-channel usage breakdown, and an activity heatmap by hour and day.

PTT Analytics dashboard
PTT Analytics → 449 transmissions and 1h 13m of airtime over the selected range, top transmitters, and channel usage breakdown

Recording archive

Every transmission — routine or emergency — is retained in the PTT Recording Archive, filterable by sender, channel, priority, and date range, with inline playback and download on every row.

PTT Recording Archive
PTT Recording Archive → 610 total recordings, 82 total minutes, searchable and filterable, with play and download per transmission
🎙️
Live browser radio
Transmit and receive from the admin console itself — no separate hardware or app required to participate on a channel.
👥
Membership control
Add or remove on-duty responders from any channel and see real-time listening status for everyone currently joined.
📊
Usage analytics
Transmission counts, airtime, top transmitters, and an hour-by-day activity heatmap over any date range.
🗄️
Full recording archive
Every transmission retained with sender, channel, priority, duration, and timestamp — searchable and downloadable.
Module 02

Messaging

Push notifications to users and responders — composed fresh, built from a reusable template, or triggered automatically by an event.

The Messaging Center sends interactive push notifications with attachments to any slice of the user base — everyone, a single community, an individual, or all responders — and keeps a full record of what went out and to whom.

Messaging Center Compose tab
Compose → message type, priority, title, content, and attachments, with a live preview and recipient selector

Message type and priority

Every message is classed by type — Alert, Announcement, Safety, Community, or Emergency — and priority, from Low to Urgent, both of which drive how prominently it surfaces to the recipient.

Message Type dropdown
Message type → Alert, Announcement, Safety, Community, Emergency
Priority dropdown
Priority → Low, Normal, High, Urgent

Templates

Recurring messages — like the Emergency Alert sent when a user presses their panic button — are saved as templates with named placeholders ({name}, {location}, {date}) that get filled in automatically each time the template fires.

Message Templates tab
Templates → the Emergency Alert template, tagged Alert / Urgent, with placeholder fields visible in its content
Create Template modal
Create Template → name, category, message type, default priority, subject and content with placeholder support

Delivery history

History records every message sent — including ones triggered automatically from other modules, like patrol reminders and classified event alerts pulled in from monitored sources — with its priority, audience, and recipient count.

Message History tab
History → sent messages with priority, audience, timestamp, and recipient count, including automated patrol and event alerts
🎯
Flexible targeting
Send to all users and responders, a specific community, hand-picked individuals, or responders only.
📎
Rich attachments
Attach images, video, audio, PDFs, or documents up to 10MB alongside the message text.
🧩
Reusable templates
Save recurring messages with named placeholders so a consistent, on-brand message goes out every time.
🕒
Full delivery history
Every message — manual or automated — logged with audience, priority, and recipient count for later review.

Where automated alerts land. Classified events from monitored channels (like WhatsApp intelligence sources) and system-generated reminders (like upcoming patrol notices) both flow into Message History alongside manually composed messages — Messaging is the single outbound record for everything the platform tells its users.

Module 03

Surveys

Create, distribute, and analyze structured feedback — from a single budget-priority question to full multi-question assessments.

Survey Management gives admins a way to ask communities and responders structured questions, rather than only broadcasting at them. Every survey tracks response counts and completion rate from creation through distribution to results.

Survey Management main screen
Survey Management → 3 surveys, 2 active, 6 total responses, 67% average completion, with per-survey status and quick actions

Building a survey

Set the survey's title, description, type, and theme color, then configure response rules — anonymous responses, multiple submissions, showing results to respondents, and requiring every question answered — before adding questions from ten supported types.

Create Survey screen
Create Survey → details, response settings, and question types: Multiple Choice, Checkboxes, Star Rating, Number Scale, Short/Long Text, Yes/No, Dropdown, Date, Time

Distributing a survey

Choose the audience — All Users, By Community, Individuals, or Responders — and the survey goes out as an interactive push notification. Individual targeting supports searching and multi-selecting specific users by name or email.

Distribute Survey - All Users
Distribute to All Users → 53 recipients, sent as an interactive HTML survey via push notification
Distribute Survey - Individuals
Distribute to Individuals → search and multi-select specific users, here 26 selected out of the full directory

Reading the results

Results break down per question with response counts and percentages — immediately visible without exporting to a spreadsheet, though export is available for deeper analysis.

Survey Results screen
Survey Results → Community Survey, 5 responses, 100% completion, with per-option response breakdown for the budget-priority question
🧱
Ten question types
Multiple choice, checkboxes, star rating, number scale, short/long text, yes/no, dropdown, date, and time.
🎯
Four distribution modes
All users, a specific community, hand-picked individuals, or responders — the same targeting model as Messaging.
⚙️
Response rules
Toggle anonymous responses, multiple submissions, visible results, and required questions per survey.
📈
Live results & export
Per-question response breakdowns update as submissions arrive, with export for offline analysis.

From question to decision. The Community Survey's budget-priority question is a working example: an admin doesn't have to guess whether a community wants roads or street lighting fixed first — they ask, and the answer is 60% Roads within a handful of responses.

Module 04

Contacts

Role-based contact directories per community, with a full leadership organogram from Chairman down to Category Heads.

Contact Management answers a different question than Messaging or PTT: not "how do we reach everyone," but "who, specifically, is responsible for this." Each community carries its own structured leadership directory, so a drug-dealing report and a noise complaint route to two different, named people.

Contact Management empty state
Contact Management → select a community to load its contact directory

Selecting a community

The community picker spans everything from small named neighborhoods to full municipal wards, each color-coded and searchable — the same community records used across Targets and GeoSpatial.

Contact list view with community dropdown open
List View → Ward 132's contacts (Category Head, Ward Councilor), with role, designation, and status, and a community dropdown covering every configured community and ward

The organogram

Switching to Organogram view lays the same community's contacts out as a full leadership structure — Leadership, Executive Committee, Operations, and twelve Category Heads (Crime, Smart Monitoring, Service Issues, GBV, Illegal Dumping, Road Maintenance, Noise Violations, and more) — with filled roles highlighted and vacancies clearly marked.

Contact Organogram view
Organogram → Ward 132's leadership structure, with a filled Drug Dealings Report Head and Ward Councilor contact, and the rest of the structure vacant
👑 Leadership
Chairman — the top of the structure
🧭 Executive Committee
Vice Chairman, Board Secretary, Financial/Accounting
🛠️ Operations
Security Head & Vice, Volunteer Manager, Emergency Coordinator, Community Liaison
🗂️ Category Heads
Twelve report-category owners — Crime, GBV, Illegal Dumping, SAPS Intervention, and more
📇
Per-community directories
Every community and ward maintains its own independent contact list and leadership structure.
🏷️
Twelve report categories
A dedicated Category Head role for each major complaint type, so reports route to the right specialist, not a generalist inbox.
🌳
Organogram view
The same contacts visualized as a hierarchy, making vacant roles as visible as filled ones.
Primary designation
Mark a contact Primary for their role so escalation always has one clear first point of contact.

Vacancies are visible by design. Ward 132's organogram shows most roles marked Vacant rather than hiding them — an admin can see at a glance exactly which categories of report currently have nobody assigned to receive them.

Complete module. Every voice, connected.

Across Push-to-Talk, Messaging, Surveys, and Contacts, Communications is where the platform stops being one-directional. Event Processing and GeoSpatial tell you what's happening and where; Communications is how you talk back — to a responder mid-incident, to a whole community, or to the one named person who owns the problem.