Mifos will be applying for Google Summer of Code in 2013. We hope to participate for our third time. Read below for how to get involved.
Get Stoked - End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time.
This is the third year that Mifos will be participating in Google Summer of Code. Over the years, we've brought on some amazing contributors who are joining in our movement to fight poverty through open source software. We want you to be part of our mission of creating a world of 3 Billion Maries.
2013 is an exciting time for our initiative as Summer of Code participants will have their first opportunity to contribute to the brand new Mifos X platform - we have completely rewritten Mifos from scratch and now have a true platform for our community to extend. The front-end is completely separate from the back-end with all the core back-end services cleanly exposed through an API so applications and modules can be built on the platform.
What is Mifos X?
Watch how Mifos technology is helping end world poverty
Guidelines
Expectations
Students working on Mifos will be expected to:
- Use the mifos-developer mailing list
- provide patches
- follow the Mifos coding standards
- document their work
- have access to reasonable bandwidth, ie: have a fast, reliable Internet connection
- track and report on progress daily
Prerequisite Skills
Basics
- Quick learner
- Troubleshooting Wizard
- Passion for writing beautiful code
- Excellent communication skills
- Knowledge of developer tools
- such as: a text editor, source control, how to build software
- experience with specific tools will also help, such as: Eclipse IDE, Git
Mifos includes wide variety of technologies, we do not expect a student to be expert on all of these. But it will be helpful if you have some experience in some of these.
Helpful skills: (specific technology requirements vary with project chosen)
- MySQL,Jersey, Hibernate, Spring,
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript (JQuery)
- JUnit, REST-assured
Hints
- When you need help, ask for help! Do some searches before asking, please. We are very excited for you to join us, but we need to know that you're willing to put in the time and effort required to do your part. When you do ask, ask well.
- Not sure if you are qualified? Download and build the code, then run the Platform and the reference user interface. Instructions for doing so are available on this wiki.
- Email the mifos-developer mailing list with your questions and project ideas.
- Install Skype for (generally infrequent) video calls. You'll need a headset for Skype, too.
Mentoring
Mifos folks are constantly working remotely (mainly using Skype), especially in supporting remote contributors. We often do video calls and desktop sharing If possible, we'd love to meet you in person! Specific mentors for each project will be listed below.
Mentor | Project | Location | Time Zone |
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| India | IST (GMT +5:30) |
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| Switzerland | CET (GMT +1:00) |
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| Ghana | GMT |
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| India | IST (GMT +5:30) |
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User 'Former user' not found
| India | IST (GMT +5:30) |
Project Ideas
All 2013 projects will be on the new Mifos X platform, this the brand new version of the Mifos software that we launched in 2012. Mifos X is a true platform in which the back-end is cleanly separated from the front-end and all core platform services are exposed through an API making it easy develop new applications on top of the Mifos X platform.
This idea list is not final yet. More projects could be added or removed.
Automated Maintenance of Mifos X API Documentation
| Mentors | johnwoodlock (Unlicensed) |
| Overview & Objectives | This project focuses on simplifying/automating the maintenance of the Mifos X API documentation (https://demo.openmf.org/api-docs/apiLive.htm) and ensuring it is complete:
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| Description | The API is probably the most important part of the new Mifos X platform and that's why we put a ton of effort into making it easier for developers to see examples and interact with. It's certainly not 'passive' documentation and must be interactive and up to date such that our community can see the flexibility and power in which the API can be used to support new financial services or support alternative way for accessing the Mifos technology. However, its currently a manual process that is a bit of a pain to complete and because of that our current documentation can become out of date. |
| Helpful Skills | |
| Impact | Worldwide, there are multitudes of methodologies and delivery channels in which to deliver financial services to the poor. On the platform through the API, our community has the ability to build applications to allow Mifos to support new markets and scale more services to the poor in need. Our community is global and of varying skillsets, so it's critical that the API is well-documented and constantly up to date with clear examples. This project will significantly reduce the burden of maintaining this documentation. |
| Other Resources |
Server-Side Pagination and Sorting
TODO: Vishwas to add in details
| Mentors | TBD |
| Overview & Objectives | This project focuses on adding support for server side pagination and sorting to the MifosX platform and the reference user interface |
| Description |
|
| Helpful Skills | Java (Spring, Jersey) , HTML and Javascript (JQuery) |
| Impact | Worldwide, there are multitudes of methodologies and delivery channels which deliver financial services to the poor. On the platform through the API, our community has the ability to build applications to allow Mifos to support new markets and scale more services to the poor in need. For large financial institutions, it is imperative that server side pagination and sorting are supported so that they can build scalable applications on top of the Mifos X platform |
| Other Resources | MIFOSX-173 - Getting issue details... STATUS MIFOSX-174 - Getting issue details... STATUS |
Multi-tenant Caching
TODO: Details to be added by Vishwas
| Mentors | TBD |
| Overview & Objectives | |
| Description |
|
| Helpful Skills | |
| Impact | |
| Other Resources |
Build a User Interface for Mifos X Data Tables
TODO: Vishwas to modify.
| Mentors | TBD |
| Overview & Objectives | Capturing surveys and other forms of data is an essential tool for a MFI to manage it's client relationship. Mifos X currently has taken a new approach to capturing this information and any additional data on clienta (and other entities like Groups, Loans etc) through the "datatables" approach. We want to simplify the process for setting it up.
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| Description | Capturing additional data is currently done by manually creating MySQL database tables with appropriate columns to store the additional data and then using MifosX Platform API's to link these newly created tables to existing entities. We are looking to simplify this process by a) |
| Helpful Skills | |
| Impact | Capturing client data and having a holistic transparent view into the client is one of the most powerful and definitive features of Mifos X. This data is used to monitor and analyze the services being delivered to the client and social impact these services are having. Having a simple interface in which to collect this survey data is an essential part of making this a usable feature of the software for MFIs. |
| Other Resources | Link to existing code Link to Question Groups overvie? |
Business Analytics (OLAP) (refresh)
TODO: Refresh or modify in context of Mifos X (smaller database/data warehouse)
- Create a Mondrian schema
- Improve ETL scripts along the way
| Mentors | KojoG |
| Overview & Objectives | Extend the Mifos Business Intelligence data warehouse to create OLAP cubes. This will allow managers to perform ad hoc slicing and dicing of their data
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| Description |
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| Helpful Skills | Database Management Systems, MDX, SQL, |
| Impact | Data 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 Resources | Saiku 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 |
Convert Mifos acceptance tests to Webdriver and optimize for better performance.
REPLACE with AUTOMATED API-LEVEL REGRESSION TESTING FRAMEWORK
Possible mentor: Michael Vorburger
Mifos uses Selenium for automated UI acceptance tests. Currently all tests are running with Selenium RC. While we've done some work to move towards Selenium 2.0, but more work is possible to make the tests actually optimized to use features of Selenium 2.0 (Webdriver).
More information:
developer list discussions: http://tinyurl.com/47726vr | http://tinyurl.com/4sjaetc | http://tinyurl.com/4gzpyb9
Selenium 2.0: http://seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.html
Do some reading on these threads, run the existing acceptance tests, come up with a proposal of what improvements can be made to speed up development and testing by optimizing these tests.
Mifos X with Embedded Database (refresh for Mifos X)
Possible Mentor: Michael Vorburger
Mifos uses MySQL 5.1 as its primary database.
We want to achieve :
- Simple / easy launch of integration/acceptance testing, without requiring an external DB (ideally in an automatically created RAM Disk...)
- Development without manual MySQL installation
- Possibility of Mifos self-contained demo package
The first thought that comes to mind is to achieve this with a pure-Java in-memory database such as H2. However, in order to avoid maintaining & supporting 2 different databases for Mifos, basing this on https://github.com/vorburger/MariaDB4j would be interesting.
Do some Googling, Search Mifos JIRA, mailing list for more information. Identify some small problems related to this project and submit patch (if possible), Come up with a good plan and start a discussion on developer mailing list.
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
XBRL Reporting Integration
| Mentors | TBD |
| Overview & Objectives | Enable MFIs to automatically generate XBRL format reports - the common reporting standard being adopted by the microfinance industry.
|
| Description | XBRL is gradually being adopted as the reporting and data standard for microfinance. This project would involve building out the reports to generate in the necessary XBRL-compliant format as well as an external client needed to map the data in Mifos to the proper XBRL taxonomy. MIX Market is leading adoption of XBRL as a data standard. By having one common reporting format, MFIs can save substantial time in generating end of period reporting to funders, regulators, associations, etc. |
| Helpful Skills | HTML, XML, SQL, Pentaho |
| Impact | MFIs need capital to lend out to their clients. In order for more MFIs to grow and provide more responsible financial services to the poor, they must be able to transparently report to funders and regulators. Adoption of a common reporting format and automation of flow of data will allow MFIs to successfully report their financial, operational and social performance using less of the valuable time of management staff to generate these reports. As well-run, fully transparent, microfinance institutions, they'll then have more readily available access to the funders and sources of capital to expand financial inclusion in their region. |
| Resources |
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Client Scoring Modules
Mentor: TBD
MFIs using Mifos often want to implement a credit scoring/client prospecting analysis tool to help automate the onboarding process for new clients by creating quantifiable measures to assess credit worthinesss. More and more MFIs are moving towards individual lending models where this scoring will be of greater need. Using our Data Tables (Surveys) module and our Mifos Business Intelligence Suite on Pentaho, they can set up questions and define parameters/scores to assess these questions.
Objectives:
- Based on user requirements, develop algorithms and scoring parameters in Pentaho to create this scoring module.
See:
Context-Sensitive Help in Mifos Application (remove from SoC)
Mentor: TBD
Currently the Mifos application lacks any built-in help functionalities (tooltips, hyperlinks) etc. This project would involved adding in context-sensitive help that links to various sections of our user manual on FLOSS Manuals.
Objectives:
- Throughout Mifos application, add tooltips/hyperlinks that link to relevant sections in Mifos user manual.
Custom Fantastic Mifos Project
Is there something missing from this ideas list that you want to do? Let us know! Send your project proposal(s) to the developer mailing list.
Other Ideas
Address Javascript browser issues
Mobile App (if we have specs)
User-generated doc module.
SMS Integration
SMS forms
Import Tool for Mifos X