My OpenMRS Fellowship Journey: Daud

kdaud · August 16, 2021, 3:49pm

                         EPIC 5:  AUGUST
               Taking the QA technical work forward  -->

The first phase of August has been encapsulated with learning more of the project configurations, as well learning more tools and reading more resources to be in position to providing technical assistance to others. This has been another vigorous learning experience(sometimes would find myself late to bed) and has enabled me acquire a wider scope on our QA projects and as well advance my technical skills in a more advanced way than before!

Of course leaning a new thing in tech everyday is my custom and will continue exploring more resources and tools to advance to higher skill sets in software development and perhaps be a resource in the QA team/squad and as well to the community.

          Working in Partnership With Other Squad Members!

Working together as a team is part of QA squad culture and is helping us to move forward with the tasks within the squad and I can ideally recommend other teams/squads within the community to embrace the culture. Its worth living as community contributors!

Besides working along with others and providing support to aid them progress in advancing to higher skill set, have been able to learn from them in return and as well grow my leadership skills in software project management. Thanks to @sharif @jwnasambu @irenyak1 @insookwa @grace @jayasanka @mherman22 @suruchi @hadijah315 @jnsereko and others for your cooperation in the QA team, its worth imitating!

                Leaning on the shoulders of the Giants

Leaning on the shoulders of @ibacher and @dkayiwa is another new experience and has made me grow to more like them in a short period of time have so far been with them. Every day I learn from them in every angle in how they make their work done and soon or latter I will be in their category in how they handle their technical work across different projects. I like how @dkayiwa makes his precise and clear comments on the PR and as well how @ibacher makes the PR author think like him through his reviews. From their reviews am now a consultant to myself before I make any PR to any of our repos to ensure the code base is of standard and aligns with quality assurance ethics.

As my culture states it clearly that “If you’re on the shoulders of the giants feed the giants and they will lift you”. Surely am being lifted by these geeks and soon will be a giant too in lifting others on my shoulders as well. Shout out to @dkayiwa and @ibacher for your endless support and will lean on you and consult you whenever I need guidance.

                 Silent mentors behind the seen!

I must say am learning as well from @grace @christine @jennifer and @janflowers in how they make things done and as well how they approach different scenarios in the community. These are silent mentors to me and am glad to learn from their experience .

                 Summary of the technical work done

Well a lot of tasks have been accomplished during the period and among them are listed below.

Developed two workflow tests: Encounter Management Test and Manage User account Test.
Supported others working on the remaining ignored old legacy test and in return increasing the test coverage to 95%. (Only 3 tests are remaining as of now with my eyes on them as the assignee(s) are working on them).
Developed the steps one can take to run the RefApp 2.x test locally and updated the QA Technical Documentation wiki page.
I and @bistenes provided support to @jayasanka who is pioneering the automated tests for 3.x RefApp and soon ending the project with a success regardless of the challenges pioneers face in software development.
Monitoring the test status via QA Dashboard and ensuring the tests in master are passing both with GitHub Actions and Bamboo builds.
In order to provide technical support to other squad members get acquainted with the new workflow based testing, I developed a demo that explains clearly the Technical Workflow for OpenMRS QaFramework (Length: 10 minutes).

The last phase of August will focus on:

developing new workflow tests.
providing technical support to other squad members and mentoring new members in the squad to aid them get on page with the technical work.
monitoring test status via QA Dashboard and responding to any test that might be failing.
providing technical support to contributors for 3.x RefApp workflow tests and as well write workflows as well for project. I know @bistenes and @mksd are keeping an eye on functionality that are ready to be subjected to automated tests and will keep an eye too and as well get close to them for their guidance.
of course exploring more resources and tools via google.com to advance to higher skill set as a QA Test Engineer and as well in software development.
Looking for ways to improve our QA processes and as well how other squads can incorporate automation in their workflows.
meeting Dictionary Manager(DM) geeks and brainstorm with them how we can achieve having separate workflows for each DM tests so that we can have each of them tracked separately via the QA Dashboard.
working on getting started developer guide for quality assurance and glad to be working with @christine in that angle.
sharing resources with other squad members via qa-slack-channel to support them in their growth in software development.
working on any task that my require attention as requirements change in software development.

mherman22 · August 16, 2021, 4:13pm

great work!!! continue the great work, including the mentoring of newbies in qa-work. kudos

insookwa · September 1, 2021, 8:52pm

Awesome Work @kdaud. And thank you for being helpfull

kdaud · September 2, 2021, 10:48am

                              EPIC 6: AUGUST

 Selenium Legacy Tests Comes To an End With  a Recorded Coverage of 100%

I found myself 2 days late to update my thread according to my structured plan however, for the past two days my hands were dirty looking into the five tests that were still ignored in master branch and finally they were made back to life .

All the selenium legacy tests in openmrs-distro-refernceapplication master are automating their respective functionality on every PR that is triggered and on every merge that is made. This is a good milestone for OpenMRS community, in addition to the new E2E workflow tests that are currently being developed by the QA contributors our 2.x RefApp will have a minimal maintenance burden since these tests will do the work of automating 2.x RefApp functionality behind the seen and we shall be tracking their status on our QA-Dashboard.This is amazing !!

A word of thanks to our contributors who have worked tirelessly to see the team strikes the greatest % a team can ever achieve. Great work deserves appreciation cc: @sharif @insookwa @gracebish @irenyak1 @achilep @mherman22 @jwnasambu

     Eyes now on E2E Workflow tests coverage for 2.x and 3.x RefApp !

Am putting my focus on increasing new workflow coverage for 2.x RefApp to make sure that the uncovered critical functionalities/features of the Reference Application are put under automation. We already have three developed E2E workflow tests that are running in qaframework repo and more workflows are soon joining the master branch. As a team we are looking at covering the remaining 2.x RefApp functionalities/features so that we support the community in maintaining 2.x RefApp and focus our attention on 3.x RefApp development with ease.

Besides increasing E2E workflow tests for 2.x RefApp, am also looking at how the team will support E2E workflows for 3.x RefApp to see that both projects are taking place for Reference Application.

                  New members joining the QA squad !

We are grateful for the new members joining the squad and getting started with the technical work. Besides providing membership to them, I and @sharif are providing technical support to get them acquainted with the technical work. Glad to see @mherman22 @jonathan @kmuwanga @pasindur2 @ndacyayisenga @jnsereko and others picking up tickets on our QA-Kanban-board.

Thanks to @jayasanka for laying out a good ground for E2E Automated tests for 3.X RefApp and even after the GSoC program has continued supporting the project. I have just learnt of recent of his mentor ship is providing to those getting started with 3.x Automated tests. This is really a good thing, thanks and keep the fire burning . Will be glad to create tickets for 3.x RefApp and avail them on the Q-Kanban Board so that contributors pick them up and work on them.

                   Learning skills from other fellows !

Attending the PM calls led by @herbert24 has not only helped me get to know what other teams/squads are working on but also enabled me acquire skills from other collegues in how they make their things done. Glad to be travelling with @sharif @hadijah315 @suruchi @jwnasambu and others who are a key element in my open source development growth since the journey began. Learning how to collaborate with others is helping me grow each single day in my journey.

                     Mentors deserves appreciation !

Am grateful to be moving along with @dkayiwa @ibacher @mksd @bistenes @grace @jennifer @janflowers and their contribution in my journey is indeed a blessing to me and to the community. Am always lifted up by these mentors whenever am blocked and this keeps me moving and pressing forward → in my journey. Each of them has lessons to learn from and a collection of all is what am aiming to become a life time mentor.

        Summary of the technical and non-technical work done:

Developed E2E workflow test : Inpatient encounter.
Cleared the selenium legacy tests that were still ignored in master striking the percentage to 100%.
Provided support to @jayasanka to ensure his GSoC project comes to success .
Updated the QA Technical wiki-page with the steps of running locally automated tests for 2.x RefApp, 3.x RefApp, and Dictionary Manager.
I and @christine developed Getting Started Guide with QA and soon to launch it out to the documentation team to carry on the next step. Thanks to @gracebish @jennifer and the team for providing guidance in documentation, this is another skill have acquired along the way and will look for ways to improve it.
Provided mentor ship to team/squad members and this will continue through out the fellowship journey and even beyond !
```
  First half of September will focus on:
```
Increasing E2E workflow tests coverage both for 2.x and 3.x RefApp.
Set up Coveralls to work with Module RefApp repo: RATEST-196
Putting my hands dirty with Platform core tests. This sounds interesting and have already got a membership in Platform Team/Squad. cc: @tendomart @dkayiwa
As mentioned earlier, I will provide mentor ship and technical support to other squad members and will work together with my colleague @sharif .
Reflecting on my fellowship plan to plot well the ladders I need to climb to strike my target goal in the program.

Every day am driven by the fact that a single line of code saves millions of lives around the globe and this keeps me witting more lines of code to have lives around the world saved .

mherman22 · September 2, 2021, 11:37am

Great stuff! looking forward to this documentation

These tests must be interesting to be a part of, would love to join in after getting my foot on the ground in QA —> @jayasanka

kdaud · September 17, 2021, 7:59am

                          FIRST HALF: SEPTEMBER
 Increasing Automated Workflow Tests For 2.x and 3.x Reference  Application

The first half of the month has been encapsulated with writing more automated workflow tests for 2.x & 3.x RefApp and great progress has been registered. The period has been another thrilling experience when providing technical support to other squad members get to learn the QA Framework and am glad that our technical team is growing in number which satisfies me especially seeing other colleagues growing their technical skills and expertise in QA Tools.

As a result, more automated tests have been developed for both 2.x and 3.x Reference application. Below is the QA Dashboard that tracks the current Project Status.

  2.x RefApp Automated Workflow Tests

 3.x RefApp Automated Workflow Tests

Breaking of Selenium Legacy Tests

One week after the team striking a coverage of 100% of selenium legacy tests that were ignored over the past years, I noticed build failures on the UI when Bamboo builds could not pass plans on weekends and this made me step back to look into why the tests were failing. It was a learning experience figuring out the issue through the guidance of @dkayiwa and @mogoodrich who lifted me on their shoulders and elevated me to configurations that helped me fix the problem. Though the solution required less than 2 hours to have things resolved, I found myself taking two days to figure out the solution but it was worth the experience because along the way I learnt more skills in trouble shouting breaking tests.

  3.x RefApp automated workflow tests breaking suddenly

As work around writing automated tests for 3.x RefApp is progressing, the existing tests in master branch suddenly got broken and this gave me another experience of its own. I remember spending a sleepless night and would not figure out the right solution. I googled almost every site that would talk about the problem but the solution there could not resolve the issue. I decided the following day to reach out to the community and in less than 10 minutes after posting the thread on talk, lo & behold a geek gave guidance on how I would approach the problem and following the guidance helped me resurrect the tests. Thanks @ibacher @dkayiwa for always putting your shoulders for every one, I guess my shoulders are getting stronger and already lifting others within the community.

 Interesting Weekly QA Calls

The QA weekly calls on every Tuesdays at 7:00 PM EAT are so interesting to attend and I find myself can not miss any of them. New members are able to understand the work around the squad and no question is left unanswered for any one who may have questions or concerns. Am always excited by the demos when squad members are showcasing what they are working on and get feedback from other technical squad members. Thanks @irenyak1 @sharif @insookwa @jonathan @gracebish @mherman22 @irenyak1 @ndacyayisenga @jwnasambu and others for making the QA calls interesting!

The last phase of September will;

Focus on platform core tests
Ensuring the Set-Up wizard for Platform is working
Get familiar with REST API automated tests
Provide technical support to the squad members

A word of thanks to my mentors @dkayiwa @ibacher @grace @jennifer @janflowers for putting your shoulders to lean on in my journey!

Write Code Save Lives motivates me every single day !

jwnasambu · September 17, 2021, 8:09am

@kdaud Thanks for your support always. Keep growing.

mherman22 · September 17, 2021, 7:29pm

Thanks to you and the whole QA squad for giving a safe landing in the squad. The instant responses for one with a blocker and growing our confidence in both software testing and communication. cc: @sharif @kdaud @christine

gracebish · September 20, 2021, 6:56am

Great job @kdaud

irenyak1 · September 20, 2021, 10:40am

Great job @kdaud.

kdaud · September 30, 2021, 3:21pm

                       LAST HALF: SEPTEMBER

              Increasing Test Coverage For Our REST API

It was a humble beginning when I started working on automated tests for REST API. This is because I had to learn some back end technologies that are used in automated testing and being a new venture I took two days when reading various google sites that helped me get started with the technical work. Then my hands got dirty with the codes when writing these tests and as of now the coverage has been increased for our REST API. Thanks to @dkayiwa @ibacher who with love have lifted me on their shoulders as I get my foots into back-end development.

       Supporting the ongoing technical work within the squad

As new members are joining the squad, supporting them is one of my priority and it is satisfying to see them growing their skills and expertise every single day. This has increased the technical members within the squad working on tickets that resides on QA Kanban Board.

Making code reviews is another priority now that PRs are increasingly coming from different squad contributors. Thanks to @sharif collaborating together in ensuring reviews are made in time for contributors work and providing significant feed back to the technical contributors as they work on tickets.

  Resurrecting RefApp 3.x Search and Registration workflow test.

Despite the effort that was made to resurrect the automated tests for 3.x RefApp in the beginning of September, one test remained in a comma. I stepped back to investigate why the test was failing and after spending a full night while investigating, the test finally came back to life.

As October arrives, I will;

increase the automated test coverage of REST API with a goal of shooting to 100%.
support Platform 2.5.0 release both for alpha and beta cc: @tendomart
provide technical support to other squad members and will work together with my colleague @sharif
immerse my foots into back-end development and will take up some tickets on Platform Kanban Board
reflect on my fellowship plan to plot well the ladders I aught to climb to strike my target goal as I come to the end of my journey.

A word of thanks to @dkayiwa @ibacher @grace @jennifer @mogoodrich @christine and the QA squad members who have made my journey to be a journey like no other!

                  Bye Bye September! Welcome October!

kdaud · October 19, 2021, 8:32am

                 LESSONS LEARNT SINCE 1ST OCTOBER 2021

Continuous Integration

card

Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible.

The goal of continuous integration is to minimize the impact of problems found when integrating different software components together. A regular integration cycle ensures that the components are integrated together in small pieces. The advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to deal with large problems which might be troublesome to solve. Instead, you will face only smaller problems which in general should be easier and faster to solve.

The true test which reveals if you are really doing continuous integration is this: What do you do when your build fails? If you are doing continuous integration, you will start fixing the problem as soon as you are aware that it exists. This is the condition which must be fulfilled before you can claim that you are doing continuous integration without lying. Keeping the build green should be of higher priority task than any other task in software development.

Fix Broken Builds Immediately

A key part of doing a continuous build is that if the mainline build fails, it needs to be fixed right away. The whole point of working with CI is that you’re always developing on a known stable base. It’s not a bad thing for the mainline build to break, although if it’s happening all the time it suggests people aren’t being careful enough about updating and building locally before a commit. When the mainline build does break, however, it’s important that it gets fixed fast

Learning that fixing build failure is of higher priority task in software development. This doesn’t mean that everyone on the team has to stop what they are doing in order to fix the build, usually it only needs a couple of people to get things working again. It does mean a conscious prioritization of a build fix as an urgent, high priority task.

                      Work Done

Increased the test coverage for REST API
Resurrected CI for QA Framework module. While investigating why CI for the module was failing since the 1st October, along the way had to learn Bamboo configurations for the module. Reaching out to the community for support was so beneficial in figuring out the issue and resolving the problem that had persisted on the module for over 17 days. And now the CI is green!
Screenshot from 2021-10-19 11-44-291920×1080 311 KB

During the process, I also learnt the handshake process that takes place during server certificate verification when CI is taking place. curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a “bundle” of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs) and these certificates expire after a specific period of time because HTTPS server uses a certificate signed by a CA represented in the bundle. Thanks to @ibacher who gave more scope on this subject through his comment. Great thanks to @dkayiwa @sharif @mozzy for your support during the process of resurrecting CI build.

                   Work To Do

The remaining phase of the month will focus on finishing the remaining REST API tests and also looking for a smart way of integrating deployment Technic on qaframework module for all the PRs so that a committer or even a non-technical person can just press a button and the changes are deployed on the server, run against the existing code base and returns the build result. When this is effected, will then look for a way of integrating the same in other openMRS repos.

Great thanks to @jennifer @grace @janflowers @dkayiwa @ibacher @christine @mozzy for your continued guidance and support in my fellowship journey!!

kdaud · November 3, 2021, 8:56am

                            LAST PHASE OF OCTOBER

The last phase of the month encapsulated many learning areas in my journey;

I got an opportunity to go through the workshop that was conducted by @achachiez from @AMPATH and was focusing on Form-Builder tool;

understanding the form features
creating a form using formbuilder
translating a medical form orders form into an Ampath form

The beauty with the form generated by the tool is that one is able to create a custom one and was interesting to play around with the tool and generated a customized form.

It was a nice experience learning from the attendees who were 8 in number coming from different back ground. I realized there is a lot to learn in the field of technology and being a good developer, one must be open and willing to learn from others.

I and @sharif had a chance to interact with a quality assurance specialist for one of the organisations which uses OpenMRS platform to develop health Information systems distributing them in various hospitals and clinics. As per the conversation on this talk post the organisation wishes to tap on the benefits of automated testing to achieve quality for their products before sent into production and currently we are looking into how we can provide the necessary support to them.

I also believe other organisations implementing OpenMRS platform in developing health care systems would be glad to tap on the benefits of automated testing for their product and am looking in how best we can support such implementations in regard to automated testing. cc: @grace

Integrated Heroku into qaframework but realized limitations with the tool in terms of pricing and rather opted to reach out to community for guidance on getting a Suitable tool for auto-deployment of application on github
It was interesting to see one of the automated tests known as Clinical Visit Test catching a bug in Platform 2.5.0 which is under construction. cc: @tendomart
Attended Mentor Office Hours which has enhanced my communication skills in general. Thanks to @jennifer for organizing these calls every Wednesday at 6:00 pm(EAT) that are helping those who attend to improve their communication skills.
Provided technical support to squad members and ensuring our CI is ever green. Thanks to @dkayiwa @ibacher who are ever present whenever we need assistance from them. I also want to acknowledge the great work from my colleague @sharif in supporting other squad members and also adding more test workflows to our module, of recent he migrated all the pages that were residing in distro-referenceapplication and now they got citizenship in qaframework module. Just few days ago he added Report Workflow Test which is now running in master!
Screenshot from 2021-11-03 11-07-541920×1080 175 KB

During November I will be focusing more on how best our implementers can tap on the benefits of automating their products and also make survey with different implementers of OpenMRS systems to see how best we can support them to better end user experience using their products.

A word of thanks to @grace @jennifer @janflowers @dkayiwa @ibacher @mozzy @mksd @christine for your endless support which has been a key element in growing my skills both technical and non-technical ones in open source development!

dkayiwa · November 3, 2021, 10:55am

That was not a bug in the platform. It was simply that the appointment scheduling module has not yet updated its resources to include support for platform 2.5

jwnasambu · November 3, 2021, 11:05am

Am surprised you create time to read through our blogs!

kdaud · November 3, 2021, 11:27am

Thanks @dkayiwa for the information on the subject!

By the time I was investigating the issue I thought it was a bug but now I understand from the provided information on the subject that the issue came as a result of the failure of the REST call that fetches appointment types https://github.com/openmrs/openmrs-module-appointmentscheduling/blob/master/omod/src/main/java/org/openmrs/module/appointmentscheduling/rest/resource/openmrs1_9/AppointmentTypeResource1_9.java#L20.

The solution was to update the supported platform versions by adding a string of "2.5.*" within the Resource to cater for Platform 2.5.0. Something like;

supportedOpenmrsVersions = {"1.9.*", "1.10.*", "1.11.*", "1.12.*", "2.0.*", "2.1.*", "2.2.*", "2.3.*", "2.4.*", "2.5*"})

Daniel most of your comments on talk posts and PRs are filled with something to learn

tendomart · November 3, 2021, 11:39am

janflowers · November 5, 2021, 2:27pm

Love all the interesting aspects of QA that you are seeing, experiencing, and sharing! Keep up the great work @kdaud. Our QA program is so critical to our long-term success in supporting Ministries with their healthcare programs. Have you had a chance to look into what @mozzy and @pmanko are working on for the “Testable FHIR IG” for OpenMRS?

kdaud · November 5, 2021, 3:48pm

This is one of my priorities since my journey began and ensuring each day I learn something new in software development.

Thanks @janflowers for pointing me to this amazing project @mozzy and @pmanko are working on. I hadn’t looked into it before but now have kicked off exploring the project and will contribute to its success.

kdaud · November 19, 2021, 10:10am

                             FIRST PHASE OF NOVEMBER

              Platform 2.4.0 REST-WS Endpoint Tests Finally Completed!

Platform 2.4.0 REST-WS end point tests that were identified by the Platform team have been automated and now running on every PR that is triggered on GitHub - openmrs/openmrs-module-webservices.rest: Provides RESTful web services for OpenMRS and also running with ci on the module via Bamboo. This is a great milestone for OpenMRS community since these tests do the work of automating the Platform 2.x RESTWS end points, support Platform 2.x releases and also will reduce the maintenance burden for the module. The automated tests status for the current Bamboo build plan for REST API is tracked via QA-Dashbaord

In a special way, I acknowledge the tremendous efforts by @jonathan who has done tirelessly towards the success of the work and currently finishing the last test logged at RESTWS-861. @dkayiwa @ibacher have been instrumental in guiding the contributors through their reviews. I can not forget Daniel’s review comment he made on one of my PR where he said “That open mindedness will take you to the moon” which motivated me to push forward the test coverage of RESTWS end points and now we have them covered.

   Test coverage for RefApp 2.x increased!

In the past weeks, we have had huge contributions from our contributors and more workflow tests based on BDD framework have been added in qaframework module. I and @sharif are providing technical support to the QA contributors through making reviews and providing guidance to squad members hence increasing the test coverage for OpenMRS Reference Application. These tests are supporting maintenance of RefApp and will support upcoming releases for Reference Application 2.x. Each workflow test status is tracked via the QA Dashboard for the current build plan and cucumber feature files are so helpful in tracking the test that might fail at any time based on the current Bamboo build plan through providing a report at cucumber.io which shows the specific step within the files that is failing and makes trouble shouting easier for developers.

Comparing with the experience of resurrecting selenium tests, I notice tests developed in BDD framework are more sustainable & maintainable than the old selenium legacy tests because BDD tests are well documented through feature files which uses a simple human readable language known as Gherkin which can easily be understood by non-technical people(business people, product managers and system users) and also makes troubleshooting breaking test more easier to the dev. All said, we may need to look into transforming selenium legacy tests into BDD framework to have all our automated tests maintainable and sustainable. cc: @christine @grace @sharif @ibacher

Have also worked with @christine on Getting Started Guide with QA and has been a nice experience learning skills in documenting for technical and non-technical contributors. The skills am acquiring through this work is helping me to do a better documentation on our QA-Documentations to have them provide proper guidance to our contributors. Thanks @jennifer who encouraged me to join the documentation team and @kaylinbracey who is taking us through practical documentation sessions on monthly basis! Looking at how I have transformed my documentation skills through this experience, I think one day I may become a technical writer along side </software development>.

               Work To Do

Am currently integrating a tool in qaframework module that will make it easier to test proposed changes, as opposed to the current pull before the changes are merged into master. This will make it easier to get feedback on proposed changes, from the product owners and other stakeholders. As well cut down the length of the feedback loop in regards to proposed improvements to the QA Framework module. The tool will be integrated in other OpenMRS modules to improve development processes and better our products!

A word of thanks to @dkayiwa @christine @jennifer @grace @janflowers @ibacher @sharif @jayasanka and our QA Team improving the QA Framework module to better OpenMRS processes and to release products with better end user experience.