User Guide

Welcome

App-Elles is a free mobile application for victims, survivors and witnesses of gender-based and sexual violence. It offers you a way to quickly alert your loved ones, to call the emergency services, to meet associations and to consult all the information available on a territory.

The purpose of this guide is to introduce you to the features of the App-Elles application and to assist you in their configuration and use.

App-Elles is not just an alert device but above all a resource application:

App-Elles centralizes and pools the information, contacts and devices of the territories at the local, national and international level
The offline availability of certain key information or emergency numbers is a main feature of the application
The app's alert service is made available only as a convenience and is not intended, nor should it be considered, as an equivalent alternative to the emergency call to competent authorities.

Settings

Permissions

To garantee the proper functioning of the application and its alert service, you are requested to grant all requested permissions. These permissions can be withdrawn at any time but will limit the operation of the application and your access to the alert service.

Tips

These permissions are necessary for the use of the alert service (Receiving alert notifications, real-time location, listening and recording the microphone,..), so it is recommended to grant them permanently in order not to having to ask for them again in an emergency. Access to your location and your microphone is only possible from the moment you trigger an alert and ends when you stop it.

Your account

An email address and password are required to create your account and access the app's resources and services. This account will allow you to connect to other users, save your alert data and recall your settings configuration from any other App-Elles application (in case of change, theft or destruction of the mobile ).

In order to verify that you are the owner of the email entered, a confirmation link is sent to you at this address.Without your confirmation, you will not be able to invite other users to become your protectors, or accept their invitations to protect them. If you do not receive the confirmation email, check your spam and, if necessary, contact our technical support: support@app-elles.com

Your account address will also be used when requesting your password renewals and sending your backup data alerts.

Tips

If you are a survivor whose author is one of your relatives, we invite you to create a new email address known only to you and reserved solely for this use.

Your profil

To help your trusted contacts recognize you, the app allows you to customize your username and profile picture. This information can be added and modified at any time in the app settings.

Tips

Prefer a username and avatar that only your trusted contacts can identify and recognize on their apps.

Your sector

The application organizes its information and content by geographical areas. Each of them contains all the resources of its sole territory, as well as those competent at the national level. At any time, you can modify it and access the resources of another territory.

Tips

Select by default the geographical area of your place of residence or the closest and modify it when searching for informations in another territory.

Alert service

Your trusted contacts

You can invite up to 3 contacts to receive your alerts, and you can accept to receive alerts from up to 3 of your contacts. The user who accepts an invitation is automatically set as a protector.

This relationship of trust can only be created at the initiative of the user wishing to be protected, she is the only one who can send an invitation to a contact to allow him to be her protector.

Tips

Connect with people you know you can count on. Exchange your respective identifiers (your account email addresses) to invite each other more easily. Take the time to explain to them why you need to connect with them and what to expect if they receive an alert from your account

Alert triggering

When you trigger an alert an audible notification is simultaneously sent to your protective contacts:

Your microphone activates: Speak, if you can, your sound environment is shared and recorded in real time;
Your GPS location is tracked: Your protectors see the address of your location and track your movements live;
The avatars of your protectors are displayed on your screen: a green dot appears when the protector is viewing your alert;
You can qualify the nature of your alert: Your protectors will know if it's an emergency, a request for protection, a test or an error before consulting the current alert;
You can call the emergency services at the same time;
Your protectors can speak to you by Push To Talk: Their voice will come out over your phone;
You can end your alert only with the “Stop” button on your screen (regardless of the trigger mode used)

At the end of the alert, everything is recorded and saved in the cloud. You can replay or download this alert from your alert history

Tips

Enable the biometric identification system provided by your smartphone (if the feature is available) to protect access to your alert history. The application will request this authentication before being able to access your archives (alerts sent and received).

If no contact is defined as a protector in your application, your alert will still be saved and retrieved in the alert history.

Tips

This can be useful if you want to use the alert service to create a recording of a conversation, comments made about you (sexist insult, verbal and psychological violence, etc.)