11.09.2011 User Meetup

Agenda

Before each meeting we'll post a proposed agenda. You can add any item you would like to cover to the agenda by emailing the user list or editing this wiki page.

Session	Description	Presenter	Time
Introduction	Discussion on what's the goal of these meetings and getting feedback on what you, the users want to achieve. We will also have an introduction of everyone on the call so the community can get more personally connected.	Ed Cable	10 minutes
Demo/Tutorial	Each meeting, we'll do a demo of a feature or a tutorial of how to do a certain task within Mifos or how to use a tool or resource in the online community infrastructure. For our first meeting, we would like to show off some of the features in the most recent releases - Question Groups	Ed Cable	10 minutes
User Show and Tell	On a regular basis we want to have the opportunity for MFIs throughout the community to present their story or case study on how they're using Mifos. The format/extent of the presentation can very but we'd like for others to learn from the deployment experiences of others as well as day to day usage of Mifos For the first meeting we will just introduce the concept. In advance of each meeting we'll select an MFI to present.	Ed/MFIs	5 minutes
Open Office Hours	This is the heart of the meeting - the time for users to ask any questions and connect with expert implementers and fellow users to discuss deploying Mifos, using Mifos, adopting technology, project management - any question you have.	Open	10 - 20 minutes
Product Feedback	Each meeting, we want users to voice their pains/challenges with Mifos and how we can make the product better. Any bugs you've found, feature requests you've had, ideas to make the product better should be shared at this time. This is the chance for our developers to directly hear from the mouth of the users how they use the product and what they need to use it more effectively.	Open	10 - 20 minutes

Who Attended

Justine and Chris - Lumana - Ghana
Krishnan - India
Udai - India
Keith - Ireland
Henrik - Creocore - USA (Mali)
Kakha - FINA - Georgia
Ed - USA
Venkat - Hugo Technologies - India
Jakub - SolDevelo - Poland
Rebecca - Nuru - Kenya

Notes

Live notes will be taken here: http://sync.in/rWr7RwWD8X and then posted to the wiki:

From Open Office Hour Discussion:

This is the heart of the meeting - the time for users to ask any questions and connect with expert implementers and fellow users to discuss deploying Mifos, using Mifos, adopting technology, project management - any question you have.

Kakhaber: Issues with backdating of the transactions and concerns with the business logic.

Record post-factum or record transactions after they've happened during meeting.
Udai: come up with how you want to manage the data and your business logic. Problem can be solved by having a distributed model of meetings - right now it's one meeting per collection sheet model. Could make an interface where at branches - they're using a distributed version of Mifos where can have multiple meetings per collection sheet.
Venkat: challenge of getting information from remote to the head office for consolidation of information. Looking at back-dated transaction.
Udai: some issues with import of excel and being able to validated back-dated transactions that are coming in via Excel. Will need to explore why it's not working in the Kakha's case and see what business logic it's violating.
Keith: Would this help for view JSON in nice format: http://jsonviewer.stack.hu/ theres plenty of json viewers out there. Course XML has better support for viewing out there.

What is coming in Mifos Reporting?

Henrik: what do I get with Mifos BI? Running Mifos 2.0 and have no reporting in there right now.
Keith: Right now it's a little confusing with reporting - embedded reports in reporting tab.
Going forward is pure focus on Pentaho and embed that in. John Woodlock could help by doing a walk through and show what's available in reporting and what you could do if you want more advanced data warehousing and analytics.
Deleting Junk Data
Henrik: can't delete data - what do users do with the amount of junk data that builds up in the system? Could we have some limited scenarios in which deleting could be allowed?
Keith: can't delete but can mark as closed or inactive. Potentially should have a user with super-privileges that can delete data - unwanted products, other "test data"' that's in a production environment - missing that kind of capability at the moment.
Henrik: could also have a mechanism to tag data as junk - concern of impact on reporting of this junk data as well as in UI.

Product Feedback

Each meeting, we want users to voice their pains/challenges with Mifos and how we can make the product better. Any bugs you've found, feature requests you've had, ideas to make the product better should be shared at this time.
This is the chance for our developers to directly hear from the mouth of the users how they use the product and what they need to use it more effectively.

Kakha: Reporting - Embedding of Pentaho in Mifos: