Google Summer of Code 2018 Ideas
The Mifos Initiative has been accepted as a Mentoring Org for 2018
The 2018 Google Summer of Code has now concluded. Stay tuned for our official wrap-up and reflections posts on our blog.
Get Stoked - End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time.
2018 Google Summer of Code - Get to Know Mifos
We're looking forward to participating in Google Summer of Code for our sixth year. In 2017, we worked with 12 interns from across the world who are continuing to make substantial contributions to our community. We hope to continue building our next generation of 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.
Students in 2018 will have the option to work on a variety of projects related to our front-end Web App built on top of the AngularJS framework, and a variety of other apps including our Android-based field officer app and client banking app, and modules like our data import tool.
In addition, we'll be working with students on both our Apache Fineract 1.0 platform for financial inclusion and Apache Fineract CN application framework for digital financial services.
- What is the Mifos Initiative and how does it advance financial inclusion to the poor?
- How is the Mifos software used?
- What is Mifos X?
- How is the Mifos X platform designed?
- Watch how Mifos technology is helping end world poverty
- What do GSoC students work on for Mifos?
- What is it like being a GSoC intern for Mifos?
2018 GSOC Mentors
We have a talented and passionate group of mentors from across our global community who are eager to help guide the next generation of HFOSS contributors. These mentors come from various backgrounds - partners deploying Mifos, financial institutions using Mifos, volunteers, and even former GSOC students but they all share a common goal of ending poverty one line of code at a time!
Mentor | Project | Location | Time Zone |
---|---|---|---|
Mobile | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Mobile | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Web | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
User 'Former user' not found
| Platform | India | IST (GMT +5:30) |
Platform | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Mobile | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Platform | Cameroon | WAT (GMT +1:00) | |
Platform | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Web | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Platform | USA | CST (GMT -6:00) | |
Web | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Mobile | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Web | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Tentative | India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Platform | USA | EST (GMT -5:00) | |
Platform | Serbia | CET (GMT +1:00) | |
Platform | Kenya | EAT (GMT +3:00) | |
Platform | USA | PST (GMT +8:00) | |
Platform | india | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Fineract CN | Cameroon | WAT (GMT + 1:00) | |
Fineract CN | Cameroon | WAT (GMT+1:00) |
Guidelines
- Getting started Read about setting up the code and understand the basic concepts around MifosX.
Expectations
Students working on Mifos X will be expected to:
- Get access to reasonable bandwidth, ie: have a fast, reliable Internet connection
- Introduce yourself to, and discuss on, the mifos-developer mailing list , the Mifos Gitter chatrooms, the Mifos Slack channel and the Apache Fineract developer list
- Work on issues by providing patches and pull requests.
- Follow the Mifos coding standards
- Make sure you document your work
- Attend daily standup on Slack as well as the weekly student check-in calls
Prerequisite Skills
Basics
- Be a quick learner
- Be well-behaved, act in good faith and be of good humour.
- 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):
- Java, Spring, MySQL, Jersey & Hibernate
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript (JQuery), AngularJS & Material Design
- JUnit, REST-assured
Source Code
- Apache Fineract CN Architectural Whitepaper
- Apache Fineract CN Codebase - https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=fineract-cn-&type=
- Apache Fineract CN Wiki (https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Fineract+CN)
- Overview of the project structure: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Project+structure
- Detailed slide deck overview on each microservice
- Architectural White Paper: https://goo.gl/du7XhL
- API Docs: https://demo.openmf.org/api-docs/apiLive.htm
- Web Hooks framework: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Hooks
- Platform - Apache Fineract: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Mailing List
- Web App - Mifos X: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Mailing List | Gitter Chatroom
- Mobile App - Android Field Officer App: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Gitter Chatroom
- Mifos Mobile - Android Mobile Banking App: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Gitter Chatroom
- Online Banking App - Web: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Gitter Chatroom
- MifosPay - Mobile Wallet Framework: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Gitter Chatroom
- Mifos Payment Gateway: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Gitter Chatroom
Hints
- When you need help, ask for help after exploring all options on the web. 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 Mifos X distribution.
- Instructions for running the platform are in the Apache Fineract Contributor's Zone
- Getting started with the web app can be found in the Getting Started Guide
- Source Code:
- Apache Fineract platform: https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract
Android App for Field Officers: https://github.com/openMF/android-client
Android App for Clients (Self-Service): https://github.com/openMF/self-service-app
Data Import Tool: https://github.com/openMF/DataImportTool
Message Gateway: https://github.com/openMF/message-gateway
- 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.
- Get started by solving few issues here.
Project Ideas
All 2018 projects will be related to the Mifos X Web App, our mobile apps including our Android Field Operations app, our Mobile Banking app, or our Mobile Wallet App or our Online Banking App. Some projects will also center directly around the Apache Fineract platform for financial inclusion and additional tools, features, our modules on that and our brand-new Apache Fineract CN application framework for digital financial services. These apps and modules are built on top of the Apache Fineract platform, the world's only open platform for financial inclusion and is banking delivered as a service via the cloud. Apache Fineract 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 Apache Fineract platform.
Fineract CN REST API Documentation
Mentors | |
Category | Apache Fineract CN |
Overview & Objectives | Our newest generation architecture, Apache Fineract CN has a set of REST APIs that are not documented yet. Given that the architecture is microservices-based, Spring REST Docs will be the chosen tool of choice to overcome limitations of static documentation:
The goal of this project is address this by using Spring REST Docs; |
Description |
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Helpful Skills | Java, Spring MVC Test, Spring REST Docs, Asciidoctor, REST, Git, Gradle |
Impact | Easier to consume Fineract CN REST API for front-end/mobile etc. developers. |
Other Resources |
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JIRA Task | https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/FINCN/issues/FINCN-6 |
Fineract CN SMS & Email Notifications
Mentors | |
Category | Apache Fineract CN |
Overview & Objectives | The SMS/Email Notifications service would be a microservice developed on Apache Fineract CN to enable MFI members to get notified on events occurring on their accounts. Members have an array of events which can occur on their accounts such as;
The objective of this project is to build functionality which will enable the MFI staff enable notifications which the member chooses when creating their account. |
Description | There are a number of SMS Campaign APIs out there like Twilio to send SMS notifications to members. Also, there are tools out there to send emails to members such as SMTP server.
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Helpful Skills | Java, JavaScript, Spring Boot, REST, Git, Gradle |
Impact | This Project Will Enhance Know Your Customer (KYC) In Apache Fineract CN |
Other Resources |
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JIRA Task | https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/FINCN/issues/FINCN-5 |
Fineract CN Mobile 2.0
Mentors | |
Category | Mobile - Apache Fineract CN |
Overview & Objectives | Just as we have a mobile field operations app on Apache Fineract 1.0, we have recently built out on top of the brand new Apache Fineract CN micro-services architecture, an initial version of a mobile field operations app with an MVP architecture and material design. Given the flexibily of the new architecture and its ability to support different methodologies - MFIs, credit unions, cooperatives, savings groups, agent banking, etc - this mobile app will have different flavors and workflows and functionalities. |
Description | In 2017, our Google Summer of Code intern built the initial version and baseline set of functionality. In 2018, the student will work on the following tasks:
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Helpful Skills | Android development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Spring, OpenJPA, Rest, |
Impact | Allows staff to go directly into the field to connect to the client. Reduces cost of operations by enabling organizations to go paperless and be more efficient. |
Other Resources | https://github.com/openMF/Fineract-CN-mobile |
JIRA Task | https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/FINCN/issues/FINCN-7 |
AngularJS Web App Enhancements
Mentors | |
Category | Web - Mifos X Web App |
Overview & Objectives | Our AngularJS Web App is the standard application on the Mifos X distribution that provides all the core functionality for the most common methods of financial inclusion and products and services. It's also the starting point for any partners looking to customize or extend the UI. It's constantly being improved based on user feedback, better performance, and to integrate new design standards. |
Description | In 2017, our Google Summer of Code intern re-designed and optimized a number of key workflows, wizards, an screens throughout the app. . This project would continue by making additional UI enhancements including:
List of tickets which will be part of project can be found at https://github.com/openMF/community-app/projects/3 |
Helpful Skills | Javascript, CSS, HTML5. AngularJS and Bootstrap (CSS framework) is plus |
Impact | Enhanced User Experience, Intuitive application design |
Other Resources | Usability and Design |
Web UI for Microfinance Institutions on Fineract CN
Mentors | |
Category | Web - Fineract CN Web App |
Overview & Objectives | While the current Mifos X stack caters to one operational methodology and has one distinct user interface and navigational flow, Fineract CN and it's broader applicability enables many different operational workflows to be supported and will have different flavors of the web UI. For the brand new Apache Fineract CN architecture, the web UI for the first use cases has been built out to support a teller-driven credit union operational methodology. The user interface and navigational flows for such an operational model is very different from that of a microfinance institutinon with group and center-based operations whereby the loan officer travels out to the customers rather than the customer goes to the branch office. The UI that will be built out for this project will be very similar to the UI that was found in the current Gen 2 Mifos X web app as well as the original Gen 1 web app with support for viewing group and center hierachies, having a different drilldown navigational flow, etc. A number of these UI elements will still need the requisite support on the back-end. |
Description | Intern will implement the front-end UI screens for the Fineract CN web UI for the following functionalities and use case:
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Helpful Skills | Javascript, CSS, HTML5. AngularJS and Bootstrap (CSS framework) is plus |
Impact | Reference UI for microfinance institutions on Apache Fineract CN |
Other Resources | Usability and Design |
JIRA Task | https://issues.apache.org/jira/projects/FINCN/issues/FINCN-8 |
Self-Service User Administrative Portal
Mentors | |
Category | Web - Mifos X Web App |
Overview & Objectives | Now that we have a robust mobile banking and online banking application which allows for users to self-create their own accounts, we need to add better back-end administrative support for staff of the financial institution to manage their self-service operations including user management, notifications to clients, task management, logo uploads, etc. |
Description | This project would involve primarily front-end development of the new UI screens and development of additional APIs on the Apache Fineract back-end to support the following use cases:
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Helpful Skills | Javascript, CSS, HTML5. AngularJS and Bootstrap (CSS framework) is plus |
Impact | Improved usability and staff control for self-service operations. |
Other Resources |
Browser-Based Offline Access (UPDATE)
Mentors | |
Category | Web - Mifos X Web App |
Overview & Objectives | For this project, we require an intern who is qualified and willing to work core HTML5 offline functionality. If we able to add offline support in community-app then we can have same application working on all browsers with offline support and need of a desktop app will not be needed. |
Description | The project will involve the following. It will be a continuation of the 2016 Google Summer of Code project worked on by Mohit.
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Helpful Skills | Javascript, CSS, HTML5. HTML5 Offline support knowledge i.e - Service workers, Sw-toolbox, IndexedDB wrappper - Dexie.js |
Impact | Offline Functionality to Community App |
Other Resources | Detailed Information |
Android Field Operations App Version 5
Mentors | Ishan Khanna |
Category | Mobile - Mifos X Android Field Operations App |
Overview & Objectives | We have released several versions of our Android app for field officers to go out in the field to process transactions, create clients, etc. Most recently in 2017, our Google Summer of Code interns added new functionalities to support capture of signatures, implementation of the collection sheet UI, support for a four-digit passcode, refactoring, additional offline support, and more. This project would continue that work and transform it into Version 5 - by extending offline synchronization, adding additional functionalities, and continuing the MVP architecture. |
Helpful Skills | Android development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git |
Impact | Allows staff to go directly into the field to connect to the client. Reduces cost of operations by enabling organizations to go paperless and be more efficient. |
Other Resources | https://github.com/openMF/android-client Architecture overview: Code style conventions guide: |
Mojaloop Integration with Apache Fineract
Mentors | |
Category | Platform - Apache Fineract CN Integrations |
Overview & Objectives | Mojaloop is "open-source software for building interoperable digital payments platforms on a national scale. It makes it easy for different kinds of providers to link up their services and deploy low-cost financial services in new markets." At the Mifos Initiative, we believe that Mojaloop nicely complements the Mifos/Apache Fineract stack whereby we provide the core banking infrastructure for client and mobile wallet account management, a financial ledger, and portfolio account management needed by each Digital Financial Service Provider to uniquely identify accounts and initiate and record transactions on financial accounts. While Mojaloop provides an open source platform enabling an internet of payments providing secure, low-cost, interoperable payments utilizing the following components: Mojaloop includes four components: an interoperability layer, which connects bank accounts, mobile money wallets, and merchants in an open loop; a directory service layer, which navigates the different methods that providers use to identify accounts on each side of a transaction; a transactions settlement layer, which makes payments instant and irrevocable; and, components which protect against fraud. Gates Mobile money is rapidly transforming financial inclusion by providing more immediate, impactful, affordable, and secure financial services to the client. Mobile money platforms like M-Pesa offer the client unparalleled value in terms of convenience, security and the possibility of new services and products that are more in line with real-world financial habits. For financial institutions and their clients to fully scale mobile money and leverage its potential, it needs to be fully integrated with their core-banking system. |
Description | In order for the Mifos and Apache Fineract communities to test out and demonstrate the complementary aspects of the Mojaloop open payments platform and protocol with Apache Fineract and Mifos X for account management we need to install and setup the various components along with the respective integrations in a lab environment. This lab environment would demonstrate a number of use cases with Apache Fineract and Apache Fineract CN being installed as the system for different digital financial service providers in the context of a microfinance institution, agent banking system and mobile wallet system, , GSOC intern Daniel Carlson, built out an initial mobile money integration module which supports capturing in real-time the transactions that occur in the mobile money system via the APIs along with a web interface for initiating transactions to occur via mobile money. This project would work extend upon this module to continue genericizing it to support the mobile money APis of other countries and to complete the integrations for mobile money systems or aggregators in East Africa from countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda s M-Pesa, TigoCash, MTN Money, AirtelMoney, Beyonic, etc. |
Helpful Skills | Web Services, Java, SQL , JavaScript , Git, Spring, Node.js, REST, Interledger |
Impact | Reduced cost and friction in transferring money - allowing the base of the pyramid to become part of the digital economy. |
Other Resources |
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Mifos Mobile - Android App Version 3.0
Mentors | Satya Naryan, Ishan Khanna |
Category | Mobile - Mifos X |
Overview & Objectives | In 2017, our Google Summer of Code intern extended our mobile banking app from an initial alpha 1.0 to a solid 2.0 release. It is all built on top of the Apache Fineract 1.0 client-facing APIs to enable self-service channels for clients to interact with their own data and transact in a self-service manner. Previously all Mifos operations were performed by back office staff. Now clients can authenticate themselves, view and edit their account details. and make repayments or transactions between their own accounts. It is now possible for them to have direct banking apps that they can utilize including smartphone-based mobile banking, USSD-based mobile banking, and online banking via a web app. |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | Android development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Spring, OpenJPA, Rest, |
Impact | By providing an extensible mobile banking app, allow a member/client in having a self-service channel allowing them more direct control and visibility into their financial livelihood. |
Other Resources | User Stories - https://goo.gl/3xuUko Wireframes - https://goo.gl/3xuUko Customer Self Service APIs - https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Customer+Self-Service Source Code: https://github.com/openMF/self-service-app |
Mobile Wallet 2.0
Mentors | Satya Naryan, Ishan Khanna |
Category | Mobile - Mifos X |
Overview & Objectives | In 2017, our Google Summer of Code intern created a lightweight and extensible mobile wallet framework to support the basic use cases of a mobile wallet as documented in the Level One Project mobile wallet requirements. This extensible framework should support both merchant and client use cases as well as be capable of integrating with a Fineract or Fineract CN back-end. |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | Android development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Spring, OpenJPA, Rest, |
Impact | By providing an extensible mobile wallet framework, allow partners a complete reference stack of back and front-end applications to offer digital financial services to clients. |
Other Resources | Mobile Wallet Framework: Source Code | Issue Tracker | Gitter Chatroom |
Mifos/Fineract Chatbot & Adapter
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | For many of our users today, chat is a much more familiar form of user interface for them and it would be valuable to provide an extensible chatbot connected to Mifos/Fineract that could be used to both provide customer support as well as allow clients to directly interact with their accounts. See this post from ThitsaWorks for more: https://medium.com/@thitsaworks/chatbots-the-emergent-and-effective-tool-in-financial-education-f6e63baf9188 |
Description | This project will include both leveraging other open source libraries and components to build the chatbot and building the adapter to the chatbot for MIfos/Fineract which will act as the interaction between chatbot and Mifos. It will take the replies from chat and feed them into Mifos. The program will sit in between Mifos and Chat. Main components needed are:
Note: only Apache license compatible libraries/frameworks/components can be used. It will cover the following use cases:
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Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Git, Spring, OpenJPA, Rest Helpful: technical knowledge of (any) chat protocol (e. g. XMPP, IRC), experience with NPU/NLP |
Impact | |
Other Resources | AI/NLU services Frameworks NLP/NLU components and tools Tutorials Other |
Fineract CN Mobile Banking App 1.0
Mentors | |
Category | Mobile - Fineract CN |
Overview & Objectives | Just as we have a client-facing mobile banking app for our generation 2 Apache Fineract 1.0 platform, we need to provide a reference mobile banking app on top of the Apache Fineract CN architecture which allows a client to securely authenticate against the microservices architecture and interact with his/her accounts. |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | Android development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Spring, OpenJPA, Rest, |
Impact | By providing an extensible mobile banking app, allow a member/client in having a self-service channel allowing them more direct control and visibility into their financial livelihood. |
Other Resources | User Stories - https://goo.gl/3xuUko Wireframes - https://goo.gl/3xuUko Customer Self Service APIs - https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Customer+Self-Service Source Code: https://github.com/openMF/self-service-app |
Online Banking App 2.0 (UPDATE)
Mentors | |
Category | Web - Mifos X Online Banking App |
Overview & Objectives | In 2017, we built out v1.0 of our online banking app, an AngularJS web app powered by self-service APIs allowing for account creation, logging in, viewing of account details, transfering between savings accounts, repaying loans via savings accounts, applying for new loans, and more. This project will extend off that to add new features and continue polishing the UI. |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | AngularJS development, SQL, Java, Javascript, Git |
Impact | Allows a member/client in having a self-service channel allowing them more direct control and visibility into their financial livelihood. |
Other Resources | Self Service APIs - https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Customer+Self-Service Source Code - https://github.com/openMF/web-self-service-app Complete Details can be found here: Self Service Web Application Further Ideas: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KXDSrBkuYA9g694-DE4qf1QKFcAhWwA-HNnn9YAucbk/edit?usp=sharing |
Accounting Module Enhancements
Mentors | |
Category | Platform |
Overview & Objectives | Mifos X and the Apache Fineract platform already provide a range of sophisticated financial accounting needs, however for organizations that use it as both their core banking system and accounting system all in one, they continue to need other features. While Mifos X never intends to replace an ERP or accounting package, we do want to continue to add additional functionalities that provide the necessary integration with the portfolio and general accounting functionality to support a financial institution's core operations. Several features have been requested by users and partners that we've grouped together as one task. Applicants should be familiar with the stack as well as the accounting and financial services domain. Some of this work will include finalizing and incorporating existing pull requests and contributions that have been made by partners. |
Description | These enhancements will all be built into the Apache Fineract platform as part of or enhancements on top of the existing accounting module which provides full configuration of the chart of accounts, support for cash and accrual accounting, automated integration with the portfolio accounts and financial mappings, and single and compound journal entries to the general ledger. New enhancements include:
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Helpful Skills | HTML, Spring, Hibernate, REST, Java, AngularJS, Javascript, SQL |
Impact | Better internal control and financial transparency |
Other Resources |
Collateral Management Module
Mentors | Maek Twain, Avik Ganguly |
Category | Platform |
Overview & Objectives | As financial inclusion evolves, more loan products are collateral-based and require more detailed tracking of the asset (gold, property, etc.) along with its value, and its depreciation. Some institutions also require tracking collateral as off-balance sheet items. |
Description | The practice of putting up collateral in exchange for a loan is used as part of the lending process between businesses for some time now. The Collateral Management Module (CMM) implements the issuance, validation and processing of collateral transactions between two members of an MFI. In a swap transaction between Party A ( Lender ) and Party B (Borrower ),
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Helpful Skills | HTML, Spring, Hibernate, REST, Java, AngularJS, SQL |
Impact | Clients and Small Businesses are able to take out higher value loans when they can offer up different forms of collateral. This is essential as MFIs move beyond just group loans and to individual lending. |
Other Resources | See - MIFOSX-1732Getting issue details... STATUS and https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Collateral+Module |
Insurance Claims Module
Mentors | |
Category | Platform |
Overview & Objectives | A crucial part of financial inclusion is micro-insurance and the ability for clients to safely manage risk in their lives. Mifos X will not fully handle the entire lifecycle of an insurance product but it should integrate with microinsurance system and track the key parts of the process that relate to the core banking system - collection and pass through of the premium and tracking claims and processing of these. |
Description | This project would involve building out a separate module that tracks claims being made by a client, likely leveraging the CRM functionality being build to track activities. It will integrate with APIs to enable processing of the claim and tracking what proceeds must be paid out to the client. It will involve creating a new module with data model, UI screens and business logic that leverages Mifos X APIs Tasks involved include:
This will also be helpful for intern; An insurance claim is a formal request made to a Financial Institution asking for a payment based on the terms of an insurance policy. It would be nice for MFIs to provide a range of insurance products such as Health insurance, property insurance, casualty insurance, etc so that their members claim these. The insurance claims module has the following workflow;
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Helpful Skills | HTML, Spring, Hibernate, REST, Java, AngularJS, SQL |
Impact | Clients are able to lower their risk and have a much larger safety net when they have affordable access to insurance policies. |
Other Resources |
Configuration Wizard
Mentors | |
Category | Web - Mifos Web App |
Overview & Objectives | A critical barrier to greater scale and reach of the Mifos X software is the time to deploy and ease of onboarding new financial institutions Spinning up a new instance and tenant of Mifos X in the Cloud is rather trivial but Mifos X is a core banking system and a user struggles to independently get the system up and running in spite of having access to documentation or local support.
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Description | This project would involve building into the Mifos X Web App a self-guided configuration wizard. Upon initial log-in, user will be prompted with a wizard as part of the Community App that will walk them through the first stages of configuring Mifos. The wizard which is optional and can declined, should provide the user the necessary prompts to guide them through the administrative setup of their organization and hierarchical structure, configuration of staff and roles and permissions, configuration of financial accounting, creation and configuration of loan and savings products, configuration of reporting and initial data entry.
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Helpful Skills | HTML, Spring, Hibernate, REST, Java, AngularJS, Javascript, SQL |
Impact | Financial institutions can more easily adopt the software and increase the scale of our social mission. |
Other Resources | See
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Extend Surveys & SPM Framework
Mentors | |
Category | Platform & Web |
Overview & Objectives | Financial Inclusion providers need a comprehensive view into the overall livelihood of their client both for better risk analysis, credit scoring, as well as social performance management. |
Description | We have the back-end in place for a surveys/social performance management framework that allows the import of XMLs for the PPI (progress out of poverty index) SPM scorecard. We need to implement a front-end UI for viewing and recording PPI surveys as well as a UI in which to create new surveys from scratch (similar to Question Groups in an older version of software). 1) Build out the UI for creating survey from available PPI scorecard See Resources below for specs/wireframes. |
Helpful Skills | HTML, Spring, Hibernate, REST, Java, AngularJS, SQL |
Impact | Ability to measure social impact and have one single point of information on a client within the platform. |
Other Resources | See https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Social+Performance+Management+Framework These are the legacy docs on the old question group functionality: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/display/MIFOS/Question+Groups+and+PPI |
Scalability & Performance Enhancements for Supporting Millions of Clients
Mentors | |
Category | Platform |
Overview & Objectives | As Mifos X has matured as a core banking platform, it's been adopted and used by larger institutions serving hundreds of thousands and even millions of clients. Partners operating cloud-hosted subscription models are also supporting hundreds of thousands of clients across their multi-tenant installations. We need to benchmark, analyze and improve the performance and scalability of the system. |
Description | Enhancements to the back-end platform will include parallelization of all the jobs with a configurable amount of concurrency, look at the explain plans of the queries being used in the jobs, paginate input queries for jobs, put lazy fetching where required, node-aware scheduler and cache, office-wise configurable jobs to distribute job-load across servers and write some tests to prove that the concurrency will work for a decent amount of scale. In addition, you'll provide some metrics which can help mid-sized MFIs (those having around a million active loans) in adopting Mifos X. |
Helpful Skills | Java, Javascript, Spring, JAX-RS, JPA, |
Impact | Higher outreach to the unbanked by supporting larger institutions and scaling more rapidly. |
Other Resources |
Static Analysis of Apache Fineract CN (UPDATE)
Mentors | |
Category | Framework - Apache Fineract CN |
Overview & Objectives | As our product is core banking platform and our clients are financial institutions, we strive hard to make our code base as secure as possible. However, due to ever increasing security threats and vulnerabilities, it is the need of hour that we analyse our code base in depth for security vulnerabilities. During pull request merge process, we have a process in place wherein we do peer code review,QA and integration tests. This practice has been very effective and our community is already reaping the benefits of such a strong code review process. However, we should test our code against the standard vulnerabilities which have been identified by reputed organisations like Mitre to gain more confidence.It has become a critical part of independent and partner-led deployments |
Description | We can make use of opensource tools like Jlint, Findbugs , SonarQube or frameworks like Total output Integration Framework (TOIF) - used by companies dedicated to produce military grade secure systems. It would be worthwhile, if we can dedicate one GSOC project for this analysis. The student would be responsible to analyse the findings, generate reports, identify if it is really a bug and then submit a fix after consultation from the community. Of course, the student needs to demonstrate some basic understanding of security vulnerabilities( like buffer overflow etc) and should have some academic level of experience working with static analysis tools. |
Helpful Skills | Java (Spring/JPA/Jersey), SQL , JavaScript , Git, Apache POI |
Impact | Improved security keeping the integrity and privacy of the underbank's financial data intact. |
Other Resources | Static Analysis of Apache Fineract Project- A GSOC project idea |
Ad Hoc Reporting Module/Business Analytics (OLAP)
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | Develop ETL scripts to create OLAP cubes (fact and dimension tables in MySQL). This will allow managers to perform ad hoc slicing and dicing of their data
This project would extend off of the work of a previous GSOC intern in building out integration with Saiku. |
Description | The data and information housed in the centralized Mifos database is critical to the operations and management of a financial institution. While Mifos X ships with more than five dozen standard report and has multiple ways to build custom reports, non-technical staff who don’t know SQL queries nor the structure of the database struggle to be able to access new reports on the fly. Integration with Saiku would allow for ad-hoc reporting or more simply a drag and drop interface for management and non-technical staff to easily slice and dice and create reports on the fly. |
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
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Front Desk Service Module / Experience Module
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | Before booking a loan, the customer needs to require and assess the details of the loan he is enquiring for and there is no way to personally judge it, based on the parameters, Sales staff right now is using different external loan calculator and loan product schemes are not documented. We need a frontend experience service with personalized match to loan products. |
Description | The staff or customer should be able to enter their requirements before applying for a loan, like Loan amount, what kind of loan product he is interested in, and based on a questionnaire or a survey he should be presented a view where loan products are personally matched based on recommendation engine.After setting basic loan parameters, customer should be able to get a quote and then will be transferred to CRM given by Ankit Sharma |
Helpful Skills | ANDROID UI, Integrating Backend Service, MIFOS X |
Impact | Streamlined sales, Staff and Customer Better Interaction |
Other Resources | https://docs.google.com/document/d/18rS0gVWkjQvNdRnNj40uKNl32zuTh-uuzNv161n6YrY/edit?usp=sharing |
Machine Learning Build Model and Predict Module
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Overview & Objectives | In the current version of the MIFOS X/Apache Fineract there is no way where we can infuse the product to machine learning straight to the Algorithms and then start predicting around certain entities and models or domains with integration of finocial.ai we can now do that by including a lib which will send data to the existing cluster running a finocial.ai and letting the partners/FI to decide what kind of learning tool they want to use and generate a POJO or MODEL and thus start predicting using that MODEL |
Description | Major use cases are predicting BAD Loans Or GOOD Loans, Predicting Fraud ,RISK and many other predictions which FI wants to do on certain Domain, Logic where FI can utilise to understand customer in a better way. FINOCIAL.AI Provides better way Personal profile data, spending history, social media data, transaction data, asset information and demographic data can provide a much more holistic view of a prospective client, instead of past credit scores. In this age of data abundance, the financial services industry can take advantage of new data sources when approaching a decision to approve a purchase or a credit card application, stop a withdrawal or recommend new financial products. |
Helpful Skills | JAVA, Integrating Backend Service, MIFOS X, Apache Fineract, FINOCIAL.AI |
Impact | Streamlined Operations, Better RISK Management, Automated Response Mechanism |
Other Resources | http://portal.finocial.org |
Integration of Egalite Agent Banking App (REMOVED)
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Self-Service - USSD App Development
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | This has a dependency on the Self-Service backend API's being available |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | USSD, Java, SQL, Finite State Machine (FSM) |
Impact | Allows a member/client in having a self-service channel allowing them more direct control and visibility into their financial livelihood. Enable members of the society on-demand access to their.financial records even with basic mobile handset |
Other Resources | http://mycloudcode.com/category/ussd/ |
Mobile Money Integration Phase 3
Mentors | |
Category | Platform - Apache Fineract CN Integrations |
Overview & Objectives | Mobile money is rapidly transforming financial inclusion by providing more immediate, impactful, affordable, and secure financial services to the client. Mobile money platforms like M-Pesa offer the client unparalleled value in terms of convenience, security and the possibility of new services and products that are more in line with real-world financial habits. For financial institutions and their clients to fully scale mobile money and leverage its potential, it needs to be fully integrated with their core-banking system. |
Description | In 2016, GSOC intern Daniel Carlson, built out an initial mobile money integration module which supports capturing in real-time the transactions that occur in the mobile money system via the APIs along with a web interface for initiating transactions to occur via mobile money. This project would work extend upon this module to continue genericizing it to support the mobile money APis of other countries and to complete the integrations for mobile money systems or aggregators in East Africa from countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda s M-Pesa, TigoCash, MTN Money, AirtelMoney, Beyonic, etc. |
Helpful Skills | Web Services, Java, SQL , JavaScript , Git |
Impact | Great efficiency, reduced risk for clients, more impactful and relevant products & services. |
Other Resources |
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Client Impact Portal Phase 2
Mentors | |
Category | Platform |
Overview & Objectives | Microfinance institutions usually work with various external parties, such as funders or investors. Using the data that is available in MifosX we would like to offer those stakeholders a seperate portal showing accurate and high-level information about the institution that would otherwise be reported manually by the institution. This information helps them in their decision making processes, but also enables them to assess the broader impact they are having with their funding. |
Description | To develop a portal that aggregates information from different Mifos X deployments and report on predefined social and operational metrics Objectives:
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Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Web Services, Scripting (Bash/Perl/Ruby), Regexes & Parsing |
Impact | Funders and investors are vital for almost all MFI's, providing them with accurate information on the impact they are making with each of their MFI's is something they highly value and that enables them to assess whether they want to further support the MFI's moving forward to enable growth of the MFI. |
Other Resources | 2014 GSOC Client Impact Portal Project
Vision for Generic SPM Framework for Mifos X (PPI) Background on Client Impact Portal
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Credit Bureau Integration Phase 3
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | Because of regulatory reasons or to do background check of a client (risk management), MFIs depend on credit bureaus. As part of it, MFI must submit client details to credit bureau and also need to pull client information from credit bureau before approving any new loans to a client.Mifos X can be integrated with a popular CBs in India and from other regions (based on the demand). |
Description | During the 2016 Google Summer of Code, Nikhil Pawar, completed the credit bureau integration module with integrations for the major credit bureaus in India. This project will continue extending the functionality of the module and work on integrations with the major credit bureaus in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. The major functionality will be sending the data to CBs on regular intervals in the format CB expects. And option to pull the client’s information from CB whenever loan officer/branch manager/ user wants to view the information for a particular client. |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Web Services, Big Data (Hadoop, Hive) |
Impact | The credit report shows account information such as repayment record, defaults, type of loan, amount of loan, etc. of the customer. This information facilitates prudent decision-making when the credit underwriter processes the loan application. This help MFI to reduce the risk of bad loans and reduces the multiple lendings to same person from different MFIs. |
Other Resources | Detailed requirementshttps://goo.gl/aZWMZa Mifos Credit bureau Integration. (Risk calibration Module -RCM) Source Code: https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract/pull/215 |
ETL-Based Data Migration Tool for Loan Performer to Mifos X
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | Data migration can be one of the most challenging and time-consuming phases of an implementation of a core banking system. It's often a barrier to financial institutions moving on to new and better more modern systems. It's critical to cleanly migrate over the historical data of a client and their transactions. Often the legacy system data needs to be cleaned up and transformed before it can be migrated into Mifos X and is one of the most costly and time-consuming phases of a deployment. We have an existing data migration tool for migrating from Mifos 2 to Mifos X that utilizes the Pentaho Kettle ETL tool. This project would extend the existing Mifos 2 to Mifos X Kettle-based migration tool to provide a standard migration tool from Loan Performer - a low-cost, widely adopted system in use by hundreds of microfinance institutions throughout Africa and Latin America. It would provide one standard tool that any partner or financial institution could use for migrating from that specific system - it wouldn't require new tools to be made each time a migration is done. |
Description | Extend the existing Kettle-based Mifos to Mifos X migration tool
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Helpful Skills | Java (Spring/JPA/Jersey), SQL , JavaScript , Git, Pentaho, Kettle, |
Impact | It has many impacts
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Other Resources |
Basic CRM Functionality - Inquiries/Complaints Module
Mentors | TBD |
Category | Platform - Apache Fineract 1.0 |
Overview & Objectives | Right now Mifos X contains core client management functionalities including tracking basic demographic information, know your customer information, document management, and survey collection through data tables. As financial institutions, serving the poor begin to offer a more in-depth and diverse range of financial inclusion products, the need for more robust client management and in-depth client understanding has grown. Their core system needs to provide more and more CRM-type functionality that compliment the portfolio management and financial/social reporting that the Mifos X provides. This project will work to deliver the initial set of customer relationship management functionalities including a module for tracking inquiries, complaints |
Description | This module will have a request management functionality. A request can be of 2 types: Complaints and Service Requests. Each request must be against a customer and optionally against an account of the customer. Each request will go through a simple workflow. Actions that can be performed on a request: Assign -> will change status to "assigned" Start Work --> will change status to "in progress" Close --> will change status to "closed" (with a sub-reason code) At each step user can enter comments. The customer summary screen will have a link to view the requests of the customer - along with a summary and current status - with options to click-through to get the complete history of each request. |
Helpful Skills | familiarity with Mifos X tech architecture, angular js,node js, java,Spring, Backend Integration |
Impact | Deepening the client relationship and ensuring fair, responsible, and transparent financial services to the poor is a core piece of the industry's roadmap for financial inclusion. Providing customers the ability to voice their concerns and feedback about the services they're receiving provides a simple yet powerful tool to protect the client. Empowering the financial institution with the ability to track these inquiries and overall maintain a more holistic relationship tracking entire lifecycle of their clients gives them a much better ability to understand their clients and respond to their needs with appropriately designed services and products. |
Other Resources |
JPOS Integration - Point of Sale Cash Out
Mentors | |
Category | Platform - Apache Fineract 1.0 Integration |
Overview & Objectives | Integrate MifosX with an opensource Point of Sale (POS) called JPOS. |
Description | Use case would be to get a debit transaction (cash withdraw from checking account) thru the POS device /local runtime with 2FA. In India, the ability to get cash out through a point of sale network is provided for under RBI regulations. In production there will likely need to be an intermediate "Merchant Acquisition" or "Payment Processor" in between a single POS and MifosX Instance, but this could be abstracted out as a payment gateway only (primarily data mapping). The implementation target is the ability to do a 2 factor authentication on a POS device running JPOS (emulator ok), input account number (via some simple method), then be able to do a (cash-out) account withdrawal in real time to the MifosX account. Additional use cases would be to implement a transaction for payment for goods. i.e. enter specific goods, then do payment from MifosX account to Merchant Account (probably also in Mifos). |
Helpful Skills | Familiarity with API work. Understanding of transactional flows. Java. Two-factor authentication - see other project idea . |
Impact | |
Other Resources |
Security Penetration testing
Mentors | Mark Reynolds |
Category | Platform |
Overview & Objectives | We believe the Mifos X platform is super secure and impenetrable. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prove us wrong, and help close gaps you may find. |
Description | Beyond a one time exercise, you should integrate (some of) the tools you've used into our build chain so that, even after you've gone, tools flag up future newly introduced potential vulnerabilities. |
Helpful Skills | Candidates applying for this project would ideally have prior experience in penetration testing, and document this in their application. |
Impact | Re-assuring the more Entreprise-y type Mifos clients that they can safely bet on Mifos X as an MFI platform. |
Other Resources | https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page https://code.google.com/p/zaproxy/ Run FindBugs & related tools for some serious static code analysis |
Mifos ID/Profile - Single Sign On for Community Infrastructure
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Overview & Objectives | This project would seek to create one unified ID/login and profile for community members similar to the OpenMRS ID. It would achieve the following two primary objectives:
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Description |
Design a profile Extra Credit:
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Helpful Skills | LDAP |
Impact | Impact is two-fold:
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Other Resources |
Scalable Mifos X deployment on OpenShift: Automated Continuous Delivery, Scripts, Documentation (UPDATE)
Mentors | |
Overview & Objectives | Create a POC of a scalable MifosX implementation on OpenShift. Also publish a whitepaper with details of this set up. |
Description | Mifos X was built to be cloud ready from the ground up. One of the most popular deployment environments for MifosX has been on Amazon EC2, however due to country specific regulation, many implementors are forced to seek alternative models that can scale as effectively. The aim of this project is two-fold:
To prepare for this project, applying students must demonstrate at least that they have already successfully locally built and ran a Mifos X REST back-end server and UI, populated the database etc. as well as provided a simple pull request proposing some minimal deployment related improvement. Note that we now believe that a Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a more suitable foundation for this project than a raw Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform (such as Openstack, offered by public cloud provider such as e.g. Rackspace; or Azure, or raw Amazon EC2). This is because a PaaS, such OpenShift, already come with relevant features such as built-in, managed, supported and monitored HTTP load balancing (e.g. OpenShift comes with HAProxy). We are aware that OpenShift out-of-the-box currently does not provide supported clustering for the MariaDB/mysql database used by Mifos (there is documentation for un-supported example based on an OpenShift template and suggested descriptions on blog posts, or also this one based on Severalnines.com; similarly one could deploy the commercial Percona XtraDB Cluster product). However at this point we believe that this would not be required, and that proper configuration on OpenStack of the already existing cache facility (incl. distributed cache invalidation) available in Mifos X will add more value at signficantly less operational complexity. You may need to develop some minor "adjustments" for Mifos X to work well in a PaaS. For example, writeable directories may be limited, and configuration changes may be needed to pick up allowed data directories from an environment variable configuration (but consider multi node distribution in this cluster setup!). Also a cloud PaaS like OpenShift may not support "always running" instances, and scheduled jobs may have to be configured to be kicked off via an explicit HTTP "wake up" request from a cron job. While OpenShift should already take care of automatic distribution of Mifos code (WAR) updates among nodes in the cluster, you may also have to consider distributed configuration in a cluster. Normally all Mifos X configuration should reside 100% fully in the database only, and as such this may be a non-issue. If however there are any customized configuration files, then perhaps something like the Spring Cloud project could be of interest to ease distributed configuration management. We are aware of other PaaS product similar to OpenShift, such as notably Cloud Foundry, or even Heroku (closed source..) but would suggest to use OpenShift. |
Helpful Skills | Continous Integration, UNIX, OpenStack, experience with any public cloud (AWS etc) and Percona Server is a plus, plus some minor Java coding required to adapt Mifos code to be able to pick up the database configuration from the OpenStack provided environment variable (and possibly automated Cache configuration tuning on OpenStack). |
Impact | Improves deployment options for Mifos. Would be very helpful for specialists in African countries who deal with strict regulatory controls in hosting data outside their region |
Other Resources | OpenShift https://www.openshift.com Old Mifos mailing list posts related to related things, search e.g. "mifos google app engine", and find as this one as well as this one. |
Mifos X on "Enterprise Stack" - IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic tests & documentation (UPDATE)
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Overview & Objectives | Mifos X today is typically used on Tomcat (with Jetty known to work). For a certain class of users, testing it on "Enterprise Stack" application servers (meaning IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic) is desirable - this project would properly test Mifos X on these configurations, make any adaptations to the code which may be required, and produce easy to follow documentation or even small tools helping future users how to go about this. |
Description | This project could be combined with and taken up by the same candidate as the Enterprise database project. |
Helpful Skills | Java, Application Server configuration, WAS classloading crap tricks, documentation writing. Use Cargo, Arquillian etc. for automated testing against WAS & WLS containers? |
Impact | Enable Mifos X to be considered by users wanting it to run (only) on an Enterprise stack |
Other Resources | Vendor pages |
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.