Buoy Walkthrough

Wiki ▸ Buoy Walkthrough

This page documents the current process for configuring Buoy as a user, walking through the process of creating a personal emergency response team and sending a test alert. It provides some example URLs in various steps, but the URLs on this page are only meant as an example. Wherever you see example.com on this page, replace it with your own Buoy-enabled website's address.

STEP 1: Make a new user account

To use Buoy, you’ll need a user account on a Buoy-enabled website. It is up to the individual website how and with what conditions user accounts are made available. Buoy itself makes no assertion about who is or is not permitted to have a user account on any specific website. It’s designed this way so that it can cleanly integrate itself with whatever user account control processes are already in place on the given site.

For the purposes of this demo, take the following steps to make a new user account. DO THIS:

1. Open the website’s home page in your web browser: http://example.com
2. Find the “Register” link in the left-hand navigation bar. Click the link to navigate to this page: http://example.com/wp-login.php?action=register
3. Choose a username and supply your email address. Note that a password will be emailed to this address; you can (and should) change your password later. (We’ll do that in an upcoming step.) For now, complete the registration form and click “Register.”
4. Check your email inbox for the address you submitted in step 3. The email will contain a link that you can click to activate your account and set your account password. Click that link.
5. Choose a new password or accept the randomly generated suggested one. Make a note of your password in a secure place, such as a password manager like the ones available from KeePassX.org or LastPass.com, then click “Reset password.”
6. You will see a success message, indicating your account is now ready and active. Click on “Log in” to continue to the log in page.
7. Type in your username that you selected in step 3 and the password you chose in step 5.
8. For the best usage experience, be sure to click the “Remember me” checkbox, too. This isn’t strictly required but it will cause the system not to prompt you for your login details the next time you visit the site after you next close your web browser. For the use case that Buoy is implemented to address, it is important that you are already logged in in the event you need to activate an alert.
9. Click “Log in.” This will take you to your profile page.

STEP 2: Provide emergency contact details information

The Buoy tool connects people in crisis with the people they trust. It does this by enabling a person to specify who they trust, and enabling those trusted people to specify how to best reach them in case of an emergency. In order to be available to respond to others in times of need, you must tell Buoy how you can be reached in an emergency. You do this by supplying that information inside of your website account’s profile.

These steps, technically, are all OPTIONAL. If you don’t do them, then you will only be able to receive alerts from others via the email address you provided when you created an account. If you do complete these additional steps, you will also be able to receive SMS (txt message) alerts.

1. Find the “Emergency txt (SMS)” field (under the "Contact Info” heading) and enter your mobile phone number. (You can enter it in any format you like. QUALITY ASSURANCE TESTERS: please try breaking this field by entering invalid/convoluted/otherwise unexpected input!)
2. Find the “Phone company” drop-down menu (under the “Account Management” heading) and select your mobile phone service provider from the list.
3. Optionally, find the “Crisis message” text box (also under the “Account Management” heading) and compose a short message that will be sent to your team members when you activate an alert. You can leave this field blank if you don’t want to send a pre-drafted message when you issue an alert from Buoy.
4. Click “Update profile” at the bottom of the page.

STEP 3: Create AT LEAST ONE MORE user account.

In order to demo Buoy effectively, you need at least one alerter account (an account from which you issue an alert) and one responder account (an account from which you respond to an alert issued by the first account). Repeat all the tasks in steps 1 and 2 to create a second account. Be sure to choose a different username and email address this time. (If you use Gmail, you can create a different email address simply by adding a + sign and a custom name before the @ sign in your address. For instance, if the first email address you used was bob@gmail.com, then you can use bob+responder@gmail.com for this second account’s email address.)

STEP 4: Create a personal emergency response team

Since Buoy can only send alerts to people who have active accounts on the website on which Buoy is installed, a personal emergency response team can only be created from the set of accounts already active on the Buoy system. Once accounts are ready (created in steps 1 through 3), they are available for use as Buoy team members.

DO THIS to set up your response team:

1. Log in to the website with the user account from which you will test sending an alert. (The account you created in step 2). To log in to the system, visit the website’s homepage, find the “Login” link, and complete the form. (It should be at http://example.com/wp-login.php)
2. Click the “My Team” link in the left-hand sidebar (it should be the one with the life preserver icon).
3. In the “Add a team member” field, begin typing the username of the responder account you created in step 3. You should only need to begin typing the first few characters of that user’s username before the rest is completed for you. Alternatively, click inside the field once to select it, and then click inside it again to show a drop-down menu of all the available user accounts that can be added to your team.
4. Once the account name is correctly entered, click “Save Changes” on the bottom of the page. The account you chose should appear with a checkbox under the “Remove a team member” heading and the word "pending" after it, indicating that an invitation was sent to the other account asking them to join your team.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as many times as desired to compose a team of your choosing, remembering to click “Save Changes” after each new account is added.

STEP 5: Accept the invitation to join the response team

In order to help ensure that Buoy cannot be used to send abusive or malicious messages, team members must approve invitations to join a response team before a user can send alerts to them. Team members can also remove themselves from any team they have previously joined at any time. To accept an invitation or to modify your account's team membership, navigate to the "Team membership" page in the Buoy admin screens.

DO THIS to accept the invitation you just sent:

1. Open a new browser or open a new "Private Browsing" (or "Incognito") window in your current browser and log in to the Buoy-enabled website if you are not already. This simulates accessing Buoy as a different user. If you have a different device, such as a second laptop or mobile phone, you can use that, too.
2. Check the email inbox of the invited user. A new message stating that the first user "wants you join their personal crisis response team" will include a link to the "Team membership" page. Click that link.
3. Under the "Accept team invitations" heading, find the name of the user from which the invitation was sent and ensure a check mark appears next to their name. Then click "Save changes" at the bottom of the page. This will move their name from the "Accept team invitations" heading to the "Leave teams" headings, allowing you to remove yourself from the team you accepted in the future.

This completes the confirmation step and allows for a team to be composed only of mutually verified, trusted contacts. Team members can only be invited by the person whose response team they are joining and each member must affirmatively approve the request to join a team before they receive emergency messages.

STEP 6: Bookmark the “activate alert” page

With a response team set up in Buoy, you are now able to create alerts that will be sent to your team. Note that prior to having at least one person on your team, the "Activate Alert" page is inaccessible and attempting to access it redirects you to the team selection page.

Alerts are created by pressing a single button on a specific page. This page is the same for everyone on a specific website, making it easy to bookmark. We recommend that you do indeed bookmark that page so that it is easily accessible to you when you need it.

DO THIS to bookmark the alert activation page:

1. Log in to the website as the first user account you created if you have not already logged in. Be sure to check the “Remember Me” box in the login form.
2. Click on “Dashboard” from the left-hand navigation bar. A submenu will appear.
3. Click on “Activate Alert” from the left-hand navigation bar, under the Dashboard heading.
4. Bookmark this page. (It should be http://example.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=better-angels_activate-alert)

STEP 7: Send a test alert to your team

In a moment of crisis, it’s important to be able to tell your friends where you are and what you need. Now that you have saved the Buoy alert activation screen in a bookmark, it should be easy to get to. If you’re using a mobile phone, you can set this bookmark to be a home-screen icon so it’s as easy to open as any other app. Now you want to test the system to make sure it works for as intended.

1. Click on the bookmark you saved from step 5. This will open the Buoy alert activation screen.
2. Click the top right red button with the chat bubble icon on it. A dialog box with a large text box for you to supply a message to your team will appear.
3. Type “Testing, not a real alert, but please respond so we know this thing works” or some similarly meaningful content in the box and press the “Send” button.
4. If you receive a pop-up “Would you like to share your location with this site?” in your browser, choose “Always allow”. This ensures that, in a real emergency, you will not be prompted to approve location requests from your software.
5. Your alert will be created and sent, and you will be redirected to another page providing “Safety Information” and additional resources. You can read this, or close the Safety Information pop-up at any time.
6. Close the “Safety Information” pop-up, and you will find yourself already in a randomly-generated chat room unique to members of your team who respond to the alert you just sent.

STEP 8: Receive the test alert you just sent.

From the perspective of someone in crisis, the chat room is the final destination of the Buoy flow. They can await responders arriving at their physical location and/or chat with them en route inside the chat room to provide additional information about their situation. As responders respond to the alert, they will be added to the chat room, too, so that they can also coordinate with the person in crisis and/or with each other about how best to respond.

To see how the responder's experience looks like, take the following steps. DO THIS:

1. Check the email inbox (or mobile phone) of the responder’s account (the account you created in step 3). You should find an email sent by Buoy on behalf of the alerting user. The subject of the email should be whatever you typed in Step 6.3, and it will contain a link.
2. Copy (do not click) the link from the email and paste it into a new browser or a private-browsing mode window of your current browser window. (This is done to simulate a second user arriving at the site with their own, separate device.)
3. Log in to the site with the responder’s account if prompted by the website.
4. You will be redirected to a page that shows a map displaying a red pin for the incident location and a blue “Respond” button. Clicking on the pin reveals the alerter’s profile picture. Click on “Respond” to respond to the alert.
5. You will be taken to the same chat room page where the user who activated the alert is waiting. You can now chat between and amongst the various user accounts who have responded to the alert.

This completes the test walkthrough and set up process for using Buoy.

In a “real” emergency, it is possibly more likely to press the "immediate alert” button (the big red button with the buoy/life preserver icon instead of the smaller chat bubble icon). The two buttons are the exact same, except for the fact that the smaller of the two allows entering a custom message before sending the alert.

Additional walkthroughs

Buoy offers additional features intended to further enhance the privacy and safety of its users. These features are described in detail in the following additional walkthroughs:

• Fake team members (feature currently removed)
• Sharing Media (coming soon)