Add an optional email field, and number of downloads on the add-ons download page

Hi All,

The new downloads site doesn’t have ability to show the number of times a module has been downloaded. It would be nice to have this field added.

Also, is it possible to have an email field, which will optionally let users submit their email addresses and can, for instance, get notifications when new modules are out?

cc: @darius

Thanks

Andrew

As a workaround for now you can get e-mail notifications by going to Bintray through the Hosted At link and clicking Watch (available if you create an account on Bintray).

The number of downloads could be easily added indeed as it is tracked by Bintray, see https://bintray.com/openmrs/omod/openhmis.inventory#statistics (these stats do not include historic data before migration to Bintray, however we do have a way to get them if needed).

I believe these features are included in the objectives that @darius proposed for the Further Improvements to Addons project idea for GSoC 2018:

Objectives:

  • Let users sign up for email updates about specific add-ons
  • Highlight most-recently updated module, and most-downloaded modules on the home page
  • Tag cloud (or simple list) showing common tags
  • Show ratings (from bintray)
  • Add support for GitHub releases

This may depend on whether the project is picked up for GSoC, but the features are on the radar.

We would love to not only get email notifications but to capture email addresses of users downloading our modules. @danfuterman may have answered that question.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Andrew

One of your suggestions i.e. to view the download counts of a module is being worked upon here. I had paused working on it but now that users need it, I’ll resume work on it and hopefully we’ll have it incorporated by next week.

Thanks. That will be super helpful!

Andrew

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As far as letting users provide their email so that module authors can communicate with them about module updates, research for future features, etc, I think that is a great idea.

I was suggesting we add it during this year’s summer of code but if you want to work on it beforehand, even better. :slight_smile:

I think that if we’re going to add a subscribe feature it should have its own panel in the UI (i.e. having a submit button next to the Add On’s general info would confuse me). I would put it under the download button.

Simplistically we can just let people enter their email, with some descriptive text about how we will use it. (And we would have to verify it’s their email address and we are not enabling spam.)

Instead or in addition, if they are logged in with an OpenMRS ID we can give a single click to subscribe to updates for this add on.

We should probably provide a way to send the actual messages via the application rather than giving people csvs of email addresses.

Thoughts? Anyone want to draw some mock ups?

Hi Reuben,

Did you manage to finish work on this?

Thanks

Andrew

This will be a cool idea for the AddOns improvements :slight_smile:

I also would like to add a separate panel for this feature. It would be better to separate this feature from other info.

I just thought about this implementation. According to my view, there will be a Subscribe button under the download button. When the user clicks on the subscribe button, It will check for the OpenMRS Login status and then,

  • If the user already logged into the system, then the user will be automatically subscribed to that Module. Then the subscribe button will be replaced with the thanking message like “Thanks for your subscription.”
  • If the user hasn’t logged into the system, then it will be redirected to another panel/page which will contain two separate sections like(We can accommodate this panel into the same UI also),
  1. Login using OpenMRS Id and Subscribe
  2. Text field to get user email address and a text area to get some feedback about the module.

I will draw some mockups and will post it here asap.


We should probably provide a way to send the actual messages via the application rather than giving people csvs of email addresses.

When we are thinking about the application for the mailing feature, we should use a bulk email sender APIs to achieve this target. Because If we are sending a lot of emails within a short period through an email client, most of them will be in the user’s spam folder. And we need to check the mails against the spam filters also.

Hi All, there’s been some interest in the Further Improvements to Addons project for GSoC 2018, but the project still needs a primary mentor, if anyone here has the time/interest in taking that on? (I have some capacity to assist as backup mentor)

I may be able to mentor the project.

Hey Andrew, sorry for the delay. I have submitted a PR for it yesterday. It will get merged once it gets approved :slight_smile:

Another idea on my mind for Addons was to have a GUI of some sort for adding a module to the json file. As the file gets larger, it gets tougher to navigate it and to manually ensure that the brackets are all in place etc. The gui(which also commits the code to github using the Github api) could make the job easier. However, this isn’t a high priority task.

What are your thoughts @darius?

This would be nice, but I don’t want to invest any effort into building it. (In my original proposal for the addons project I had suggested that the backing data should be done via google sheets, and we’d have a google form for submissions, before Cintia suggested github.)

Personally I think that asking devs to do a PR, and having Travis CI verify that they’ve done it right, is not that big an ask for a developer. :slight_smile:

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