Creating a Custom User Manual - MIFOS 2.x Archive

Owned by Ed Cable
Last updated: May 18, 2015 by Dayna Harp (Unlicensed)
3 min read

FOR CURRENT MIFOS X PLATFORM INFORMATION VISIT:  Welcome to the Zone

FLOSSManuals offers up the capability of creating a completely tailored instance of the Mifos user manual - using the base manual as your starting point, you can rewrite and recompose each chapter to create a MFI-specific user manual.  This user manual can then be generated as a PDF, saved as HTML output, or even printed as a book.

Follow these steps to create your own user manual. You can do it one of two ways - 1) cloning the entire manual and then editing it or 2) create a new manual and then import individual chapters from the original Mifos manual.

Clone Manual Approach

If you are looking to re-use a significant portion of the manual in its entirety, this is the method for you. You can clone the existing manual in one step. Most of the work then falls under deleting sections/chapters you don't want to use. 

  1. Log into FLOSSManuals Write Interface - http://booki.flossmanuals.net/
  2. Navigate to the Mifos Manual - http://booki.flossmanuals.net/mifos-user-manual/_edit/
  3. Click My Manuals. Go to the Import Manual section.
  4. Select Import Booki from the_ Import type:_ Dropdown.
  5. In the Source: field, enter the full booki url for the Mifos User Manual without the word, edit. It is: http://booki.flossmanuals.net/mifos-user-manual/
  6. You can enter in a new title if you would like or you can made it hidden initially. 
  7. Click Import. 
  8. Your manual is now available under My Manuals. Click the edit link. You will now see the Booki editing interface and a clone of every section and chapter of the Mifos user manual. 
  9. Edit or delete chapters and content within chapters as you please. 
  10. When you're complete, skip down to the Exporting a Manual section below and follow those steps. 

Create New Manual and Import Existing Chapters Approach

If you're only going to be remixing and reusing a few chapters or sections from the manual, import individual chapters.  With this approach, more time is spent importing but less time is spent deleting irrelevant chapters and section. 

  1. Log into FLOSSManuals Write Interface - http://booki.flossmanuals.net/
  2. Open in a separate tab or window, the existing Mifos Manual - http://booki.flossmanuals.net/mifos-user-manual/_edit/. You will use this to reference which chapters to import. 
  3. Click My Manuals. Go to the Create new manual section and enter the title for your new manual (you can select license or to hide from others initially) and click create
  4. Your manual now shows up under My Manuals. Click edit.
  5. You will now see the typical Booki editing interface.
  6. Let's first create a section that we can import chapters to. I will call them, About This Manual, Administration, and Managing Products.
  7. Click Import Chapter. A Clone Chapter window will pop up. Values in this fields will auto-populate based on existing manuals.  
    1. For book id, begin typing "mifos". Select "mifos-user-manual" when it shows up.
    2. For chapter id, begin typing the names of the chapters you would like to import. Use the existing Mifos Manual to recognize chapter names.
  8. For example, I want to import several of the chapters from the Introduction Section of the Mifos User Manual. I want to import the first three chapters. 
    1. The first chapter is "Welcome to Mifos". I begin by typing "welcome" and then select the chapter. You can optionally rename the chapter if you'd like. Click clone chapter. 
    2. The chapter will show up in your manual. You must then drag it to the respective section. 
  9. Repeat the same tasks for the other chapters to import. <Show Chapters>
  10. You can rename a chapter by double clicking the title.
  11. To edit a chapter, simply click edit. A WYSIWYG editor will display the full cloned chapter which you can edit according to the needs of the MFI. 
  12. To keep this example simple, I won't make any edits to chapter and will skip to publishing a manual.

Exporting a Manual

You have the ability to export this manual as a PDF, ePub format, or OpenOffice format.

  1. Export to PDF. Type in a title for your book title. Select "book (PDF)" from the Document type dropdown menu. 
    1. Click Publish this Book. 
    2. When completed, a link to the PDF will be generated.  
  2. Export to OpenOffice (can open in Word and have editable doc). Type in a title for your book title. Select "openoffice" from the Document type dropdown menu.
    1. Click Publish this Book.
    2. When completed, a link to the .odt document will be generated. You can now open this in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or Open Office.
  3. Selecting the checkbox for Send to Lulu.com will allow you to purchase your manual as a hard copy book.

Creating a Printed Book via Lulu.com

Lulu.com is an open publishing tool allows you to publish your manual and purchase a hardcopy or paperback version of your manual as a physical book. Â