Dear John,
Thank you for your message ... really feel that I am not alone.
1. I think it is more useful to have an import function inside Mifos ,
rather then use external code (VBA) to call this function. But I will
try ...
2. During the transition process ( moving to Community based management
from Grameen umbrella) Mifos has many organizational, functional ,
technical and other challenges . Using Spreadsheet (Excel or
LibreOffice Calc) is a way to optimize community's / developer's
resources and reduce risk of having wrong decision.
3. To ask development to new programmers is not effective , only
building development environment will take 1-2 day.... and I expect
that this is a time experienced Mifos programmers will need for
development.
4. Udai is indeed doing very good thing , but he is focused on client
part, which is not requested for now and his client can not be so
useful as SpreadSheet in given situation).
5. I tried to find JSON 2 Spreadsheet and Spreadhseet 2 JSON mapping
tools or addon but was not able to do it. FOr XML and CSV I do not have
any problems.
Georga.
On 11/15/2011 6:27 PM, John Woodlock wrote:
George,
I haven't totally absorbed all of your message but I hear from you
that Excel is a handy tool for capturing data. I find that too. It
may or may not be the same meaning as is being given to an "offline
data collection tool" but no matter because you are not alone. Other
MFI's have wanted to update mifos transactions via Excel spreadsheets too.
I'm thinking that if a mifos transaction REST api is available then
you can write your own VBA code from Excel to call it. Is that what
you are thinking too?
Udai is doing quite a bit of work on REST (around transaction area) so
it feels like this capability is not too far off.
Just saying this because some off-line need may just be commodity
Excel rather than development for a browser storing stuff and we
shouldn't miss the easy bit.
John
On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 12:04 AM, George IBERIA <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Colleagues ,
As Previous discussion has many messages I decided to create
separate topic with the definition what we need on current stage
and in future for our current project -- your ideas are very welcome!
1. Off line data collection is a very simple module which
will allow credit officer to collect data from the remote centers
without internet connection on his laptop.
2. During the data collection (manual input) credit officer
has to see some outputs ( savings, repayments for previous period
and many statistical information.
3. Business process can be described as following:
a) Loan Office (LO) downloads data from Mifos for certain
Center ( or branch ). I was thinking it is possible with Pentaho BI
b) LO brings this data on his Netbook to remote center |
brunch ;
c) LO officer is filling new transactions in off line data
collection module ( I was thinking about Spreadsheet)
d) LO brings back his Netbook or USB and importing data in
to MIFOS. For that he has to login into Mifos , click on nice link
called "import data" , select the file and define center | group
| branch and click IMPORT.
e) After validation system will imort the data: like LO
entered it into Mifos one by one.
Now questions:
1. Which format has to be used for Export/Import ?
XML|JSON|CSV|EXCEL| OTHER
As a business user I prefer EXCEL , as a Developer XML .
YOU?
2. Develop client (Web or Gui) or use Spreadsheet?
I prefer to use spreadsheet -- it is MUCH MORE USEFUL ,
allot of time will be saved, we will transfer risk from Mifos to
Spreadsheet, (by other words from Community to Client).
3. Which are the steps for development? (whatever client will
be used)? See my approach :
STEP 1: Define Format
STEP 2: Server side development: IMPORT API
STEP 3: Try to download Information using BI (if that
is impossible try to do it from app)
STEP 4: 1st ITERATION testing / user story ( THAT IS
WITHOUT CLIENT ! NO NEED FOR CLIENT AT THIS POINT)
STEP 5: Redesign/ refactoring (if needed)
STEP6: Make decision about Client ( Web, GUI or Spreadsheet)
STEP 7: 2nd Iteration testing / user story
STEP 8: Corrections, final testing;
NOTE: that API actually is implemented and can import
transactions one by one. All is needed to call that function in
cycle and path correct parameters . Not a nice solution (may have
a performance problem) but will be enough to build a model and do
following development / improvements.
And last thing: Dear developers please now put number of days you
need for development for each steps.
Best Regards,
George | Cleaner@MifosMIS Project
P.S. Hope you will not ask me why I am not doing all those steps :-)
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