Diverse Ukrainian organisations are transforming themselves to support their members as they navigate the difficult situation during the war. Support provided from companies, governmental organisations, NGOs and other actors range from providing information, evacuating colleagues and employees and their families, to financial, logistical and psychological help. One of the ways for organisations to keep track and communicate with their employees is the Together App, an open source solution created to help organisations to communicate and ensure the physical safety of their members in a simple manner.
The key feature that organisations can use is the automatic wellbeing check-in from users on a regular basis. Users can be checked in by their peers if they do not currently have access to the internet.
Another feature is an interactive map allowing to locate persons in the same city, together with their status, for finding help, support and organising evacuations, community meetings and coordination activities.
Designated persons from the organisation such as the HR and management can get notifications about the status of their employees and colleagues, keep track of who has been mobilised and provide adequate help if needed.
The solution is open source and privacy-friendly as it allows each user to determine what data they want to share and with whom. As sharing the exact coordinates could put users in danger as it might indicate the location of bomb shelters, hospitals or refugee camps, the app never saves the exact location of its users, identifying only the city through browser geolocation data to make using the app easy and effortless for those who might find themselves in difficult conditions.
Together App is customisable and can be self-hosted and deployed in diverse organisations, as it doesn’t require a lot of technical expertise and builds on an already used and known solution. The implementation should not take longer than an hour.
Full documentation, deployment information and support are available on the project's Github page.