Mobile Field Operations

Target release	Mifos X 16.xx
Epic
Document status	DRAFT
Document owner	Ed Cable
Designer
Developers
QA

Goals

Tools to enable far-reaching field operations in remote areas including mobile, tablet, and offline devices.

Background and strategic fit

Many of our customers work in rural and outlying regions and need their field operations staff to be connected to their clients and their data at all times. They need access to data on and offline and to have the full power of Mifos X in their mobile devices so they can reduce the costs of serving their clients.

Assumptions

For smartphones and tablets, we will primarily design and build for the Android operating system given the ubiquity of the platform, low cost of devices and extensibility of the platform.
Ability for data collection needs to be available on and offline - while connectivity is rapidly expanding, many of our customers still require offline data entry
Offline data entry will be centered around mobile devices but our customers still require browser-based solutions for offline data capture.
Mobile financial services is separate from mobile field operations and is a separate topic
Mobile field operations is focused on the operational staff of the financial institution and is separate from mobile banking which is client-facing.

Customers

Customer	Location	Description	Status	Smartphone	Tablet	Offline - Mobile	Offline-Browser
Financial Institution Name	Country	Overview of Requirements		Processes to be supported	Processes to be Supported	Processes...	Processes...
TCP Global	Colombia,			Translation into Spanish Translation into French		Create new clients Create new loans Enter repayments	Create new clients Create new loans Enter repayments
Digamber Finance				See Mobile Use Cases - Digamber Finance			Need to operate in areas of low connectivity.
Nuru International
WOCCU					AKA Musoni App
Esperanza International	Dominican Republic	Overview of mobile requirements		See Offline - Mobile SPANISH	Dashboard reporting Ability to analyze KPIs, especially risk metrics Approvals for new clients, loan applications, savings accounts, etc.	Client management - search/view clients/groups/centers, creation of centers, groups, and clients (incl. taking/attaching client photos, additional client info, attaching pictures of ID cards), GPS tagging of client business/home/group Loan account management - view balance and transaction history, repayments (incl. ability to apply fees), loan application submission, approval process, and disbursement (incl. attaching required documents, photos of collateral, etc.) Savings account management - view balance and transaction history, make deposit, make withdrawal, attach documents Data volumes - loan officers manage 400+ clients and need all client and loan/savings account data available to view and transact in offline mode. During a given lapse in connectivity, a loan officer typically interacts with 50 clients.
Global Finance Cameroon				Client Information Name, tribe, quater, date of admission, issued by, date of issue, and now for contribution labels. Name, date , name of member you are contributing to, amount, debt. Transactions Registration fees, annual dues, rally dues, harvest thank givings, admission of new members, evangelism, pastor s visit, prison visit, hospital visit, church contribution.
Cellos Tech						Store and forward capabilities	Store and forward capabilities
Intrasoft	Kenya			See Mobile Use Cases - Intrasoft (Zayyad)
AFP (led by FINA	Laos	FINA built a offline android client and server-based solution to provide a payment mechanism to manage the delivery of cash stipends to the rural poor in Lao PDF	Completed - Production			Transactions can be captured in the field while offline and uploaded and synced with database when online once again.
Conflux	India	These are the implications Binny wants to be considered as one thinks about the potential for conflicting transactions when capturing data offline				I think we are over-simplifying the problem. By treating it as a technical problem where we need to store some of the data offline. My opinion is that storing data offline is merely a technical detail and possibly the easier part to accomplish. For me, the areas that we need to design more is – how will the process work and how will the data syncing with server be accomplished gracefully? a) Which use cases will be available during offline operations and what is the need? – validate this with the end-user organization b) New customers and accounts – - Customer onboarded or loan created offline – in the offline module a customer ID is allocated (for example: new customer “Steve” was allocated an ID of 1999 in the offline) – an ID is needed as some kind of reference has to be given back to the customer or written down on their paper application form - Before this data was synced with server, other customers were onboarded on the server – with IDs 1999 till 2004 - Now when you sync offline data with server, Steve may get an ID of 2005. How will this be synced up? Perhaps an external ID needs to be allocated. In such a case, how will we ensure that external IDs are unique across all offline use? c) Similar issue with transaction ID – receipt issued to customer with one transaction ID or reference number, but when the transaction is synced with server, we may not be able to retain the same transaction ID d) Reflecting the transaction date/time on the server with the same date/time when the transaction happened in the field e) Server side validations Example: Savings withdrawal – balance is blocked on server due to the account being part of a guarantee. How will we ensure that withdrawal attempt fails? f) How will we ensure that an offline savings withdrawal will not be followed by an online withdrawal by a fraudster?

Requirements

See Mifos X Android App Requirements documented for GoogleServe volunteer event.

#	Title	User Story	Importance	Notes
1
2

User interaction and design

See Mifos Android Mockups.pdf

Questions

Below is a list of questions to be addressed as a result of this requirements document:

Question	Outcome