GSoC 2021 with OpenMRS — Community Bonding Period
In Google Summer of Code 2021, the past few weeks we had the ‘Community Bonding Period’ which was used for getting familiar with the mentors and the organization. In my previous posts, I wrote about the experience I gain in the first week of the community bonding period. So here I’m writing a summary of the main things I did in this period. First of all, let’s have a small introduction about my project and the organization.
The Organization and the Project
OpenMRS is the organization to which I contribute during the Google Summer of Code Program. OpenMRS have selected 11 projects for GSoC this year and the project which I have been selected for is ‘Improving Functionalities of DHIS Connector Module’. It’s under the ‘Module Development’ Category.
DHIS Connector module is a module that is used to send aggregated data from OpenMRS to DHIS2 Instance. The module provides several user interfaces which can be used to configure the process easily.
DHIS Connector module can be improved with many other new functionalities. Therefore, I started gathering new requirements since the project list was announced and I was able to list out the main functionalities we can introduce for the module. You can see my requirement gathering thread by clicking here.
What I did in Community Bonding Period
The first thing I did was arranging weekly meetings with my mentor of the project. And I spent time studying the DHIS Connector module and OpenMRS Reporting module. Also tried experimental things in the module. I was able to create the resources like Period Indicator Reports, DHIS2 Datasets which I wanted to use for my project in the future when developing. Also, I designed the basic layouts and database changes for the new functions of the module. In Addition, I set up OpenMRS and DHIS Connector module on a remote server to make it easy for my mentors to check my progress. Click here to find more about what I did.
During the community bonding period, the OpenMRS community organized a ‘Student and Mentor Social Hour’. There we [students] and the mentors introduced ourselves and had a small discussion about the community and the projects. There I could get to know the other GSoC participants.
The community bonding period was very useful for us to clarify things about the projects. Anyway, the Community Bonding Period ended on the 7th of June and now we are in the Coding Period. I’m really excited and I hope to share my experience with you weekly.
