Google Summer of Code 2015 Ideas
Get Stoked - End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time.
We're currently working on our application and ideas lists for the 2015 Google Summer of Code. Applications are due on February 20 and Mentoring Orgs are announced on March 2.
2015 Google Summer of Code - Get to Know Mifos
We're looking forward to participating in Google Summer of Code for our fifth year. In 2014, we successfully graduated seven stellar 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 2015 will have the option to work on a variety of projects related to Mifos X - our core back-end Java platform which provides a full set of RESTful APIs to deliver financial inclusion, our front-end Community App built on top of the AngularJS framework, and a variety of other apps including our Android-based mobile client.
- 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?
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:
- Use the mifos-developer mailing list
- provide patches
- follow the Mifos coding standards
- document their work
- have access to reasonable bandwidth, ie: have a fast, reliable Internet connection
- track and report on progress daily
Prerequisite Skills
Basics
- Quick learner
- 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):
- MySQL,Jersey, Hibernate, Spring,
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript (JQuery), AngularJS
- JUnit, REST-assured
Hints
- When you need help, ask for help! Do some searches before asking, please. 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 reference user interface. Instructions for doing so are available at Getting started - Contributing to MifosX.
- 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.
Mentoring
Mifos folks are constantly working remotely (mainly using Skype), especially in supporting remote contributors. We often do video calls and desktop sharing If possible, we'd love to meet you in person! Specific mentors for each project will be listed below.
These are the tentative mentors for the 2015 program - we'll update with any changes.
Mentor | Project | Location | Time Zone |
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| India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
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| India | IST (GMT +5:30) |
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| Ghana | GMT |
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| USA | PST(GMT -8:00) |
User 'Former user' not found
| India | IST (GMT +5:30) | |
Sri Lanka | IST (GMT +5:30) | ||
India | IST (GMT +5:30) | ||
Netherlands | CET (GMT+1:00) | ||
USA | PST(GMT -8:00) | ||
Germany | CET (GMT+1:00) |
Project Ideas
All 2015 projects will be on the new Mifos X platform or various apps built on top of its RESTful APIs. Mifos X is the world's only open platform for financial inclusion and is banking delivered as a service via the cloud. Mifos X 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 Mifos X platform.
Business Rules Engine
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
Overview & Objectives | A business rule system enables these financial institutes policies and other operational decisions to be defined, tested, executed. Rule engines typically support rules, facts, priority (score), mutual exclusion, preconditions, and other functions. This module will enable MFI admin to add, remove or modify the business rule against pre-defined work flows in the application. |
Description | As financial institutes, the business process of the institute is governed by local regulatory, and internal rules and rules defined by other other stake holders. And MIS should have provision to define these rules in the application to achive the objectives of these rules defined by various stake holders. Example: Insurance company does not provider insurance to any person above 65 age. In that case in the MIS if users tries to attach a insurance feed to a client's loan account whos age is more than 65 years then "business rule engine" should prevent that action with appropriate message. The implementation would probably have 4 parts to it: a) Code Hooks - Extend functionality of event listeners (what was done for "Guarantor Release for Blocked Funds" for loans) to include key business events like loan creation, loan approval, loan disbursement, savings account creation, savings account activation, savings withdrawal, client creation, client approval, etc. Pre- and Post- events to be enabled for these business events. |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git |
Impact | It helps MFIs to follow the compliance set for regulatory and various stake holder. Also reduces the fraudulent cases |
Other Resources | Business Rules Engine |
Mobile Field Office Planner
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
Overview & Objectives | To allow field-based staff to manage their daily schedules and to ensure that their supervisors are able to review these tasks and to plan field operations and bring in more efficiency and transparency for field operations. To meet the requirement, Android based app need to be developed to cover these uses cases. And this app will be an extension to MIfos X Android Client built by GSOC intern, Ishan Khanna in 2014. |
Description | Field officers typically have a predefined set of tasks to follow, for example: Do survey for a locality, Conduct Group Trainings, Conduct Group Tests, Do Center Meetings and Collections. Each could have a task code to make operations streamlined. Field officers manage their calendars by selecting an activity and specifying a center, date and time for which this activity is planned. This becomes their planned activity for this slot. A simple workflow to manage each slot – when field officer starts the activity, status of the slot is changed from “new” to “open” and when the activity is completed, it is set to “closed”. It would be ideal to manage this workflow using a mobile tool – preferably an inbound SMS message. For example: an SMS from the field officer’s phone with the text “OPEN 1430” will change the status to “OPEN” of the field officer’s activity that was planned for 2:30pm. Field officer may change his plan up to a certain time prior to the start of the activity. Auditors and branch managers will review the activities and track the field officers’ planning and efficiency. |
Helpful Skills | Java, XML, SQL , Git, SMS integration, Android app development is plus |
Impact | Field efficiency and operational efficiency |
Other Resources | See SMS Integration and Outbound SMS |
Mifos X Android Client Version 2
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
Overview & Objectives | As financial institutions serving the poor extend to more rural outlying regions and adopt more lightweight branchless and paperless operations, mobile field operation tools are essential. In 2014, GSOC intern Ishan Khanna built out version 1 of our Android-based mobile And this app will be an extension to MIfos X Android Client built by GSOC intern, Ishan Khanna in 2014. |
Description | There is a lengthy list of potential Version 2 requirements for the Mifos X Android client including: |
Helpful Skills | Java, XML, SQL , Git, SMS integration, Android app development is plus |
Impact | Field efficiency and operational efficiency |
Other Resources |
Improvements to User Generated Documents
Mentors | Pranjal Goswami |
Overview & Objectives | Provide an easy way for reports to "merge-printed" from the Client or account page. Currently, if a user needs to print a specific letter for customer or loan account or savings account - the only way is to develop a report or use stretchy report. This is difficult to use and cannot be invoked from a client or account page. |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git |
Impact | Easy to print reports like Loan Sanction Letter, Savings Transaction report, Deposit notice etc. |
Other Resources |
AngularJS Community App Enhancements
Mentors | Vishwas Babu A J |
Overview & Objectives | Our AngularJS Community App is the standard application on the Mifos X platform 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 and AngularJS refactoring. |
Description | The project will involve the following:
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Helpful Skills | Javascript, CSS, HTML5. AngularJS and Bootstrap (CSS framework) is plus |
Impact | Better usability. improve the productivity of users and actions will be taken on time. |
Other Resources | Usability and Design |
Batch Jobs for Loan Loss Provisioning and Dividend posting
Mentors | Vishwas Babu A J |
Overview & Objectives | Across the globe, thousands of financial cooperatives are bringing financial inclusion to the Base of the Pyramid in the form of SACCOs, credit unions, cooperative societies, etc. One major feature gap that we still don't fully support in Mifos X is proper management of shares and member equity and calculation and posting of dividends. This project would cover that functionality as well as adding loan loss provisioning. Project involves adding two additional batch jobs in Mifos: a) For Loan Loss Provisioning b) Dividend calculation and posting for Share accounts |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java (Jersey, Spring, JPA), Javascript (knowledge of Angular JS is a plus), Git |
Impact | From a business perspective, these add a lot of value in automating some of the key year end computations |
Other Resources |
Two Factor Authentication for certain types of transactions
Mentors | Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
Overview & Objectives | Enable two factor authentication for certain types of transactions - for example transfers initiated, need to be confirmed via a One-Time-Password generated by Mifos and sent via SMS to client's mobile number. |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git |
Impact | Provides more security for clients especially during loan disbursements and savings withdrawals or transfers. |
Other Resources |
Self-Service Application - Mifos Platform Changes
Mentors | Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
Overview & Objectives | Develop a set of APIs that can be used by a front end application that is meant for Client/Member Self-Service |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git |
Impact | Allows a member/client in having a self-service channel - i.e. online banking interface through a browser or smartphone app. |
Other Resources |
Self-Service - Web App development
Mentors | Gaurav Saini |
Overview & Objectives | This has a dependency on the Self-Service backend API's being available |
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 - Android App development
Mentors | TBD |
Overview & Objectives | This has a dependency on the Self-Service backend API's being available |
Description | |
Helpful Skills | Android 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 |
Data Tables Improvements to Support Workflows
Mentors | Binny Gopinath Sreevas (Unlicensed) |
Overview & Objectives | Workflows can be used for adding additional data/surveys for capturing data or adding checklist to a pre-defined workflows at certain points of the workflow (scope does not include adding custom workflows). This project would build off the existing Data Tables modules to add enhancements for pseudo-workflows. |
Description | In most of the cases MFI wants to capture additional data during certain workflows (example: during client closing, wants to conduct exit survey, capture PPI during loan creation) and this requirement can fulfilled by adding option to attach datatable/survey/question group to the pre-defined workflows as certain points (example: during loan creation, during approval time or during disbursement etc). Enhance data tables to emulate real-life workflows:
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Helpful Skills | Java, SQL , JavaScript , Git |
Impact | Helps organization to streamline their data capture process in the MIS and as well as in the field. And this leads toward more measurability of the MFI's impact in the field and more transparency. |
Other Resources |
Mobile Money Integration
Mentors | Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
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 | Based on the extent of the APIs available through the various mobile money platforms, the level and seamlessness of integration can vary from real-time to end-of-day file-based integration. This project would work to provide several file, message, and or API-based reference integrations with leading mobile money platforms, including
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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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Inbound SMS Integration
Mentors | Nayan Ambali(plus Michael Vorburger, as needed) |
Overview & Objectives | MFIs have requested the ability for both inbound and outbound SMS communication. This project will focus on Inbound SMS Integration as well as advanced outbound SMS functionalities. As part of client protection, client has right know about her/his account information at any time any where. In 2014, through web hooks we built the initial outbound SMS module with a proof-of-concept Twilio integration as well as the Mifos X Messenger which was built by the community. This project will built out additional connections with SMS gateways for outbound SMS campaigns and event-based messages. |
Description | In outbound SMS notification MFI decides when and what information need to be sent to client, but as part of client protection, client has complete rights to request for information about her/his account details(any time any where). Using inbound SMS client can query for her account details such loan amount, status of new loan application, outstanding loan amount. |
Helpful Skills | Java, SQL , JavaScript , Git |
Impact | Transparency and client protection. |
Other Resources | See SMS Integration and Outbound SMS |
Client Impact Portal Phase 2
Mentors | Sander van der Heyden and Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
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 |
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
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
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 | This will be an optional module inside Mifos X, and this module can be turned on/off based on the institutes requirements. And will be flexible to configure with different CBs (may not be practical to integrate with all CBs). 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 |
Clean Energy Integration
Mentors | James Dailey |
Overview & Objectives | |
Description |
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Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Web Services |
Impact | MFIs become more capable of integrating with third party systems for management of deliveries, after-sales service, and carbon tracking. |
Other Resources |
Pay as you Go Solar Module Phase 2
Mentors | James Dailey |
Overview & Objectives | |
Description | This project is a continuation of the initial PayGoSol foundation that was led by 2014 GSOC intern, Antonio Carella.
Work in 2015 will include adding the following features to make it an out-of-the-box solution that any PAYG hardware provider could use:
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Helpful Skills | SQL, Java, Javascript, Git, Web Services |
Impact | Providers of pay-as-you-go solar can use MIFOS for their operations. MFIs can become such providers. |
Other Resources | Mifos Android Client on MifosX
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Data Migration Tools
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
Overview & Objectives | Data migration can be one of the most challenging and time-consuming phases of an implementation of a core banking system. In 2013, GSOC intern, Avik Ganguly, built our data import tool for generating pre-configured Excel templates to migrate data into Mifos X. In 2014, Diunuge, extended this to other types of information in Mifos X along with integrating it from a stand-alone web app to a core part of the platform. The data import tool is now the foundation for all of our data migration tools. This project would continue to extend the data import tool to new types of data and APIs that need to be imported, enabling office-level import, and continued integration into the platform. This project will also involve building on top of the data import tool to provide out of the box migrations from other legacy systems such as MicroBanker or Loan Performer.
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Description |
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Helpful Skills | Java (Spring/JPA/Jersey), SQL , JavaScript , Git |
Impact | It has many impacts
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Other Resources |
Web-based Ad Hoc Query and Reporting Tool Phase 2
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
Overview & Objectives | To run any business successfully, you need the insight of the business and that is possible when you have information system in which you can get the information in the format your business analysis team needs. And in current world business are very much market adaptive and market scenarios changes very rapidly. To cope up with that good MIS need to have Ad-hoc report builder. Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop report designer builds crosstabs, tables, and chart-based reports using a standard browser. In 2014, we began the Saiko integration and this project would serve as a continuation of that. |
Description | The ad hoc reporting will be based on a logical mapping of Mifos data elements to business entities (like customer, loan account, savings account, loan transactions, savings transactions etc.) and business attributes (like loan approved date, loan amount, loan outstanding amount etc.). An end user will be able to configure and generate reports based on these business entities and business attributes. Reporting fields and reporting criteria will support basic derived fields like "days overdue", "amount overdue", "customer total outstanding amount", "customer total relationship value" etc. The reporting will support basic functions like summing up totals, sorting based on different fields and grouping based on different fields. |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Pentaho reporting, DW concepts, Saiku |
Impact | Business analysis team, funders, management or operational users can get the required data in real time instead of depending on someone to develop reports. Helps in taking quick decisions as data is available immediately. |
Other Resources |
Actionable notifications/alerts/status updates in Mifos X
Mentors | Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
Overview & Objectives | For better usability system needs to have notifications to the logged in user about actions he/she needs to perform in the application.
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Description | Build real time notification system in application to notify to users about pending/new actions she/he needs to take. Example if branch manager login to the application and 3 new loans are created and pending for approval then system should notify him/her about the pending actions. This involves both invoking and triggering these notifications based on these actions or activities as well as the extension of the user interface to support the display of the notifications as well as the ability of the user to take action upon the notifications. |
Helpful Skills | Javascript, CSS, HTML5. AngularJS and Bootstrap (CSS framework) is plus |
Impact | Better usability. improve the productivity of users and actions will be taken on time. |
Other Resources | Usability and Design |
Basic CRM Functionality - Inquiries/Complaints Module
Mentors | Binny Gopinath Sreevas (Unlicensed) |
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 grows. Their core system needs to provide more and more CRM-type functionality that complement the portfolio management and financial/social reporting 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 option to click-through to get the complete history of each request. |
Helpful Skills | |
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 |
Security Penetration testing
Mentors | KojoG |
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 |
Scaling MifosX to serve 2 million+ customer accounts
Mentors | Vishwas Babu A J |
Overview & Objectives | This project's goal is to create an Amazon Cloud formation template for Mifos deployments at large Organisations. We would measure how we scale, with concrete scenarios and hard numbers, and produce documentation about this helping organization who are evaluating Mifos. We would also try to identify and fix performance bottlenecks in the MifosX and the community app codebase |
Description | You would be creating a Cloud formation template on AWS for a sample high performance Mifos setup. The setup would include
You would then use Jmeter (or a tool of your choice) to create realistic data and run and benchmark performance on this setup. Based on the figures, we would make fixes to either to the MifosX / Community app codebases to fix any identified performance bottlenecks and then carry out multiple iterations of tweaking the Cloud formation template to achieve best performance. |
Helpful Skills | Must be a self starter, Experience with Amazon AWS and any opensource load testing tool is helpful |
Impact | Re-assuring the more Entreprise-y type Mifos clients that they can safely bet on Mifos X as an MFI platform. |
Other Resources | http://twitter.github.io/iago/ http://www.loadui.org (by the good people behind SOAPui) Selenium WebDriver |
Mifos ID/Profile - Single Sign On for Community Infrastructure
Mentors | KojoG & Ed Cable |
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 |
Make Mifos X DB-Agnostic - Flexible configuration allowing other databases, incl. tests & doc on Oracle
Mentors | Anuruddha Premalal |
Overview & Objectives | Initial version of Mifos X was not designed to be database agnostic. Goal of this project is to make it so, and test this out in practice by running it locally on Oracle, make sure our test suite runs against Oracle as well as mysql, and well documenting how this can be set up by end-user clients, if they wish to go for this deployment. |
Description | To make this possible, all business logic has to be concentrated in the middle tier with the database being as dumb as possible. This means the platform does not rely on any database specific stored procedures or on the database to generate unique keys. And also application heavily use prepared statements (Spring jdbctemplate) for retrieving data and need to make sure all these queries use full JOIN syntax, and bracket the JOINs so that each join is between a single table and bracketed expression. |
Helpful Skills | SQL, Java |
Impact | MFI with large client base can use the application with Oracle or any other commercial databases. |
Other Resources | Mifos has abstraction from underlying database using: |
POC of a Scalable MifosX deployment on Openstack
Mentors | Vishwas Babu A J |
Overview & Objectives | Create a POC of a scalable MifosX implementation (with load balanced tomcats and percona servers) on an openstack setup on a public cloud. Also publish a whitepaper with details of Openstack setup |
Description | Mifosx 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
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Helpful Skills | Unix, OpenStack, experience with any public cloud (AWS etc) and Percona Server is a plus |
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 | Openstack: https://www.openstack.org/ |
Mifos X on "Enterprise Stack" - IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic tests & documentation
Mentors | Michael Vorburger |
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
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Other Resources | Vendor pages |
Mifos X SDK
Mentors | Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
Overview & Objectives | The Mifos X platform as of today is a well structure but monolithic code base - one Git repo, one build, one WAR. This has worked out well for us, but as we grow, it could be interesting to introduce a proper SDK and plug-in concept, allowing contributors to build individual JARs that can be dropped into a certain directory of Mifos X to augment the core platform on well defined extension points and hooks. These modules would be loaded at run-time, not require rebuilding Mifos X, and would remain compatible when a customer upgrades their core platform version. We currently see the SDK as something more relevant to the Java back-end, so in this project you would likely work less on our AngularJS UI (barring some configuration UI for the plug-ins probably); but if you do have any ideas how to make the front-end more modular and extensible as well, we would love to hear from you. |
Description | This project will have three axis/phases: 1. platform infrastructure framework kind of work, based on a very simple or fictitious example extension; 2. identifying the functionally which could require / be sensible to extend in Mifos X, extracting clear and documented Java APIs from it, and then make changes to existing functional platform services to make them extensible by plug-ins; 3. well document this - such plugins will only be written if it's easy and clear how to do this. Note that the more technical part 1. should only take about 1/4 of your project, the focus will have to be putting the "theory" from 1. into "practice" in phases 2. & 3. |
Helpful Skills | Java, modularity, API design, dynamic class loading, OSGi-like concepts (without any plans to actually move Mifos X to running on an OSGi kernel; it's unnecessary complexity, for this) |
Impact | Developers from partnering organisations would be able to more easily extend the core Mifos X by extension code running in-process the platform (as opposed to REST-based |
Other Resources | Many other Java-based platform have such mechanism, and you would be expected to draw at least conceptual, if not outright technical inspiration (re-using code, if feasible) from things like the Eclipse Plug-In architecture (or similar non-OSGi based ones in other IDEs), research if Spring itself or some extension from someone has anything useful for this (think like Guice Multibindings plus ServiceLoader API as discussed on this StackOverflow, or this blog, or these Mycila Guice Extensions; but without going all the way to OSGi-based Spring DM / Dynamic Modules; again, overkill, here), get inspiration from drop-in add-on modules extension capabilities in enterprise software such as e.g. Atlassian plug-in framework, and learn how e.g. our friends at OpenMRS do this (see OpenMRS SDK doc and OpenMRS project). |
Automation of Conversion of AngularJS Community App into Chrome App
Mentors | Nayan Ambali |
Overview & Objectives | At present MIfos X platform is shipped with Community-App (SPA) as default UI, but initial load time of the application high. And for users on narrow bandwidth internet it takes a considerable amount of time to load the app. Instead of loading the app every time, we can convert the Community-App into a Chrome App and user can download them once and install it ion the machine, and it can used as thick client. |
Description | Community-App is completely developed on top of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. And Chrome apps are also written in same stack. Using grunt we should be able to repackage Community-App(SPA) into Community-App(Chrome App) |
Helpful Skills | Javascript, AngularJS, Grunt |
Impact | Users with slow internet connectivity can use this app (Installed on the machine) instead of loading Community-App (SPA) on the browser. Users will also have a continually updated app. This will also allow MFIs to potentially use Chromebooks as field-based devices for their branches. |
Other Resources | http://developer.chrome.com/apps/angular_framework.html |
UI meta modeling, making screen adaption a configuration instead of coding activity
Mentors | Michael Vorburger |
Overview & Objectives | The AngularJS-based Mifos X UI, like most of today's AngularJS-based or really most web apps, is "coded out" with JavaScript & HTML partial views. This project aims to explore and deliver at least partially working solution, based on and applied to Mifos X UI as a "case study", how web UI of modern SPA web applications can be "modeled" (described), and "generated" (at build, or better, runtime right within the browser). Advantages of such a model driven (MDA / MDD) approach incl. that less technical users can change screen definitions themselves, and that changes to the underlying technical architecture (e.g. AngularJS version and other JS frameworks used) ideally only affect the generators, not the functional screen models. |
Description | You could base this on ongoing explorations in https://github.com/vorburger/MUI.js, and using EFactory / ESON as model syntax (see https://github.com/vorburger/efactory; ESON a JSON-like EMF Xtext technology which is currently being incubated as a formal eclipse.org project). The goal and expected outcome of this project isn't some write up, but actually running code. |
Helpful Skills | Conceptual Modeling, JavaScript, advanced AngularJS, curious and creative mind, capability to actually deliver |
Impact | Enable the Mifos X UI to be much more easily customized and adapted by end-users |
Other Resources | see links above |
Extend Community app to run on Mobile devices with Offline Support
(INCORPORATE offline client work here)
Mentors | Vishwas Babu A J & Markus Geiss (Deactivated) |
Overview & Objectives | MIfos X platform is shipped with a Community-App (SPA) as the default UI which is optimized for Web Browser display on large screens (Mobile, Laptops and Tablets). We need to extend the same to support mobile views (with minor changes to workflow) and provide offline functionality |
Description | Community-App is completely developed on top of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Also since there is a clear separation between the view and the Controllers in Angular JS, we should be able to spin up mobile views fairly easily reusing the same Controllers and Services. As it is quite common for Mobile users to have intermittent data connection, we should also support offline functionality, |
Helpful Skills | Javascript, AngularJS, Apache cordova |
Impact | Field officers can access MifosX from a Mobile optimized view, capture data offline that can be synced back to the server when an internet connection is available. It also becomes easier for the community volunteers to maintain the mobile view ( as we reuse most of the code from the Community app) as opposed to maintaining a separate Android app. |
Other Resources
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Business Analytics (OLAP)
Mentors | KojoG |
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
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Description |
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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 Wikipedia OLAP Article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olap Introduction to OLAP - http://www.db-class.org/course/video/preview_list Gentle Introduction to MDX - http://www.iccube.com/support/documentation/mdx_tutorial/gentle_introduction.html |
Web UI quality cross browser non-regression testing
Mentors | Michael Vorburger |
Overview & Objectives | While the Mifos X Community App front-end UI based on AngularJS-based currently does already have some JS unit tests, we lack a full UI level web tests which continually non-regression test common scenarios. We believe having this could add value in terms of quality, including ensuring automated cross browser testing. |
Description | Possibly building upon a extremely limited small scale existing POC (if you find it to be a useful starting point), your mission, should you chose to accept it, would be to build out comprehensive UI walk through scenario test coverage for the Mifos X UI. If you can build more such tests faster and more maintainable (= less code) by using any of the existing frameworks listed below or others you know of / will find, or build useful such infrastructure yourself as part of this code, we're eager to hear from you! Keep in mind that the main deliverable of this project is not (only) a foundation framework, but must actually include an extensive suite of running tests integrated into the Mifos build. |
Helpful Skills | Candidates should demonstrate serious interest and basic know-how by accompanying their application for this project with pull requests to the existing mifosx-ui-selenium-webdriver-tests POC. |
Impact | Continuously verified and cross browser checked quality of the Mifos X UI. |
Other Resources | http://docs.seleniumhq.org/projects/webdriver/ https://github.com/vorburger/mifosx-ui-selenium-webdriver-tests https://github.com/vorburger/webdriver-runner https://saucelabs.com or https://browserling.com |
JPOS Integration - Point of Sale Cash Out
Mentors | TBD |
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 .
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Impact | |
Other Resources |
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.
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