Intro to Technical and Data Services

Start Here

Support available on the Tech and Data shelf

You can get direct support via email and Mattermost from the Digital Team.
This team also provides advice and consultancy on bigger projects.

Short presentation on how to get technical and data support.

Data Protection is very important to take time to learn about. If you’re collecting or using personal data, there are resources about GDPR to help you to understand what you need to do.

The Hub, Mattermost, Cloud and Forums

This book contains everything you need to know about these services, from what they are, to getting an account, using them effectively and more technical guidance for people who become 'group admins' or 'hub admins'

Action Network for XR
Online tech tools
How to contribute to the Rebel Toolkit

Getting Tech Support

What can I ask and where?

All of us have difficulties in remembering exactly how to do things and sometimes it's quicker to ask a question than to search through help guides.

Join a Zoom drop-in for questions and support:

If you are a Mattermost user you can message and post your questions in the channels listed below, otherwise email tech@rebellion.earth and your query will be relayed to the appropriate team.

GDPR and Personal Data

What is GDPR?

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation. It’s the UK version of EU data protection legislation. If we break this law, we risk consequences to the whole organisation and our ability to communicate.

This advice is for everyone volunteering for Extinction Rebellion in the UK and using

Personally identifiable information (PII) includes

Sometimes it is the combination of information which identifies a person (e.g. there might be 2 people in a house, only one adult, so age and address combined identifies a person)

Personal data

GDPR regulations cover all kinds of personal data. This includes all of the personally identifiable information listed above plus an individucal's

Learn about GDPR

Why understanding GDPR is important

We want to take care of each other, and that includes being careful with information about each other, so complying with GDPR rules is totally in accordance with our XR Principles and Values.

Following GDPR is about showing respect to rebels. We want to ensure that all rebels’ personal data is treated with respect and protected from misuse. GDPR provides a sensible set of principles that can help us to do that. If you’re collecting or using personal data, the resources here will help you to understand what you need to do.

Our purpose in holding personal data

Within Extinction Rebellion UK we need to share information with each other, cooperating to achieve Our Demands. To do this we share personal data so we can form teams, and reach other teams.

Be careful with this personal data, and to use it only for Extinction Rebellion’s purpose.

Consequences

If we have people in Extinction Rebellion (XR) who go beyond these guidelines, we risk

Planning for the personal data we need to hold

A big part of doing this right it to only hold the personal data we need for a specific purpose, and make sure we only allow access as needed. All that and more comes into doing a "data plan".

If your team uses personal data, check out the Data Plan checklist below.

If you:

Unsubscribing and data deletion

Self-service

Action Network emails lists
Follow this link to find more information about how to unsubscribe, update details or join a new local group.

Hub, Forum, Cloud, Mattermost and Vault
You can remove yourself from The Hub, Forums, Cloud, Mattermost and the Vault - click the person icon at the top right of the Hub, click Settings, then click Delete me.

Getting help to unsubscribe

If you don't want to hear from XR services again e.g. from The Hub, Mattermost, Volunteer website, Rebel Toolkit, Rebellion Academy, CRM systems, Action Network, TESN, Arrestee & Legal Support or Finance contact dataprotection@rebellion.earth. Please specify in your email which systems you want to stop messages from (otherwise someone has to spend a long time checking all of them).

If you want to be removed from our systems, contact dataprotection@rebellion.earth. It would help us to know which systems you want to be removed from (otherwise someone has to spend a long time checking all of them). In some cases we won't be able to remove all your entries - in which case we'll let you know which we need to keep.

You can contact us via our GDPR & Security Reception channel on Mattermost or by email at dataprotection@rebellion.earth.

Consultancy

The Digital Team can help with creating, changing or reconfiguring a Digital service.

We have experts in analysis, design, software development, GDPR, non Digital software and project management of Digital systems. We can discuss your requirement and help you to avoid developing something that we could have done for you, is not GDPR compliant or already exists.

Contact us on Mattermost at Tech Reception
If you don’t use Mattermost, email tech@rebellion.earth

Known Issues with Tech and Digital Tools

If your issue isn't here - this is how to contact Digital. If you are in Digital, there is more in the Internal Knowledge Base.

Big Blue Button

1. Automatic closed caption creation not avilable on mobile

If you are presenting using Big Blue Button, and you want your words automatically transcribed to help your audience understand you, then you have the option of enabling Automatic Transcription when you join the meeting. But this only works if you join from a PC Browser such as Chrome or Edge. It is not an option when you join from a mobile device using Android or Apple IOS. Worse, if you join with a phone, nobody else can see captions for what you are saying!

So for most meetings we recommend either using Jitsi Meet or enabling local captions.

Jitsi Meet

1. Mobile

16 March 2026. There are reports of unstable audio on some mobile browsers. We are investigating which ones. It appears to be more stable on the mobile app. Also, screen sharing works on the mobile app but not on a browser.

Unfortunately subtitles do not work on the mobile app (although others can see subtitles for what you are saying, unlike with BBB). This is also being worked on. And becoming a moderator on the app is a bit of a pain, see below.

Consider using the app (if you don't need subtitles)

On an Android phone or an iPhone, if you do not need subtitles (captions, transcript), another option is to use the Jitsi Meet app. This seems to have slightly better / more stable audio performance, and allows screen sharing on mobile, but unfortunately there is a bug breaking subtitles. When the bug is fixed we may recommend the app more widely.

How do I become a moderator in the app

Unfortunately if you try to login in the app to become a moderator you will end up back in the browser. At the moment you need somebody else to make you a moderator, or open the meeting in a browser at the same time as the app and use the browser to make the app a moderator.

In the near future it should be possible to join by copying a "moderator link" from the Hub, and entering that in the app.

2. Recordings

Recordings are supported but for now there is a manual process to share the recording with your circle. Please contact us via Tech Reception.

Transcripts: Ending a recording turns off closed captions. You will need to turn them back on, and if you are keeping the transcript, copy it before ending the recording!

Breaks: When starting a break while recording is still running, please mute everyone's audio (moderators have a button on the participants list), or stop the recording, or the recorder may throw a tantrum, especially if there is a screen share running.

3. Audio issues (especially Windows 11 Brave)

Make sure that:

4. Some people cannot be heard by some other people

Sometimes a person in the meeting can hear most of the other participants but can't hear anything said by a specific other person, even though everyone else can hear them, and the first person can hear everyone else. This mostly happens in larger meetings.

This can usually be fixed by reloading the browser on the person who cannot hear. We may be able to fix this but since it's recurred in various bug reports over the course of years, it remains to be seen!

5. Flaky video when not much bandwidth available

If your Internet connection is slow anyway, Jitsi may struggle with it, resulting in video freezing, pixellation, or not working at all. Unfortunately Jitsi does not always accurately estimate how fast your connection is, especially if it's a slow connection with other people using it, so try reducing the performance settings.

Details:

Note that you can still raise your hand by using the hand button.

Also, if this is in fact the problem, you should be able to see some statistics by moving your mouse over your self-view window, and then over the icon at the top left. On a good connection this will be green, but if it is having problems it might be red! If either bitrate number is below about 100Kbps, or it says "Connection: Poor", you should consider reducing your performance settings.

6. Flaky video on a slow computer or when lots of other apps are using up all the CPU/memory

A similar problem can happen if you just have a slow computer, or a lot of other applications are running (e.g. lots of browser windows); you can see this on Task Manager on Windows, or Activity Manager on a Mac.

You can try rebooting or closing other apps, or reduce the performance settings (move the slider to the left) as in the previous item.

On a mobile phone, using the app might be a solution, if you don't need subtitles.

7. I can't turn subtitles on

If captions are enabled, you can see them by opening the chat and then clicking on the "CC" icon (or from the ... menu). However if captions are not turned on yet, you need to be a moderator to push the blue "Start closed captions" button.

You can ask a moderator to turn on subtitles; whoever started the meeting (and logged in on the Hub) will be a moderator. Or you can become a moderator by going to the ... menu, clicking Settings, then Profile, then the blue "Log in" button. If you are not already logged in on the Hub, it will ask for your Hub login. Then you can go back to captions and turn them on.

See the help and video on the Jitsi page.

8. Subtitles are too laggy / slow / inaccurate

This is disputed but some people report it. If the lag in the Jitsi Meet subtitles is unacceptable, there is another option.

It is possible to turn on "local" captions (i.e. generated by your computer rather than ours) on Windows 11, iOS 26, some versions of Android, and possibly on other systems. We will try to put some instructions on this here.

The reason we don't recommend this by default (e.g. with Big Blue Button or even Signal Meet) is that it's fiddly to configure and puts the burden on the disabled rebels, who don't always have good technical skills. We decided a drop-in replacement for Zoom which includes subtitle support was preferable.

9. Issues with Firefox and Safari (on a fast computer and a fast connection!)

There are relatively widespread reports of issues with Firefox and Safari. It's worth trying Chrome or Brave. Personally I use Chrome only for meetings, while I use Firefox for everything else.

10. Puts down raised hands before people have a chance to speak

Your hand will be lowered automatically when you start speaking. Please mute yourself when not speaking. This is also important because noise suppression in Jitsi is not as good as on some other video conferencing platforms.

Other common problems and how to report a problem

You can contact us via the regular tech support sessions, Tech Reception etc. See here.

There is a checklist document explaining what we need to know to have a good chance of fixing your problem. It also includes solutions for many common problems.

Mattermost

1. Boards not working on Desktop App on Mac OSX

02 October 2024. A work around is being tried but has not been completed yet.
Alternatively Mattermost boards can be viewed in a browser such as Safari or Chrome.

2. Boards intermittently not working

16 March 2026. Various reports of Mattermost boards not working, especially going to an error page. Sometimes this can be fixed by reloading or switching to channels and back to boards. Sorry about this, some of it appears to be caused by network problems, we are investigating.

UK Cloud

1. Poor mobile support for cloud documents

18 March 2026. Unfortunately editing documents on mobile has severe limitations.

Basic text entry should work: while you are near the top of a document, there should be a button with a pencil icon on the bottom right. Click it to enable editing. When you are done, click the tick icon in the bar at the top.

An alternative is to use desktop mode - click on the browser menu (3 dots right at the top), and look for something like "Desktop site". This has nearly full desktop functionality, but the menus may be unusably small, and you will need to zoom in.

Help would be appreciated, let us know if you can help with large JavaScript systems!

The OnlyOffice app may be an option but in the past this has had severe bugs, including overwriting documents with old versions when opening them read only; we will re-test this, but do not try it unless you are confident in your ability to reinstate an old version of the document.

2. Renaming and sharing files

16 March 2026. Sometimes renaming a file and then sharing it, or vice versa, will cause the share to not work. You may need to copy the file first, then share it. It's possible this is fixed, we're seeing fewer reports of it lately.

3. Sharing a Group folder

06 November 2024. Sometimes the browser will crash or there will be gaps in file lists, or the XRUK Cloud menu will stop working. Often this is caused by sharing a group folder with somebody who is already in the group. If you then favourite it, there are two copies of the folder in the favourites list.
Workaround is to not share a group folder with somebody who is already in the group.

4. Files do not open in Safari / on an iPhone

16 March 2026. Workaround is to switch the browser to desktop mode (on the browser menu) and then back.

5. Cannot open files after swiping back on a phone

16 March 2026. Workaround is to reload (on the browser menu). Another option is to close the file with the close icon (an X or an up arrow in a folder, at the top of the page on the left or right), rather than swiping back.

6. Cannot open files shared by people who left the group

16 March 2026. This has to be fixed manually. Digital will try to contact affected people.

7. Problems with files versions when copying files

06 November 2024. Changes to a document do not always get saved immediately. That is, even if other people can see the changes in the document editor (OnlyOffice), copying or downloading the file may still show an old version.
Workaround is to use the save option on the file menu before copying files.

Update 2026: This is now very unlikely, changes should always be fully saved in less than 3 minutes. You can see whether this has happened by checking the Versions panel (next to sharing).

8. Form spreadsheet lag

When you create a form and link a spreadsheet to it, the spreadsheet will be updated when people fill the form in. However it can take several minutes for the spreadsheet to be updated. Note that we have many other ways to do forms.

9. My huge presentation breaks

There is a file size limit for presentations. Shrink your images to a sensible size (no more than 4K resolution)! If affected, download your presentation, edit it locally (e.g. with PowerPoint or LibreOffice) to shrink the images, and upload it again.

Action Network

The main Action Network Known Issues page can be found here.

Rebellion Academy

When you login for the first time from a Hub account, it will send a confirmation mail. Please check your inbox including spam. Unfortunately, it will only ever send one mail for your account, so if you don't confirm it the first time you will need to ask an admin to set a password for you on Tech Reception. Hopefully this will be fixed soon!