08.31.2011 Developer Meeting

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
Update from Keith's work:

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:
Plenty of
Krishnan - interests from university students

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.