What is Sauti?
A tour of the platform, its two consoles and the ideas that run through every screen.
Sauti is a campaign communication and operations platform built for Kenya. It brings together the work a campaign usually spreads across a bulk-SMS dashboard, spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, M-PESA statements and paper forms, and it does so without ever showing your team a supporter's phone number.
Two consoles#
Sauti has two separate consoles:
| Console | Who uses it | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign workspace | Your campaign team: owners, managers, communications officers, finance, coordinators, volunteers and polling agents | /app on the main Sauti address |
| Operator console | The Sauti platform team only | A separate, restricted address |
Most of this documentation is about the campaign workspace. The Platform operators section covers the operator console.
Volunteers and polling agents also use the Sauti Field app on Android phones. See The Sauti Field app.
What you can do#
- Message people by SMS, USSD, voice, email and Telegram, with WhatsApp available only where the platform's policy allows it. Every channel uses the same audience, approval, wallet and opt-out controls.
- Organise supporters by county, constituency, ward and polling station, with tags, custom fields, consent and engagement history.
- Run field operations: volunteers and teams, walk lists, a phone bank, tasks, events and logistics.
- Handle money: a prepaid messaging wallet, payment links, M-PESA collections, donation pages, payouts and budgets.
- Run election day: agents checked in at their stations, incidents, and results that need two matching entries and a sign-off.
- Measure: delivery, replies, spend and field work, with small groups hidden to protect communities.
The ideas behind every screen#
Supporter contacts are sealed. Phone numbers and email addresses of the people you reach are encrypted with a key that belongs to your organisation. Everywhere in the workspace you see a masked value such as 07•• ••• •42. Only the sending service unlocks a number, at the moment a message leaves. Your own staff's contact details are not masked to colleagues in the same organisation.
Everyone works within a scope. Each team member has a role and a geographic scope, for example one constituency. Lists, counts and reports only include people in that scope.
Sends are controlled. Before a message goes out, Sauti recalculates the audience, removes anyone who has opted out, checks quiet hours and frequency caps, screens the content and reserves the cost from your wallet. Your approval policy decides when a second person must release the send.
Opt-outs always win. A reply of STOP, ACHA or SITAKI removes the person from future messages immediately. No setting can switch this off.
Everything is audited. Important actions are written to a tamper-evident audit trail with who did it, when, and why.
Where to go next#
- Sign in securely.
- Understand roles and access.
- Follow the first-week checklist.