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Typewith.me notes and action items - http://typewith.me/e5hgMGMXhu
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On the Call Keith Woodlock Krishnan Mani Udai Gupta Ed Cable Action Items: Ed to collect more info on current versions Mifos users are running Krishnan soon to share updated concept note on accounting module Ed to connect Krishnan with community members to gather more accounting requirements Ed to compile list of accounting packages Krishnan to engage group of university students in India for volunteer development Udai to help pull together a list of tasks for volunteers Ed to share details of upcoming documentation sprint Ed to collect more background on removal of client photo feature Devs to begin pulling together project requirements to recruit a volunteer. Discussion: How can the devs getting closer to the customer What are other projects like OpenMRS doing on community side to get dev end closer to the customer. Technical process OpenMRS achieved a good platform approach. Keith: Surprised number of people on old versions of Mifos 1.3 --> Interesting to get as many upgraded as possible Available to help with upgraded like done with Stephen Kaufman Find out what versions they're on. Action: Ed to collect more info Krishnan's Update on Accounting Accounting - have been exchanging some notes. Building a product that will be able to demonstrate how it works in a fairly short period of time. 2 weeks from now. Have something that will actually take care of accounting while MIS simply deals with capturing transactions Accountant goes into this part of the app but not just configure accounts but configure what accounting treatment for these transactions is Liberate operations staff to concentrate on day to day business. Accountants can do fancier stuff that they want to do to account for all of the transactions. Krishnan had written small concept note. Action Item: Ed to connect Binny personally with Krishnan, with miguel, and with gigi Writing this part of the application in Ruby - could model it with something Mifos community would like to adopt. BI help as well - John Woodlock Next couple of days putting some work around data migration and how easy it would be to bulk upload information on this prototype. Afterwards might show some simple embedded reports Then really nail down loan/client area --> talk to actual MFIs that are doing individual clients --> move it towards something that is close and useful to them. Then take it to where we need to go. Accounting happening in parallel - will simplify approach to applications that MFIs want. Over the next month to 2 months - take shape - have flexible portfolio application and accounting solution as well. Couple interesting suggestions: Grads and postgrads who could start working on smaller assignments - will require some mentorship and hand-holding. Udai: not much handholding for a good developer or student. Open to giving mentorship, in group they can do much better job than having mentors. Andrew --> newly started working on mifos, group of students. He takes leads Ask questions Need someone to carve out some small assignments Krishnan can engage them on a regular basis Udai: First step - get to know mifos, how to set up environment Once you cross hurdle, realize what you can improve Great contribution come from people who try software and feel what they can improve. First to have to get to level where they can ask for some work. If we have three or four groups of such students - one group has learned - tap ahead and help the other groups. Problem is people aren't asking question on mailing list. Google summer of code - one student was struggling, other student was helping --> one student and he help other student - evolve and support itself. Once they begin to help each other Krishnan - might not be rockstars but will contribute at some level. Action: udai to help pull together tasks over coming weeks Action: Krishnan to engage a group of students in India Other thought: List of accounting packages being used. One task that could be identified - for every such accounting package that needs to be used, write small plug-in - transform information between mifos format and what is accepted by particular accounting package. Effort to integrate new accounting package - small plugin that works with xml - create these for a number of packages Action: Ed to pull together list of accounting packages Doc Sprint: Krishnan will see who else is interested and get them as a point of contact Action: Ed to send more details. Krishnan: Any request with integration for credit bureau with HighMark MostFit - done integration for a customer of theirs - data submission process (once every month for each participating MFI, shared formats with us) - HighMark Perhaps MostFit team member could contribute this as well. Would be useful addition - organizations that are part of MFIN In order to obtain membership, had to submit data o HighMark credit bureau. Udai: Credit bureau has standard report - way to provide data to credit bureaus - don't know exact type of report Some of the mifos integrators are trying to build report separately - no plan for core integration right now. Support of Client Photo For large customer it was unsustainable with file size of photos. For small community members, could re-enable it, release that has it enabled. Kay had asked John to disable it on the issue - disabled on the UI only. Action: Ed to reach out to Kay about rationale Action: draft project requirements Krishnan: not encountered a scalability program because no customer large enough with photos and files attached. Also, Mostfit does not store documents or photos in the database, but merely an identifier, and the documents stay on file storage Udai: problem --> when you make a dump of database - huge binary strain because of photos Photo is currently being stored as a blob in the database (not good for administer) Photo is jpeg and stored in file system Because we were launching cloud hosting - would have been a mess. Not sure why disabled with no alternate - Store on a file system with metadata in database. |