Mifos v1.1.x Release Notes

Target audience: Mifos specialists.

These release notes contain important information about the Mifos project release version 1.1 and higher (version 1.1.x). In addition to an overview of the major changes since the previous major release (1.0), known limitations and bugs and other information are addressed here. Be sure to read this document before you begin using Mifos.

Release History

Mifos version 1.1.0: Released July, 2008
Mifos version 1.1.4: Released October, 2008

Prerequisites

Hardware and software requirements are covered in the install guide, included with the version 1.1.x release package.

Major Changes for 1.1.x

New Features

BIRT Reporting System Integrated Into Mifos
3 Report Templates Integrated Into Mifos
Improved Configuration Tools
Surveys
PPI (Progress out of Poverty Index)
Holiday Handling
Increased Support for Individual Clients/Teller Model
Accounting & Adjustment Enhancements
Product Definition Flexibility
Bulk Loan Creation
Product Mix Constraint Rules
Internationalization (French and English translations included)
Production Database Connection Pooling

Install-time Configuration

Configuration of Mifos has changed dramatically since version 1.0. See Configuring Mifos for details.

Connection Pooling

It is recommended that connection pooling be enabled for all Mifos instances (development, test, production). If you have an existing my.hibernate.properties file, modify it by adding the following lines:

hibernate.c3p0.acquire_increment=1 
hibernate.c3p0.idle_test_period=100 
hibernate.c3p0.max_size=20
hibernate.c3p0.max_statements=0 
hibernate.c3p0.min_size=5 
hibernate.c3p0.timeout=100

See the Hibernate manual for more information.

Known Issues

Deployment isolation

There have been unconfirmed reports that deploying multiple instances of Mifos inside the same Tomcat installation may cause problems. We advise isolating deployments by only deploying a single instance of Mifos inside a single installation of Tomcat until further notice.

Browser Requirements

Mifos v1.1.x only supports IE 6.0. There are many known firefox bugs and we do not recommend using firefox with this release.

Filed in the Issue Tracker

Removing group membership: When removing group membership for a client, the drop-down list to select a new Loan Officer is not populated. The work-around is to close the client and create a new client outside a group. Issue 2044.
Issues with Loan Schedule Independent of Meeting Schedule (LSIM):
- Group Loans and LSIM: With LSIM turned on, you are unable to create loans for clients and groups with monthly meetings defined by a specific date of the month (ie, the 21st of every month). If you have monthly meetings that are scheduled on a specific date, you must keep the LSIM setting turned off. Issue 2074. Note: If you specify monthly meetings by a day of the month (ie, 3rd Friday every month, 1st Monday every month) you can still use the LSIM feature.
- Grace period and LSIM: "Grace on all payments" doesn't work with LSIM turn on. Issue 1994
- Min/Max days between disbursal and first repayment: The configuration for this setting does not work propertly so please do not change the default settings of this feature that shipped with Mifos. Issue 2005, Issue 1579.
Bulk entry: Savings withdrawals are committed when you click "Preview" on the data entry screen. Issue 2047
Loan disbursal: You cannot disburse two loans for the same loan product to the same client or group. The work-around to do this is to create multiple products with the same product settings. Issue 2006
Savings Product Definition: "Minimum balance required for interest" is not working. Issue 1542.
Holidays not changeable: Once you add a new holiday to Mifos, it cannot be edited or deleted. Use caution with this feature. Issue 1398
Rounding issues with removing fees from active loans: There may be rounding issues for some scenarios when you remove fees from active loans. Issue 1934
Loan Product Definition: Two features are no longer available when creating a loan product: "Interest is deducted at disbursement" and "Principal is due on last installment". Issue 1817
Loan Product Definition: Some allowable ranges specified in this pipeline are not enforced when creating a loan account:
- You can still create a loan account with a grace period even if "Grace type" is specified as "None" in the Loan Product Definition Pipeline. Issue 1662
- Number of installments for grace period on loan accounts can be greater than in loan product definition. Issue 1663
- When editing a loan account, the interest rate not validated against allowable range defined in the Loan Product Definition. Issue 1882
Date option removed: The date option in custom fields has been removed. Issue 1963
Group Loans with Individual Monitoring (GLIM): This feature is still incomplete so please do not enable this feature in the configuration settings.
Additional permanent generation space may be needed: The Mifos web application may require more permanent generation space than the default. See PermGenOutOfMemory for details.
Memory leak: There is a slow memory leak in Mifos that may, under very heavy loads, require restarting the application every couple of days. Issue 2092.
Moving clients to new group: Moving an active client to a new group sometimes results in a null pointer exception. Issue 2184.

List of known bugs at the time of release

`Current list of known bugs <https://mifos.dev.java.net/issues/buglist.cgi?issue_type=DEFECT&issue_type=ENHANCEMENT&issue_type=FEATURE&issue_type=TASK&issue_type=PATCH&component=mifos&issue_status=NEW&issue_status=STARTED&issue_status=REOPENED&email1=&emailtype1=exact&emailassigned_to1=1&email2=&emailtype2=exact&emailreporter2=1&issueidtype=include&issue_id=&changedin=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&short_desc=&short_desc_type=fulltext&long_desc=&long_desc_type=fulltext&issue_file_loc=&issue_file_loc_type=fulltext&status_whiteboard=&status_whiteboard_type=fulltext&keywords=Patch&keywords_type=notokens&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&Submit+query=Submit+query>`_.

Fixed Issues

Use the following links to see which issues were fixed in Mifos version 1.1.0 and 1.1.4:

Acknowledgements

The project owners would like to thank those who have been actively involved in the Mifos community. Your code contributions, ideas, documentation assistance and testing have been extremely helpful in moving the project forward.

A big thanks to the entire Mifos community!