Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

Get Stoked - End Poverty. One Line Get Stoked - End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time.

Table of Contents
maxLevel4
outlinetrue

...

aa6d6a9eec9b4c00-

Mentor

Project

Location

Time Zone

User Profile
user557058:

59fb7242-

26f4-

4765-96bf-3dcaf1486cc8

 IndiaIST (GMT +5:30)

User Profile
user557058:aa6d6a9e-ec9b-4c00-8ab1-726a8d728e8f

 

India

IST (GMT +5:30)

User Profile
user557058:59a2f1c9-f496-449b-9ea9-9ab65b908d01

 

Ghana

GMT

User Profile
user557058:a229ed08-ab13-4620-b9a7-69d46f997c06

 

USA

PST(GMT -8:00)

User Profile
userunlicensed
 IndiaIST (GMT +5:30)
User Profile
user557058:098bc1f7-5d5d-4c36-b6f2-60d574c0214a
 Sri LankaIST (GMT +5:30)
User Profile
user557058:2babbedd-40a6-49ca-a275-eeea25a56fd5
 IndiaIST (GMT +5:30)
User Profile
user557058:3fa93dbb-db85-48eb-860f-b5b8fffc7940
 NetherlandsCET (GMT+1:00)
User Profile
user557058:e88a165f-a874-4cda-aa58-9b0df7812469
 USAPST(GMT -8:00)
User Profile
user557058:8f775b0b-ac27-40cc-836a-ac3cdc4eddaa
 GermanyCET (GMT+1:00)

...

Improvements to User Generated Documents

MentorsTBDPranjal Goswami
Overview & Objectives

Provide an easy way for reports to "merge-printed" from the Client or account page. Currently, if a user needs to print a specific letter for customer or loan account or savings account - the only way is to develop a report or use stretchy report. This is difficult to use and cannot be invoked from a client or account page.

Description

 

The following enhancements will be needed:

  • Improvements to the UI - to provide Logical names for pre-defined fields
  • Extend it for Deposit Accounts too
  • For Loans and Deposits accounts, we should be able to access Client Details
  • For loans - allow Loan Summary and Tranche details tabs to be accessible in the template
  • Allow data table fields to be accessible for Clients and Loans and Deposits
  • For Loans and Deposits - allow transaction tab to be accessible in template - need a way to specify a specific transaction type and/or a date or a date-range as inputs for these at the time of invoking the report
  • Allow basic filters like date-range for transactions related templates
  • Allow totals for amount fields for transactions related templates

 

Helpful SkillsSQL, Java, Javascript, Git
Impact

Easy to print reports like Loan Sanction Letter, Savings Transaction report, Deposit notice etc.

Other Resources 

...

MentorsMarkus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

Develop a set of APIs that can be used by a front end application that is meant for Client/Member Self-Service

Description

Design for how the self-service APIs will be invoked and internal design on the Mifos Platform to support self-service.

Develop a set of APIs for the following:

  • Login
  • View Own Profile and Data Tabs
  • View Own Accounts (deposits and loans)
  • View Own Accounts' Transactions (deposits and loans)
  • Initiate transfers from own account
  • Fill up Questionnaires for own profile or accounts - customer facing - based on Data tables
Helpful SkillsSQL, Java, Javascript, Git
Impact

Allows a member/client in having a self-service channel - i.e. online banking interface through a browser or smartphone app.

Other Resources 

Self-Service -

...

Web App development

...

Helps organization to streamline their data capture process in the MIS and as well as in the field. And this leads toward more measurability of the MFI's impact in the field and more transparency.

...

MentorsTBDGaurav Saini
Overview & Objectives

This has a dependency on the Self-Service backend API's being available 

Description

Develop Android AngularJS Screens:

  • Login
  • View Own Profile and Data Tabs
  • View Own Accounts (deposits and loans)
  • View Own Accounts' Transactions (deposits and loans)
  • Initiate Transfers from own account (Transfer to own savings account, payment to loan, transfer to another member)
  • Fill up Questionnaires

Integrate with the corresponding APIs on the Mifos platform.

Helpful SkillsAndroid developmentAngularJS Development , SQL, Java, Javascript, Git
Impact

Allows a member/client in having a self-service channel allowing them more direct control and visibility into their financial livelihood.

Other Resources 

Data Tables Improvements to Support Workflows

...

In most of the cases MFI wants to capture additional data during certain workflows (example: during client closing, wants to conduct exit survey, capture PPI during loan creation) and this requirement can fulfilled by adding option to attach datatable/survey/question group to the pre-defined workflows as certain points (example: during loan creation, during approval time or during disbursement etc).

Enhance data tables to emulate real-life workflows:

  • Classification of data tables - as Data capture, UI-read-only, Surveys etc.

  • Long internationalized labels for fields

  • Sequencing of data tables

  • Pre-conditions for a data table - so that the a data can be captured/screen is made visible only if certain conditions are met

  • Conditional data tables - For example: some data to be captured for Individual Clients whereas other data to be captured for small businesses

  • Data table to be captured along with main entity itself within the same transaction - for example: Address fields for client

  • Self-service vs. Staff data tables
    (This list to be reviewed with Markus and Ed to ensure that there is no duplication of effort with other projects like SPM tool)

 

Self-Service - Android App development

MentorsTBD
Overview & Objectives

This has a dependency on the Self-Service backend API's being available 

Description

Develop Android Screens:

  • Login
  • View Own Profile and Data Tabs
  • View Own Accounts (deposits and loans)
  • View Own Accounts' Transactions (deposits and loans)
  • Initiate Transfers from own account
  • Fill up Questionnaires

Integrate with the corresponding APIs on the Mifos platform.

Helpful SkillsAndroid development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git
Impact

Allows a member/client in having a self-service channel allowing them more direct control and visibility into their financial livelihood.

Other Resources 

Data Tables Improvements to Support Workflows

MentorsBinny Gopinath Sreevas (Unlicensed)
Overview & ObjectivesWorkflows can be used for adding additional data/surveys for capturing data or adding checklist to a pre-defined workflows at certain points of the workflow (scope does not include adding custom workflows). This project would build off the existing Data Tables modules to add enhancements for pseudo-workflows.
Description

In most of the cases MFI wants to capture additional data during certain workflows (example: during client closing, wants to conduct exit survey, capture PPI during loan creation) and this requirement can fulfilled by adding option to attach datatable/survey/question group to the pre-defined workflows as certain points (example: during loan creation, during approval time or during disbursement etc).

Enhance data tables to emulate real-life workflows:

  • Classification of data tables - as Data capture, UI-read-only, Surveys etc.

  • Long internationalized labels for fields

  • Sequencing of data tables

  • Pre-conditions for a data table - so that the a data can be captured/screen is made visible only if certain conditions are met

  • Conditional data tables - For example: some data to be captured for Individual Clients whereas other data to be captured for small businesses

  • Data table to be captured along with main entity itself within the same transaction - for example: Address fields for client

  • Self-service vs. Staff data tables
    (This list to be reviewed with Markus and Ed to ensure that there is no duplication of effort with other projects like SPM tool)


 

Helpful Skills Java, SQL , JavaScript , Git
Impact

Helps organization to streamline their data capture process in the MIS and as well as in the field. And this leads toward more measurability of the MFI's impact in the field and more transparency.

Other Resources 

Mobile Money Integration

MentorsMarkus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

Mobile money is rapidly transforming financial inclusion by providing more immediate, impactful, affordable, and secure financial services to the client. Mobile money platforms like M-Pesa offer the client unparalleled value in terms of convenience, security and the possibility of new services and products that are more in line with real-world financial habits.  For financial institutions and their clients to fully scale mobile money and leverage its potential, it needs to be fully integrated with their core-banking system.

Description

Based on the extent of the APIs available through the various mobile money platforms, the level and seamlessness of integration can vary from real-time to end-of-day file-based integration.  This project would work to provide several file, message, and or API-based reference integrations with leading mobile money platforms, including

  • M-Pesa
    • File-based integration
  • TigoCash
  • OrangeMoney
  • AirtelMoney
Helpful SkillsWeb Services, Java, SQL , JavaScript , Git
Impact

Great efficiency, reduced risk for clients, more impactful and relevant products & services.

Other Resources

...

MentorsSander van der Heyden and Markus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

Microfinance institutions usually work with various external parties, such as funders or investors. Using the data that is available in MifosX we would like to offer those stakeholders a seperate portal showing accurate and high-level information about the institution that would otherwise be reported manually by the institution. This information helps them in their decision making processes, but also enables them to assess the broader impact they are having with their funding.

Description

To develop a portal that aggregates information from different Mifos X deployments and report on predefined social and operational metrics

Objectives:

  • Implement back-end logic in MifosX required to make information available to the client impact portal
  • Implement UI and back-end logic of the Client impact portal
Helpful Skills SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Web Services
ImpactFunders and investors are vital for almost all MFI's, providing them with accurate information on the impact they are making with each of their MFI's is something they highly value and that enables them to assess whether they want to further support the MFI's moving forward to enable growth of the MFI.
Other Resources

2014 GSOC Client Impact Portal Project

Vision for Generic SPM Framework for Mifos X (PPI)

Background on Client Impact Portal

...

MentorsJames Dailey
Overview & Objectives

Pay-as-you-go mobile phones have revolutionized access to telecom, the same can be done with solar energy access. Off-grid installations of PVC panels and batteries can be pared with a mobile payment mechanism to allow clients to purchase power "as they use it". This functionality will allow organizations to become involved with 3rd party providers of solar systems.

Description

This project is a continuation of the initial PayGoSol foundation that was led by 2014 GSOC intern, Antonio Carella.

  1. Create a pre-paid account mechanism as an account type or account option in Mifos (perhaps extending existing classes), zero fees.
  2. Create a new API for consuming pre-paid account balances.  
  3. Create a simple external model that mimics consumption by a household on a daily basis - imagined as a set of data received from solar panel (watts used, time of day, volts present).  
  4. Load up pre-paid account by account transfer in P2P interface (my phone to your account) or via trusted agent - i.e. trusted agent receives cash and loads account on Mifos.

Work in 2015 will include adding the following features to make it an out-of-the-box solution that any PAYG hardware provider could use:

 

  • Hardware Integration
    • Integration with SMS "kill signal" (sms outbound) 
    • Integration with unique "enabler code" for keycode entry and SMS outbound 
    • Per time period Charge and Pay per Kwh options (via control panel) 
  • Web App & Android Client
    • Better UIX and UI work 
  • Platform Work
    • Componentized PGS server (with Mifos X as dependent jar) 

 

 

Helpful Skills SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Web Services
Impact

Providers of pay-as-you-go solar can use MIFOS for their operations. MFIs can become such providers.

Other Resources

Mifos Android Client on MifosX

 

...

MentorsBinny Gopinath Sreevas (Unlicensed)
Overview & Objectives

Right now Mifos X contains core client management functionalities including tracking basic demographic information, know your customer information, document management, and survey collection through data tables. As financial institutions serving the poor begin to offer a more in-depth and diverse range of financial inclusion products, the need for more robust client management and in-depth client understanding has grows. Their core system needs to provide more and more CRM-type functionality that complement the portfolio management and financial/social reporting the Mifos X provides.

This project will work to deliver the initial set of customer relationship management functionalities including a module for tracking inquiries, complaints

Description

This module will have a request management functionality. A request can be of 2 types: Complaints and Service Requests. Each request must be against a customer and optionally against an account of the customer. Each request will go through a simple workflow.

Actions that can be performed on a request:

Assign -> will change status to "assigned"

Start Work --> will change status to "in progress"

Close --> will change status to "closed" (with a sub-reason code)

At each step user can enter comments.

The customer summary screen will have a link to view the requests of the customer - along with a summary and current status - with option to click-through to get the complete history of each request.

Helpful Skills 
Impact

Deepening the client relationship and ensuring fair, responsible, and transparent financial services to the poor is a core piece of the industry's roadmap for financial inclusion. Providing customers the ability to voice their concerns and feedback about the services they're receiving provides a simple yet powerful tool to protect the client. Empowering the financial institution with the ability to track these inquiries and overall maintain a more holistic relationship tracking entire lifecycle of their clients gives them a much better ability to understand their clients and respond to their needs with appropriately designed services and products.

Other Resources 

Security Penetration testing

MentorsKojoG
Overview & Objectives

We believe the Mifos X platform is super secure and impenetrable. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prove us wrong, and help close gaps you may find.

Description

Beyond a one time exercise, you should integrate (some of) the tools you've used into our build chain so that, even after you've gone, tools flag up future newly introduced potential vulnerabilities.

Helpful SkillsCandidates applying for this project would ideally have prior experience in penetration testing, and document this in their application.
ImpactRe-assuring the more Entreprise-y type Mifos clients that they can safely bet on Mifos X as an MFI platform.
Other Resources

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page

https://code.google.com/p/zaproxy/

http://wapiti.sourceforge.net

Run FindBugs & related tools for some serious static code analysis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetration_test

Scaling MifosX to serve 2 million+ customer accounts

MentorsVishwas Babu A J
Overview & Objectives

This project's goal is to create an Amazon Cloud formation template for Mifos deployments at large Organisations. We would measure how we scale, with concrete scenarios and hard numbers, and produce documentation about this helping organization who are evaluating Mifos.

We would also try to identify and fix performance bottlenecks in the MifosX and the community app codebase

Description

You would be creating a Cloud formation template on AWS for a sample high performance Mifos setup. The setup would include

  • Approximately 5 web servers (Apache) on medium EC2 instances fronted with a load balancer
  • Approximately 5 Tomcats servers on large EC2 instances fronted with a load balancer
  • Multi Az extra Large RDS
  • Distributed in memory cache environment

You would then use Jmeter (or a tool of your choice) to create realistic data and run and benchmark performance on this setup. Based on the figures, we would make fixes to either to the MifosX / Community app codebases to fix any identified performance bottlenecks and then carry out multiple iterations of tweaking the Cloud formation template to achieve best performance.

Helpful SkillsMust be a self starter, Experience with Amazon AWS and any opensource load testing tool is helpful
ImpactRe-assuring the more Entreprise-y type Mifos clients that they can safely bet on Mifos X as an MFI platform.
Other Resources

http://twitter.github.io/iago/

http://www.loadui.org (by the good people behind SOAPui)

Selenium WebDriver

https://jmeter.apache.org/

http://grinder.sourceforge.net/

http://opensta.org/

Mifos ID/Profile - Single Sign On for Community Infrastructure

Mentors KojoG & Ed Cable
Overview & Objectives

This project would seek to create one unified ID/login and profile for community members similar to the OpenMRS ID. It would achieve the following two primary objectives:

  1. One unified profile and identity for community members in which they can share with the community who they are and also build reputation and recognition. This ability to discover and self-identify with other community members is difficult when we have so many different tools and profiles to maintain.
  2. Single Sign On for our various collaboration and community infrastructure tools listed below.

 

Description
  1. Identifying a single sign-on authentication protocol that ties together authentication of our various community collaboration tools: 1) Atlassian Studio - JIRA, Confluence, JIRA Agile, 2) Social Q&A - AnswerHub 3) Mailing Lists - Mailman (administered through SourceForge 4) Source Code Version Control - GitHub 5) Continuous Integration - Jenkins 6) General Community Website (mifos.org) - Wordpress 7) Partner Directory
    1. This could be built out independently, tie into some OpenID protocol, or leverage one of our existing tools for this authentication - Atlassian Studio/Crowd or AnswerHub or another common OpenID protocol. 
  2. Design and implement a dashboard to handle the creation of this unified ID
  3. Design and create a common profile tied to this ID with basic information and photos that is searchable by the community.

Design a profile

Extra Credit:

Helpful SkillsLDAP
Impact

Impact is two-fold:

  • Common unified profile and identity can help to grow collaboration and participation in the community. By being able to simply share who you are or discover who's in your community, we can deepen the bonds of community which motivates each member to participate more often and invest personally in the health of the community. Building reputation and recognizing efforts of each type of community member (users, partners, volunteers, etc) in a tangible way also helps to increase participation.
  • Single sign-on will it make much easier for community members to collaborate and communicate. Right now there is often a high barrier to signing up for the various tools - SSO will make that process easier but also encourage others to more regularly be involved.
Other Resources

Make Mifos X DB-Agnostic - Flexible configuration allowing other databases, incl. tests & doc on Oracle

MentorsAnuruddha Premalal
Overview & Objectives

Initial version of Mifos X was not designed to be database agnostic. Goal of this project is to make it so, and test this out in practice by running it locally on Oracle, make sure our test suite runs against Oracle as well as mysql, and well documenting how this can be set up by end-user clients, if they wish to go for this deployment.

Description

To make this possible, all business logic has to be concentrated in the middle tier with the database being as dumb as possible. This means the platform does not rely on any database specific stored procedures or on the database to generate unique keys. And also application heavily use prepared statements (Spring jdbctemplate) for retrieving data and need to make sure all these queries use full JOIN syntax, and bracket the JOINs so that each join is between a single table and bracketed expression.

Helpful SkillsSQL, Java
Impact

MFI with large client base can use the application with Oracle or any other commercial databases.

Other Resources

Mifos has abstraction from underlying database using:

  • Hibernate as ORM (must have good experience with Hibernate)
  • Liquibase as Database refactoring tool
  • DbUnit as test dataset maintenance

POC of a Scalable MifosX deployment on Openstack

MentorsVishwas Babu A J
Overview & Objectives

 Create a POC of a scalable MifosX implementation (with load balanced tomcats and percona servers) on an openstack setup on a public cloud. Also publish a whitepaper with details of Openstack setup

Description

 Mifosx was built to be cloud ready from the ground up. One of the most popular deployment environments for MifosX has been on Amazon EC2, however due to country specific regulation, many implementors are forced to seek alternative models that can scale as effectively

The aim of this project is two-fold

  • Propose a scalable deployment model for Mifos (includes load balanced tomcats, percona mysql server etc ) on OpenStack. The POC would be on a public cloud provider (Rackspace?)
  • Publish a whitepaper of the same, which can be used as a reference for local implementors (who would additionally take care of provisioning their own hardware)

 

Helpful SkillsUnix, OpenStack, experience with any public cloud (AWS etc) and Percona Server is a plus
ImpactImproves deployment options for Mifos. Would be very helpful for specialists in African countries who deal with strict regulatory controls in hosting data outside their region
Other ResourcesOpenstack: https://www.openstack.org/

Mifos X on "Enterprise Stack" - IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic tests & documentation

MentorsMichael Vorburger
Overview & Objectives

Mifos X today is typically used on Tomcat (with Jetty known to work). For a certain class of users, testing it on "Enterprise Stack" application servers (meaning IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic) is desirable - this project would properly test Mifos X on these configurations, make any adaptations to the code which may be required, and produce easy to follow documentation or even small tools helping future users how to go about this.

Description

This project could be combined with and taken up by the same candidate as the Enterprise database project.

Helpful Skills

Java, Application Server configuration, WAS classloading crap tricks, documentation writing.

Use Cargo, Arquillian etc. for automated testing against WAS & WLS containers?

ImpactEnable Mifos X to be considered by users wanting it to run (only) on an Enterprise stack

 

Other Resources

Vendor pages

Mifos X SDK

MentorsMarkus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

The Mifos X platform as of today is a well structure but monolithic code base - one Git repo, one build, one WAR. This has worked out well for us, but as we grow, it could be interesting to introduce a proper SDK and plug-in concept, allowing contributors to build individual JARs that can be dropped into a certain directory of Mifos X to augment the core platform on well defined extension points and hooks. These modules would be loaded at run-time, not require rebuilding Mifos X, and would remain compatible when a customer upgrades their core platform version.

We currently see the SDK as something more relevant to the Java back-end, so in this project you would likely work less on our AngularJS UI (barring some configuration UI for the plug-ins probably); but if you do have any ideas how to make the front-end more modular and extensible as well, we would love to hear from you.

Description

This project will have three axis/phases: 1. platform infrastructure framework kind of work, based on a very simple or fictitious example extension; 2. identifying the functionally which could require / be sensible to extend in Mifos X, extracting clear and documented Java APIs from it, and then make changes to existing functional platform services to make them extensible by plug-ins; 3. well document this - such plugins will only be written if it's easy and clear how to do this. Note that the more technical part 1. should only take about 1/4 of your project, the focus will have to be putting the "theory" from 1. into "practice" in phases 2. & 3.

Helpful SkillsJava, modularity, API design, dynamic class loading, OSGi-like concepts (without any plans to actually move Mifos X to running on an OSGi kernel; it's unnecessary complexity, for this)
ImpactDevelopers from partnering organisations would be able to more easily extend the core Mifos X by extension code running in-process the platform (as opposed to REST-based
Other Resources

Many other Java-based platform have such mechanism, and you would be expected to draw at least conceptual, if not outright technical inspiration (re-using code, if feasible) from things like the Eclipse Plug-In architecture (or similar non-OSGi based ones in other IDEs), research if Spring itself or some extension from someone has anything useful for this (think like Guice Multibindings plus ServiceLoader API as discussed on this StackOverflow, or this blog, or these Mycila Guice Extensions; but without going all the way to OSGi-based Spring DM / Dynamic Modules; again, overkill, here), get inspiration from drop-in add-on modules extension capabilities in enterprise software such as e.g. Atlassian plug-in framework, and learn how e.g. our friends at OpenMRS do this (see OpenMRS SDK doc and OpenMRS project).

Automation of Conversion of AngularJS Community App into Chrome App 

Mentors Nayan Ambali
Overview & Objectives

At present MIfos X platform is shipped with Community-App (SPA) as default UI, but initial load time of the application high. And for users on narrow bandwidth internet it takes a considerable amount of time to load the app.

Instead of loading the app every time, we can convert the Community-App into a Chrome App and user can download them once and install it ion the machine, and it can used as thick client.

Description

Community-App is completely developed on top of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. And Chrome apps are also written in same stack. Using grunt we should be able to repackage Community-App(SPA) into Community-App(Chrome App)

Helpful SkillsJavascript, AngularJS, Grunt
Impact

Users with slow internet connectivity can use this app (Installed on the machine) instead of loading Community-App (SPA) on the browser. Users will also have a continually updated app. This will also allow MFIs to potentially use Chromebooks as field-based devices for their branches.

Other Resources  http://developer.chrome.com/apps/angular_framework.html

UI meta modeling, making screen adaption a configuration instead of coding activity

MentorsMichael Vorburger  
Overview & Objectives

The AngularJS-based Mifos X UI, like most of today's AngularJS-based or really most web apps, is "coded out" with JavaScript & HTML partial views. This project aims to explore and deliver at least partially working solution, based on and applied to Mifos X UI as a "case study", how web UI of modern SPA web applications can be "modeled" (described), and "generated" (at build, or better, runtime right within the browser). Advantages of such a model driven (MDA / MDD) approach incl. that less technical users can change screen definitions themselves, and that changes to the underlying technical architecture (e.g. AngularJS version and other JS frameworks used) ideally only affect the generators, not the functional screen models.

Description

You could base this on ongoing explorations in https://github.com/vorburger/MUI.js, and using EFactory / ESON as model syntax (see https://github.com/vorburger/efactory; ESON a JSON-like EMF Xtext technology which is currently being incubated as a formal eclipse.org project). The goal and expected outcome of this project isn't some write up, but actually running code.

Helpful SkillsConceptual Modeling, JavaScript, advanced AngularJS, curious and creative mind, capability to actually deliver
ImpactEnable the Mifos X UI to be much more easily customized and adapted by end-users
Other Resourcessee links above 

Extend Community app to run on Mobile devices with Offline Support

(INCORPORATE offline client work here) 

MentorsVishwas Babu A J & Markus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

MIfos X platform is shipped with a Community-App (SPA) as the default UI which is optimized for Web Browser display on large screens (Mobile, Laptops and Tablets). We need to extend the same to support mobile views (with minor changes to workflow) and provide offline functionality

Description

Community-App is completely developed on top of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Also since there is a clear separation between the view and the Controllers in Angular JS, we should be able to spin up mobile views fairly easily reusing the same Controllers and Services. As it is quite common for Mobile users to have intermittent data connection, we should also support offline functionality,

Helpful SkillsJavascript, AngularJS, Apache cordova
Impact

Field officers can access MifosX from a Mobile optimized view, capture data offline that can be synced back to the server when an internet connection is available.

It also becomes easier for the community volunteers to maintain the mobile view ( as we reuse most of the code from the Community app) as opposed to maintaining a separate Android app.

Other Resources

 

Business Analytics (OLAP)

MentorsKojoG
Overview & Objectives

Develop ETL scripts to create OLAP cubes (fact and dimension tables in MySQL). This will allow managers to perform ad hoc slicing and dicing of their data 
to answer important questions about their operations.

  • Create ETL scripts and tests
  • Create a Mondrian schema to work with Saiku Analytics
Description

 

Helpful SkillsDatabase Management Systems, MDX, SQL,
ImpactData drives a microfinance institution - the more powerful and robust analytical tools management has, the better they can tailor their services and outreach to impact the poor most effectively.
Other ResourcesSaiku Analytics Demo - demo.analytical-labs.com
Wikipedia OLAP Article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olap
Introduction to OLAP - http://www.db-class.org/course/video/preview_list
Gentle Introduction to MDX - http://www.iccube.com/support/documentation/mdx_tutorial/gentle_introduction.html

Web UI quality cross browser non-regression testing

...

While the Mifos X Community App front-end UI based on AngularJS-based currently does already have some JS unit tests, we lack a full UI level web tests which continually non-regression test common scenarios. We believe having this could add value in terms of quality, including ensuring automated cross browser testing.

...

Possibly building upon a extremely limited small scale existing POC (if you find it to be a useful starting point), your mission, should you chose to accept it, would be to build out comprehensive UI walk through scenario test coverage for the Mifos X UI. If you can build more such tests faster and more maintainable (= less code) by using any of the existing frameworks listed below or others you know of / will find, or build useful such infrastructure yourself as part of this code, we're eager to hear from you! Keep in mind that the main deliverable of this project is not (only) a foundation framework, but must actually include an extensive suite of running tests integrated into the Mifos build.

...

http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/

...

https://github.com/vorburger/webdriver-runner

https://saucelabs.com or https://browserling.com

https://github.com/FluentLenium/FluentLenium

http://www.gebish.org

...

Sign On for Community Infrastructure

Mentors KojoG & Ed Cable
Overview & Objectives

This project would seek to create one unified ID/login and profile for community members similar to the OpenMRS ID. It would achieve the following two primary objectives:

  1. One unified profile and identity for community members in which they can share with the community who they are and also build reputation and recognition. This ability to discover and self-identify with other community members is difficult when we have so many different tools and profiles to maintain.
  2. Single Sign On for our various collaboration and community infrastructure tools listed below.

 

Description
  1. Identifying a single sign-on authentication protocol that ties together authentication of our various community collaboration tools: 1) Atlassian Studio - JIRA, Confluence, JIRA Agile, 2) Social Q&A - AnswerHub 3) Mailing Lists - Mailman (administered through SourceForge 4) Source Code Version Control - GitHub 5) Continuous Integration - Jenkins 6) General Community Website (mifos.org) - Wordpress 7) Partner Directory
    1. This could be built out independently, tie into some OpenID protocol, or leverage one of our existing tools for this authentication - Atlassian Studio/Crowd or AnswerHub or another common OpenID protocol. 
  2. Design and implement a dashboard to handle the creation of this unified ID
  3. Design and create a common profile tied to this ID with basic information and photos that is searchable by the community.

Design a profile

Extra Credit:

Helpful SkillsLDAP
Impact

Impact is two-fold:

  • Common unified profile and identity can help to grow collaboration and participation in the community. By being able to simply share who you are or discover who's in your community, we can deepen the bonds of community which motivates each member to participate more often and invest personally in the health of the community. Building reputation and recognizing efforts of each type of community member (users, partners, volunteers, etc) in a tangible way also helps to increase participation.
  • Single sign-on will it make much easier for community members to collaborate and communicate. Right now there is often a high barrier to signing up for the various tools - SSO will make that process easier but also encourage others to more regularly be involved.
Other Resources

Make Mifos X DB-Agnostic - Flexible configuration allowing other databases, incl. tests & doc on Oracle

MentorsAnuruddha Premalal
Overview & Objectives

Initial version of Mifos X was not designed to be database agnostic. Goal of this project is to make it so, and test this out in practice by running it locally on Oracle, make sure our test suite runs against Oracle as well as mysql, and well documenting how this can be set up by end-user clients, if they wish to go for this deployment.

Description

To make this possible, all business logic has to be concentrated in the middle tier with the database being as dumb as possible. This means the platform does not rely on any database specific stored procedures or on the database to generate unique keys. And also application heavily use prepared statements (Spring jdbctemplate) for retrieving data and need to make sure all these queries use full JOIN syntax, and bracket the JOINs so that each join is between a single table and bracketed expression.

Helpful SkillsSQL, Java
Impact

MFI with large client base can use the application with Oracle or any other commercial databases.

Other Resources

Mifos has abstraction from underlying database using:

  • Hibernate as ORM (must have good experience with Hibernate)
  • Liquibase as Database refactoring tool
  • DbUnit as test dataset maintenance

POC of a Scalable MifosX deployment on Openstack

MentorsVishwas Babu A J
Overview & Objectives

 Create a POC of a scalable MifosX implementation (with load balanced tomcats and percona servers) on an openstack setup on a public cloud. Also publish a whitepaper with details of Openstack setup

Description

 Mifosx was built to be cloud ready from the ground up. One of the most popular deployment environments for MifosX has been on Amazon EC2, however due to country specific regulation, many implementors are forced to seek alternative models that can scale as effectively

The aim of this project is two-fold

  • Propose a scalable deployment model for Mifos (includes load balanced tomcats, percona mysql server etc ) on OpenStack. The POC would be on a public cloud provider (Rackspace?)
  • Publish a whitepaper of the same, which can be used as a reference for local implementors (who would additionally take care of provisioning their own hardware)

 

Helpful SkillsUnix, OpenStack, experience with any public cloud (AWS etc) and Percona Server is a plus
ImpactImproves deployment options for Mifos. Would be very helpful for specialists in African countries who deal with strict regulatory controls in hosting data outside their region
Other ResourcesOpenstack: https://www.openstack.org/

Mifos X on "Enterprise Stack" - IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic tests & documentation

MentorsMichael Vorburger
Overview & Objectives

Mifos X today is typically used on Tomcat (with Jetty known to work). For a certain class of users, testing it on "Enterprise Stack" application servers (meaning IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic) is desirable - this project would properly test Mifos X on these configurations, make any adaptations to the code which may be required, and produce easy to follow documentation or even small tools helping future users how to go about this.

Description

This project could be combined with and taken up by the same candidate as the Enterprise database project.

Helpful Skills

Java, Application Server configuration, WAS classloading crap tricks, documentation writing.

Use Cargo, Arquillian etc. for automated testing against WAS & WLS containers?

ImpactEnable Mifos X to be considered by users wanting it to run (only) on an Enterprise stack

 

Other Resources

Vendor pages

Mifos X SDK

MentorsMarkus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

The Mifos X platform as of today is a well structure but monolithic code base - one Git repo, one build, one WAR. This has worked out well for us, but as we grow, it could be interesting to introduce a proper SDK and plug-in concept, allowing contributors to build individual JARs that can be dropped into a certain directory of Mifos X to augment the core platform on well defined extension points and hooks. These modules would be loaded at run-time, not require rebuilding Mifos X, and would remain compatible when a customer upgrades their core platform version.

We currently see the SDK as something more relevant to the Java back-end, so in this project you would likely work less on our AngularJS UI (barring some configuration UI for the plug-ins probably); but if you do have any ideas how to make the front-end more modular and extensible as well, we would love to hear from you.

Description

This project will have three axis/phases: 1. platform infrastructure framework kind of work, based on a very simple or fictitious example extension; 2. identifying the functionally which could require / be sensible to extend in Mifos X, extracting clear and documented Java APIs from it, and then make changes to existing functional platform services to make them extensible by plug-ins; 3. well document this - such plugins will only be written if it's easy and clear how to do this. Note that the more technical part 1. should only take about 1/4 of your project, the focus will have to be putting the "theory" from 1. into "practice" in phases 2. & 3.

Helpful SkillsJava, modularity, API design, dynamic class loading, OSGi-like concepts (without any plans to actually move Mifos X to running on an OSGi kernel; it's unnecessary complexity, for this)
ImpactDevelopers from partnering organisations would be able to more easily extend the core Mifos X by extension code running in-process the platform (as opposed to REST-based
Other Resources

Many other Java-based platform have such mechanism, and you would be expected to draw at least conceptual, if not outright technical inspiration (re-using code, if feasible) from things like the Eclipse Plug-In architecture (or similar non-OSGi based ones in other IDEs), research if Spring itself or some extension from someone has anything useful for this (think like Guice Multibindings plus ServiceLoader API as discussed on this StackOverflow, or this blog, or these Mycila Guice Extensions; but without going all the way to OSGi-based Spring DM / Dynamic Modules; again, overkill, here), get inspiration from drop-in add-on modules extension capabilities in enterprise software such as e.g. Atlassian plug-in framework, and learn how e.g. our friends at OpenMRS do this (see OpenMRS SDK doc and OpenMRS project).

Automation of Conversion of AngularJS Community App into Chrome App 

Mentors Nayan Ambali
Overview & Objectives

At present MIfos X platform is shipped with Community-App (SPA) as default UI, but initial load time of the application high. And for users on narrow bandwidth internet it takes a considerable amount of time to load the app.

Instead of loading the app every time, we can convert the Community-App into a Chrome App and user can download them once and install it ion the machine, and it can used as thick client.

Description

Community-App is completely developed on top of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. And Chrome apps are also written in same stack. Using grunt we should be able to repackage Community-App(SPA) into Community-App(Chrome App)

Helpful SkillsJavascript, AngularJS, Grunt
Impact

Users with slow internet connectivity can use this app (Installed on the machine) instead of loading Community-App (SPA) on the browser. Users will also have a continually updated app. This will also allow MFIs to potentially use Chromebooks as field-based devices for their branches.

Other Resources  http://developer.chrome.com/apps/angular_framework.html

UI meta modeling, making screen adaption a configuration instead of coding activity

MentorsMichael Vorburger  
Overview & Objectives

The AngularJS-based Mifos X UI, like most of today's AngularJS-based or really most web apps, is "coded out" with JavaScript & HTML partial views. This project aims to explore and deliver at least partially working solution, based on and applied to Mifos X UI as a "case study", how web UI of modern SPA web applications can be "modeled" (described), and "generated" (at build, or better, runtime right within the browser). Advantages of such a model driven (MDA / MDD) approach incl. that less technical users can change screen definitions themselves, and that changes to the underlying technical architecture (e.g. AngularJS version and other JS frameworks used) ideally only affect the generators, not the functional screen models.

Description

You could base this on ongoing explorations in https://github.com/vorburger/MUI.js, and using EFactory / ESON as model syntax (see https://github.com/vorburger/efactory; ESON a JSON-like EMF Xtext technology which is currently being incubated as a formal eclipse.org project). The goal and expected outcome of this project isn't some write up, but actually running code.

Helpful SkillsConceptual Modeling, JavaScript, advanced AngularJS, curious and creative mind, capability to actually deliver
ImpactEnable the Mifos X UI to be much more easily customized and adapted by end-users
Other Resourcessee links above 

Extend Community app to run on Mobile devices with Offline Support

(INCORPORATE offline client work here) 

MentorsVishwas Babu A J & Markus Geiss (Deactivated)
Overview & Objectives

MIfos X platform is shipped with a Community-App (SPA) as the default UI which is optimized for Web Browser display on large screens (Mobile, Laptops and Tablets). We need to extend the same to support mobile views (with minor changes to workflow) and provide offline functionality

Description

Community-App is completely developed on top of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Also since there is a clear separation between the view and the Controllers in Angular JS, we should be able to spin up mobile views fairly easily reusing the same Controllers and Services. As it is quite common for Mobile users to have intermittent data connection, we should also support offline functionality,

Helpful SkillsJavascript, AngularJS, Apache cordova
Impact

Field officers can access MifosX from a Mobile optimized view, capture data offline that can be synced back to the server when an internet connection is available.

It also becomes easier for the community volunteers to maintain the mobile view ( as we reuse most of the code from the Community app) as opposed to maintaining a separate Android app.

Other Resources

 

Business Analytics (OLAP)

MentorsKojoG
Overview & Objectives

Develop ETL scripts to create OLAP cubes (fact and dimension tables in MySQL). This will allow managers to perform ad hoc slicing and dicing of their data 
to answer important questions about their operations.

  • Create ETL scripts and tests
  • Create a Mondrian schema to work with Saiku Analytics
Description

 

Helpful SkillsDatabase Management Systems, MDX, SQL,
ImpactData drives a microfinance institution - the more powerful and robust analytical tools management has, the better they can tailor their services and outreach to impact the poor most effectively.
Other ResourcesSaiku Analytics Demo - demo.analytical-labs.com
Wikipedia OLAP Article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olap
Introduction to OLAP - http://www.db-class.org/course/video/preview_list
Gentle Introduction to MDX - http://www.iccube.com/support/documentation/mdx_tutorial/gentle_introduction.html

Web UI quality cross browser non-regression testing

MentorsMichael Vorburger
Overview & Objectives

While the Mifos X Community App front-end UI based on AngularJS-based currently does already have some JS unit tests, we lack a full UI level web tests which continually non-regression test common scenarios. We believe having this could add value in terms of quality, including ensuring automated cross browser testing.

Description

Possibly building upon a extremely limited small scale existing POC (if you find it to be a useful starting point), your mission, should you chose to accept it, would be to build out comprehensive UI walk through scenario test coverage for the Mifos X UI. If you can build more such tests faster and more maintainable (= less code) by using any of the existing frameworks listed below or others you know of / will find, or build useful such infrastructure yourself as part of this code, we're eager to hear from you! Keep in mind that the main deliverable of this project is not (only) a foundation framework, but must actually include an extensive suite of running tests integrated into the Mifos build.

Helpful SkillsCandidates should demonstrate serious interest and basic know-how by accompanying their application for this project with pull requests to the existing mifosx-ui-selenium-webdriver-tests POC.
ImpactContinuously verified and cross browser checked quality of the Mifos X UI.
Other Resources

http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/

https://github.com/vorburger/mifosx-ui-selenium-webdriver-tests

https://github.com/vorburger/webdriver-runner

https://saucelabs.com or https://browserling.com

https://github.com/FluentLenium/FluentLenium

http://www.gebish.org

http://www.thucydides.info

JPOS Integration - Point of Sale Cash Out

MentorsTBD
Overview & Objectives

Integrate MifosX with an opensource Point of Sale (POS) called JPOS.

Description

Use case would be to get a debit transaction (cash withdraw from checking account) thru the POS device /local runtime with 2FA.  In India, the ability to get cash out through a point of sale network is provided for under RBI regulations. In production there will likely need to be an intermediate "Merchant Acquisition" or "Payment Processor" in between a single POS and MifosX Instance, but this could be abstracted out as a payment gateway only (primarily data mapping). The implementation target is the ability to do a 2 factor authentication on a POS device running JPOS (emulator ok), input account number (via some simple method), then be able to do a (cash-out) account withdrawal in real time to the MifosX account. Additional use cases would be to implement a transaction for payment for goods. i.e. enter specific goods, then do payment from MifosX account to Merchant Account (probably also in Mifos).

Helpful Skills

Familiarity with API work. Understanding of transactional flows.

Java.

Two-factor authentication - see other project idea .

 

Impact 
Other Resources

https://github.com/jpos/jPOS/

Custom Fantastic Mifos Project

...