Atlassian Engage 4 Good Project Application Due January 30!

Community
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Looks like January will be a busy month for grant writing!

What is this about?

Engage 4 Good is an Atlassian Foundation program connecting employees with purpose-driven organisations to collaborate on skilled projects, increase their capacity and capability, and leverage digital technologies.

Who : Atlassians have about 5 days of “leave” each year that they can use volunteering on a project. This is a way of connecting Atlassians with organizations who have projects that align with Atlassian’s skills/experience.

How much time? Up to four hours a week or 5 hours for 3-5 meetings/workshops

When would Atlassians work with us? August-November 2022

The application is relatively straightforward - and really focused on communicating a) what problem we’re trying to solve, b) how this project will solve it, and c) the value to our community/beneficiaries of solving this problem.

@burke @grace @ibacher @dkayiwa @cintiadr @permissionerror Trying to remember some of the ideas that were floated around the last spring/summer, when we didn’t have much time or bandwidth to work on this. Anything come to your mind?

More info about Engage 4 Good:

Atlassian Foundation would like to invite non-profits and social enterprises globally to apply for its skilled volunteering program, Engage 4 Good.

Engage 4 Good is an Atlassian Foundation program connecting employees with purpose-driven organisations to collaborate on skilled projects, increase their capacity and capability, and leverage digital technologies.

Our teams across the world have a wide variety of business and technology skills that may be relevant to help you solve the problems that limit your team’s potential.

Download the guide to find out more and apply by completing this short form.

Applications close 11.59pm Pacific Daylight Time on Sunday 30 January 2022 (4.49pm 31 January AEDT).

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@jennifer there seems to be a typo in the year within the part of

When would Atlassians work with us? August-November 2021

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Hey everyone! This application is due in a little less than week (January 30). Any ideas?

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Hey @burke @ibacher @dkayiwa - what do you think.

A few suggestions to follow; keeping each separate so folks can :heart: the ones they like.

Some helpful information for us to keep in mind:

  • They’d work on the project from 28 Feb - 20 May. 12 weeks; each volunteer can commit 1-4 hours a week “to collaborate on a solution.”
  • Scope needs to be small. I looked at their past project videos and most were “we helped this group use Trello” or “now they use Jira better”. “For example, we may not be able to build you a new system but could we analyse existing systems, and plan out a technology roadmap for the next year” - I think we want them to work on actual stuff, not just plan work that we’d still need to do later.
  • Example possible Tech skill sets: Back-end software development, Continuous integration / continuous deployment, Systems design and implementation, Website development, Continuous process improvement, Front-end software development, IT strategy, Automation, DevOps, Website design
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Idea 1: Migrating from OpenMRS ID to KeyCloak (Large Impact, Large Effort)

The biggest need in my mind is getting on to Atlassian Cloud. But Cintia and Ian and Burke keep saying, that’s not the big lift; the big lift is our Auth service.

@ibacher @burke @dkayiwa do you think migrating from OpenMRS ID to KeyCloak is do-able given the time constraint mentioned above? (i.e. 12-48hrs?)

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Idea 2: Review of OpenMRS 3 Onboarding by a Frontend Dev (Medium Impact; Medium Effort)

Have a frontend dev go through our 3.x dev onboarding and i.d. where the process and technical documentation needs improvement; make suggestions.

(Why: Presumably their frontend engineers are a decent benchmark for whether our current process/documentation meets the broader industry good practices. Without a comparison like this, it’s hard to know right now which issues 3.x devs are facing are because there’s something generally problematic in our documentation, or whether some problems are specific to our industry because many devs haven’t used JS frameworks before.)

@bistenes what do you think of this?

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Idea 3: OpenMRS Website - Fix Google Analytics Sustainably and create SOP for maintaining it; & General Site Improvements (Medium Impact, Medium Effort)

It’s been annoying that our Google Analytics tags keep dying somehow, and Ian and I are the ones who keep catching this and having to fix it. Yet our GA tags keep breaking and this isn’t discovered until I try to find out the impact of our new Product site pages, only to discover that zero traffic has been logged for weeks or even months.

Our website squad is also quite small and doesn’t seem to have bandwidth for all the work and improvements that could be done. We also haven’t received much actionable feedback on the new site. So, ideas:

  • Fix Google Analytics and create SOP for maintaining it
  • General Site Improvements recommendations
  • Improvements to be made to improve Donor awareness/appeal
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Idea 4: Jira and Confluence Housekeeping best practices (Medium Impact, Small Effort)

According to past projects, this team has gurus for how to optimize Jira & Confluence, and how to keep them clean.

For Confluence, we don’t have much guidance on how to keep our documentation fresh. Maybe they know of a process similar to our Jira Clean-Up process that we could apply.

For Jira, I’ve documented our Jira Graveyard SOP; they could review this and our Jira and make suggestions for improvement.

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@cintiadr mentioned that she was going to put something together for this. Any updates?

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I like the idea of trying out KeyCloak. Even if we couldn’t fully migrate to KeyCloak, proving its a viable option, working out configuration details, and defining the strategy to migrate would all be valuable.

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@grace i like all your four ideas. :slightly_smiling_face:

They are critical needs of our community.

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I can think of alternate ways of doing Ideas 2, 3, and 4 with existing squads, teams, and 2022 fellows. Idea #1 has dogged us for a long time.

Our last submission was done at the last minute, gave a very high level idea of what we’d do, and did not succeed. This time around, we need to be more specific about what we expect the Atlassian volunteer to do over the course of the 12 weeks. What milestones will they hit? When?

@burke, it sounds like you have some ideas around this. Are there any additional actions you think they should take?

  • Prove Keycloak is a viable solution
  • Work out configuration details
  • Define a strategy for OpenMRS to migrate from OpenMRS ID to Keycloak

This application will become our scope of work with Atlassian. So what tangible outputs do you expect for each one of these activities? How long will each one take?

We need to have a strong draft of the application by 12pm PT on Friday so that I can finalize and submit it by January 30 (Sunday).

Here’s a Google doc with their template.

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Thanks to @cintiadr, we have a solid draft going!

So this is the last call for feedback on our Atlassian Engage 4 Good Project application. In 90 minutes, I’ll start polishing it up and get it ready for submission.

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The application is in! HUGE thanks to @cintiadr @burke and @grace for helping write up our application.

Here’s what happens next:

  • 31January - 4 February: The Atlassian Foundation assesses and prioritises projects
  • 7 February - 28 February: Volunteers join successful projects and contact organisation. Unsuccessful projects will be notified.
  • 28 February - 20 May: Project kick off meetings and project delivery

We’ll post updates here as we get them.

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Thank you so much @jennifer for pushing this!! :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers: Would be SO meaningful to have the OpenMRS ID app addressed.

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:partying_face: Great news, everyone! We heard back from Atlassian about our project proposal and we’ve passed muster. It’s now up to us to convince enough Atlassians to give us a hand. :muscle:

How? We’re invited to do a 2 minute pitch on February 22 at 8pm UTC | 12pm PST (date changed due to US holiday on the 21st).

Read on for details…

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for your application to our Engage 4 Good skilled volunteering program. Our team of Atlassians have assessed your application for eligibility, potential impact, feasibility and suitability and it’s looking good!

Now we need to recruit our volunteers. Projects will only commence if a full volunteer team is formed which means we need your help.

Join us to pitch your project and inspire volunteers to give you a hand!

When: Monday 21st February 12.00pm - 12.45pm PST

A calendar invitation will follow this email. Please RSVP as soon as possible by accepting or declining the invitation.

Each organisation will have 2 minutes to pitch followed by 1 minute of questions. We encourage you to share your cause to inspire action then explain the problem you need help with. Keep it light and casual - Atlassians aren’t a formal bunch so no slides, just you. We will share links to your project during the event so volunteers can read more and join the project.

Can’t attend? Send us a video and we will play it during the event.

Please advise if you require a copy of your project application and let us know if you have any other questions.

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Should we practice our pitch in the S&O call preceeding this time/date?

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Update: Here’s the 2-min video pitch that Jen and I put together. Thanks to everyone who helped with input to the script!

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Got word from Atlassian, we have someone willing to help us :slight_smile:

Also, in related news GSoC 2022: Limitations of Migrating from OpenMRS ID to a new SSO System - #4 by cintiadr

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Excellent news, @cintiadr! Looks like we could end up with a few people working together on this. :partying_face:

Is there any follow up with Atlassian that we need to do from an admin side (I haven’t heard anything)? When can they get started?