My OpenMRS Fellowship Journey: Suruchi

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#32

PM Levels and defining my goals

I started my June with a sprint planning meeting for OCL for OpenMRS, so in this sprint, we are focusing mainly to work on automated tests and start the work for customization of curated concepts. Further, we have prioritized a few of the tasks to improve the subscription module https://issues.openmrs.org/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=215&selectedIssue=OCLOMRS-989.

I planned my next two months’ goal with my both mentors Grace and Hadijah and reviewed the last two months’ progress. Further, I presented my progress and plan with Jennifer in terms of both development and product management. I also received a few of the feedback and it was a great way to validate my work and share the experience so far. In addition, Grace and I defined the different levels of PM too. As we have our new intern- West in our team, I tried to onboard him and gave him an overview of how to start by sharing a few of the resources. I also attended the OHIE meeting and presented the idea of the trusted content flag with the border team. And we discussed the importance and need for a trusted content flag among our users.

I worked on an issue of trusted content flag OCLOMRS-998: Add Trusted content flags MVP by suruchee · Pull Request #708 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub and I have been working on a few of the issues of customization v1. Also, I am working on a clear review content change UI and will soon make a UAT call for design with our implementers. With the help of Hadijah, I learned unit testing from How to unit test React applications with Jest and Enzyme and will be writing unit tests for the OCL client app.

Further, I am focused to work on the tasks from the sprint board for the rest of the month.

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#33

UAT (User Acceptance Testing)

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a type of testing performed by the end-user or the client to verify/accept the software system before moving the software application to the production environment.

And, I send my last two weeks of June especially learning about UAT and design. I designed a UI for Clear content review in OpenMRS after a user resubscribes subscription URL from the dictionary manager application. Then I learned how to use, ProtoPie and used it to make a prototype for the feature. The prototype can be viewed at Protopie Cloud. Further, I designed a UAT protocol https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xItsZkNS4bppKuqBRBidMDZ08yvIp2ver45UimzdM_w/edit# and I did a UAT call with Ellen and got some constructive feedback regarding the design. Thank you so much Ellen for your time and valuable feedback. Also, I will be doing another UAT call with Mwariri next week. This practice helped me learn about Wireframe, UAT protocols, user interviews, UI and UX design. Also, last week I have been working to design a roadmap for customization of curated concepts(mini-roadmap) OCLOMRS Roadmap - Google Slides.

In terms of development, I am working in customization of mappings in concepts and I am working in unit and E2E tests. I am working on backlog curation for the dictionary manager project and will be conducting Sprint Planning in early July.

Further, I will work on the issues related to the customization of concepts for the next month.

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#34

Last week on Saturday morning, after the end of the two first weeks of July, I opened my laptop to write a blog summarizing my progress. I was excited to share about the mini-community meeting and my other achievement. But as soon as I opened my laptop I received very sad and tragic news about our beloved community member, our hero, Joseph. I was shocked and sad. I could not hold myself, it was hard to believe. He was a friend, mentor, and a great contributor to OpenMRS. The news erased all my memories from the earlier week and could not think of anything. But, I know he wants us to focus on the positive thing and keep the momentum going. So, I am continuing work onwards and will be updating my progress for this month in the next post.

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#35

Hello everyone, I am back with a new blog summarizing my last month.

On the very first week of July, I did a UAT with Mwariri for clear content review while resubscribing OCL subscription URL in OpenMRS. It went well, I got a chance to interact with our users and received a lot of constructive feedback. I learned how often the re-subscription is done and we discussed the designs and color in UI. Then Hadijah and I planned our big priorities for the next sprint and worked in backlog, we did a sprint planning meeting and discussed our next priorities with all developers in the Dictionary Manager squad which include unit testing, e2e testing, customization of concepts, and clear content review. Further, I worked in MVP for the trusted content flag to tag the content whether it’s authentic or not OCLOMRS-998: Add Trusted content flags MVP (#708) · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client@e30f9ce · GitHub Ian helped me a lot to understand about the redux and reducer and it’s working while working on this issue. And also I worked in unit testing for “Creating Organization” OCLOMRS-1012:Create Organisation page/component test (#717) · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client@7df8d97 · GitHub and Hadijah helped me to understand more about the unit testing.

We had an “OpenMRS mini-meeting” in the second week, it was a refreshing meeting and I felt well connected with all the community members once again from April. The major highlight of the meeting was the 3.0, implementer’s talk, squad-showcase, and lighting talk. The most exciting part was the quiz by grace. We all got energetic and actively participated, and it was really fun. It’s the beauty of OpenMRS meetings that the participant never gets bored with our unique idea of breakout rooms, quiz, and lightning talks. Further, I shared the idea of Product management with the community in lightning talk Product Management Explained - YouTube and, I presented Dictionary Manager’s squad among the team, and I received motivating responses from the community members.

But at the end of the week, we got very tragic and sad news about our beloved friend and mentor Joseph. We were sad and scattered, it was like a bad dream and hard to believe. And later next week, we had a program for remembering and celebrating Kaweesi. We remembered him and it was nice to know about his work in the community and Uganda and to see how much everyone love him. We all miss him and it is a great loss to the community, and the gap cannot be filled. But we are trying hard to gather together ourselves and working to keep the momentum going.

So last week, I worked on an automated test for creating a version. Hadijah helped me a lot to understand its working. As running the test took a lot of time and we were trying different methods, it took more than 2 hrs but I am thankful to Hadijah that she stayed with me and helped me fix the issue.

Further, I will be working in Dictionary manager enhancement and automated test for next month and I will be working on a separate project https://docs.google.com/document/d/1znjfkoze1io4uxZi5TM8Pf0FM_5Ihov9yuTZeol73ek/edit with Hadijah to develop my react and overall front-end skills.

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#36

Always there to offer any assistance I can :hugs: , and thanks for your resilience and openness to learning @suruchi, continue the good work.

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#37

I started my first week of August with the planning of the next two months’ goals in terms of development and product management. I worked with both of my mentors Grace and Hadijah to analyze what I accomplished in the last two months my challenges and then we decided on the goals for the next two months. My goal for the next two months is to learn advance react then to work on customization and other improvements in Dictionary manager. Then I presented my goals and plan to Jennifer and received feedback and suggestions.

Further, I worked on automated tests including the tickets https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/OCLOMRS-970, https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/OCLOMRS-984 and https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/OCLOMRS-790 to test the workflow of copy subscription URL, copy dictionary and edit organization.

In terms of product management, during the first week, I organized a sprint planning meeting and all the developers joined to plan for this month. We analyzed the remaining ticket from the previous sprint and pulled it to this sprint and reassigned it. Also, we planned this sprint to focus primarily on the implementer’s requirements and bug fixes. After the planning, we released a new version of Dictionary manager and released a release, not including the major release features and fixes Dictionary Manager v 1.4.0 Released: Easier Concept Re-Use, Trusted Content Flag, and more. This practice has helped me strengthen my communication skills.

For the rest of the month, I will be focusing on the sprint task and my project with Hadijah.

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#38

During the last two weeks of August, I worked mainly in bug fixes for Dictionary Manager, though there are still some of the bugs to be fixed but all the developers in Dictionary Manager Squad are working hard to resolve all the issue. As many bugs were causing issue to MSF team so we had a session with Michael to understand the issues, listed it down and worked in it. I have particularly worked on https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/OCLOMRS-1032, https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/OCLOMRS-1034.

At the end of August we had a sprint planning as a retro for last month and planning for September. We concluded all the tasks and started a new sprint. Further we had a release in production with automated testing in and many bug fixes including. Further we concluded the unit test for organization. And for September, we are aligned to focus on bug fixes and customization feature. Sprint Board for September can be viewed at Log in - OpenMRS Issues.

As Hadijah and I are working on a project to enhance the project development and react skills, I am learning project planning starting from requirement analysis to project development. I have also learned docker and google login in this project. Further, the project can be viewed at https://github.com/suruchee/authors-heaven and it is under progress.

Now, I am working to fix bugs as a main priority and customization in Dictionary Manager and will work to finish the react project.

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#39

User Research and Bug fixes

I started my September doing the user research for Dictionary Manager, I took interviews with a few of our users and will be doing more during the month of September. My goal to interview our user is to understand what our user says about the product, how they use it and what are their pain points while using the application. Further, while talking to users, I found which features are more used by users and what are the features wished by the user. This interview really helped me get connected with the implementers and will help me define the future roadmap. As I am still trying to interview more users, the final outcome is yet to complete so I have planned to present the final findings to the team by the end of this month.

Further, in Dictionary Manager, we worked to fix the existing bugs in the application and after resolving the issues we made a mid-month release as the bugs were causing real issues to the implementer. The fix included - back button fix, selecting language issues, different label fix, displaying source name issue, pagination, and searches. I am also learning advanced react to use API and implement in react and reducer.

For the rest of the month, I will be working on bug fixes, user research and an advance react project.

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#40

User Persona

A persona in user-centered design and marketing is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product similarly. Persona helps team members share a specific, consistent understanding of various audience groups.

During the last two months, I was dedicated to creating User Persona for Dictionary Manager, and I was able to draw few personas by the last week of September. During the process, I interviewed five of our users: Ellen, Laure, Wamathaga, Antony, and Bailly. With the help of these five interviews, I concluded with three of our unique User Personas. The interview was helpful to me to know our users, how they use the product for what, and what are their pain points. Also, I was able to identify, what are the most used features and what improvements are needed in the product. So, the interview was helpful to me to enhance my communication skills, know our users, create personas, and most importantly it’s a baseline to create a roadmap for the product and prioritize tasks. I am planning to showcase the created persona in the squad meeting next week and expect to receive feedback from the team.

Further, I am promoted to dev/3, I am thankful to Grace, Hadijah, Jennifer, and Ian for helping me achieve it. I am excited to contribute more to the community and enhance my skills. Also, I have worked on two of the tickets last week in dictionary manager: OCLOMRS-1054:Avoid implying SYNONYM is a name type by suruchee · Pull Request #749 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub OCLOMRS-1025:Automated test: Add and delete members in an organization by suruchee · Pull Request #737 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub

Also, I have created a Roadmap for the October for dictionary manager and updated in wiki page too so that it will be easy for the squad to go through the roadmap time and again.

Last week, I was able to complete an advance react project with the help of Hadijah, working on the project, I learned- google login, use of react and redux in typescript project and use authentication.

By the end of September, I discussed my fellowship plan with Grace, Hadijah, and Jennifer in terms of both product management and development. I presented my last two months’ progress and my plan for the next two months.

For the next two months, I have planned to implement my findings from the User Interview into the product enhancement, to include more users, to make the product more stable, and enhance the project I have started with Hadijah.

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#41

I started my October with 2021 OpenHIE Virtual Community Meeting. It was a virtual meeting for four days and I attended many sessions related to terminology, FHIR and Product Management. The most exciting was OHIE21 Terminology session, where we discussed about what terminology and what terminology services are being used most by the users and also we discussed the issues faced while using the terminology services. And the most intersting part was the response from user which says the most used terminolgy is ICD-10 and most used service is OCL TermBrowser and Terminology Service and second one is OpenMRS Dictionary Manager.

Further, I worked in a ticket to unify OCL and OpenMRS Dictionary Manager Experience OCLOMRS-1056:Unified OCL and OpenMRS Dictionary Manager Experience by suruchee · Pull Request #750 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub. Also, I am preparing to present User Persona with the squad team members and OCL community with October and hoping to receive feedback from the team.

And, I will be working on the mid-sprint review, sprint tasks, and Roadmap in the coming days of October.

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#42

For the last two weeks, I was working on the upgrade of Material UI 5. Following the release, Releases · mui-org/material-ui · GitHub I am upgrading the Dictionary Manager UI to Material UI version 5 so that we get updated with the latest release and we get support from the mui-org later.

In the last squad call, I presented the User Persona Dictionary Manager User Personas - Google Slides for Dictionary Manager with the squad, I also explained how I concluded with the three-person, Devin, Connie, and Izzy User Interviews - Dictionary Manager - Google Docs. It was great sharing the process and findings. Further, I am excited to share with the community that in Nepal, we are trying to implement OCL and Dictionary Manager for content management in one of our government hospital which uses Bahmni. So, I am excited and happy to support the team during the implementation.

Further, I spend some of my time updating the roadmap and I updated it with a mini-road map for next month, November following the priorities based on the outcomes of user interviews Dictionary Manager (OCLOMRS) Roadmap - Google Slides . Also, I created a few of the tickets for Dictionary Manager aligning with the roadmap and curated the backlog. We will be having a sprint planning meeting on the first Wednesday of each month on the same squad call so it’s on 3rd November where we will do a retrospective discussion regarding the last sprint and further plan for the next sprint following the roadmap.

For the next month, I am planning to wrap up the upgrade for Material UI and test it in a QA environment and carry out User Testing with implementers for OCL online app.

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#43

I spend the first two weeks of November particularly working on User testing for the OCL Web app. We are planning to integrate the UI of Dictionary Manager and the OCL Web app so for more clarification on what our user thinks about the web app we are doing the user testing. I had prepared a set of protocols for user testing User Testing Protocol - Google Docs and I used it as a guideline to interact with our implementer. Thanks to Ellen from PIH and Antony from KenyaEMR for your time to help us know more about your thoughts regarding the application and your valuable feedback. We were able to find a few of the flaws in UX and realized that the users were mostly attracted by OCL’s search feature. Also, the User Testing has helped us to find user’s priority so it is going to help us to design the roadmap for 2022. It will help us to design a user-oriented product.

Further, we had a Dictionary Manager’s focused working session last week for 48 hours where we had some discussions regarding the product and we worked on high priority tasks. We discussed the ongoing issues and worked together for two days on Dictionary Manager. We were able to fix many issues and many blocked tasks were completed when we worked together.

For the rest of November, I will be working on Dictionary manager issues and designing the roadmap for 2022.

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#44

The last week and early December was the time of learning and sharing. As we all attended OpenMRS Implementer’s Conference 2021, it was the time of reuniting everyone and sharing.

We had a different session of lightning talks, unconferencing session, Squad Showcases and Plenary Session, and an inspiring virtual site visit. I was so much touched by a virtual site visit by the Intellisoft team. It reflected the work we are doing and how it’s affecting people. Further, the lighting talk was fascinating, I was excited to know everything about Ozone by Mekom, making the internet work in your language was a fruitful session and it was great to know about KenyaEMR usage in tracking COVID19 vaccination infection among PLHIV.

The Squad Showcase was a great session to know about all the squad and I am honored to represent Dictionary Manager Squad at the conference. I had created a video to summarise the squad work and plan for 2022 OpenMRS 2021: Dictionary Manager & OCL Squad Showcase - YouTube . Besides, I like the presentation from QA and FHIR squad. Also, the Plenary sessions: Country-Level OpenMRS Implementation Aspirations & Realities and Implementation Framework and Planning gave mush more idea about the implementation.

I also attended a few unconferencing sessions like OCL, OMRS concept dictionary as FHIR Terminology Service, Bahmni@next: Joining 3.x initiative, 3.x Integrations: Ozone HIS, OpenELIS 2.x update and OpenMRS & OpenHIE: FHIR Roadmap, FHIR IGs, & QA. All the sessions were a great discussion point and it was helpful to know different teams’ thoughts ideas and plans.

I am also excited to share more about Dictionary Manager with the community through a blog post Driven by Real Needs: The OpenMRS Dictionary Manager Web App – OpenMRS.org, where everyone can understand how the Dictionary Manager squad works. Further, I worked in two PRs OCLOMRS-1068:Add ability to reorder members in a concept set by suruchee · Pull Request #762 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub and OCLOMRS-1051:Pick concepts - Choice issue with same IDs by suruchee · Pull Request #755 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub for Add ability to reorder members in a concept set and Pick concepts - Choice issue with same IDs features respectively.

For the rest of December, I will be working to merge a few of the PRs and some issues on board. I will be working closely with Grace to plan for 2022.

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#45

I spend my first week of December at OpenMRS Implementer’s conference then continued the regular work of Dictionary Manager.

In Dictionary Manager, we did sprint planning in the squad calls and discussed the issues on the Jira board. Also, my work for upgrading the application to MUI5 has been merged OCLOMRS-1065: Upgrade the MUI to version 5 in dictionary manager by suruchee · Pull Request #760 · openmrs/openmrs-ocl-client · GitHub and can be tested in QA and Staging environment. Further, we are testing the feature of cloning concepts in Dictionary Manager which can be tested in https://openmrs.cloning.openconceptlab.org/ . The cloning feature is to clone a concept from a public source and pull it into the personal source so that any edits can be made. And, we are working on the Clear Content Review feature which is owned by Ken, and we expect to push the feature in the QA environment before Christmas break.

Further, I am attending the planning meetings of Dictionary Manager Plans and Roadmap for 2022 2022 OpenMRS Dictionary Manager Plan - Google Docs . We have concluded what things are needed to be done, further, I will be working with Grace to decide on how to proceed according to plan and when the goals can be delivered.

For the rest of December, I will be working on some of the issues on board and designing goals for 2022.

#46

Fellowship: Final Reflection

Happy New Year 2022 !!

I am now at the end of my fifteen-month-long fellowship program which was started in October 2021. It was a great experience of learning and sharing.

I would like to thank Jennifer, for making this journey more wonderful with her support and guidance.

Great thanks to both of my mentors Grace and Hadijah, for leading me to the path of competent developer and product manager.

Special thanks to Ian for always helping and guiding us to analyze any problems and helping me improve my coding skills.

Besides, coding the Dictionary Manager squad proved to be a great platform for me to improve my communication and leadership skills. Thanks to all squad members for the great teamwork.

I am looking forward to continuing my work in product management and development in the community.

5 Likes
#47

New Fellowship!! Excited and Commited :fireworks: :fireworks:

Hi everyone, I am back with my updates on the fellowship. My previous fellowship successfully ended on 31st of December 2021 and now I have started my new fellowship as a PM from March. I would like to thank OpenMRS and especially Grace and Jennifer for trusting me and again allowing me to contribute to the community as a fellow.

I was always around and looking over the Dictionary Manager and OCL in the previous months and now I am excited with my new responsibilities and committed to improving content management in OpenMRS.

During the first two weeks of March, I was involved in my regular input to user’s assistance. I interacted with Wamathaga and guided him to solve a few of the issues he was facing while using Dictionary Manager and further, I talked with Antony to get an update about his plan to use CIEL as their dictionary. Earlier in February, we were discussing different approaches on how we could make OCL and DM to manage content in his organization including the local concepts, and now finally reached the conclusion to use CIEL. Also, I regularly contacted developers working in DM and subscription module and got updated.

Further, I lead the regular OCL for OpenMRS squad call where we discussed the different use cases of concept customization, thanks to Michael for his efforts to present it among the team.

Now, I have planned to assist the Palladium team during the rest of March and conduct the regular squad call and update the backlog for the subscription module remaining issues.

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#48

I spend my last two weeks of March continuing to support the Palladium team. I had a session with Antony, Jacob, and Keziah. I explained how to get started with the OCL and Dictionary Manager application. The session was informative as we covered almost all the features of both applications and compared their usage. I have listed the feedback and questions from Dr. Jacob during the session which include:

  • Copy dictionary Feature- It would allow KenyaEMR to create individual dictionaries for all hospitals, starting with a Master Dictionary and then making the modifications for individual hospitals.

  • Feedback system - When creating content for EHR, most users make concepts then reach out to the CIEL team to verify and consolidate concepts. But our users wish for a feedback loop system within the OCL TermBrowser rather than reaching out to the CIEL team and waiting for updates.

  • Privilege and Hierarchy within Organization creation and adding members - User wants member hierarchy e.g. Admin, Manager, Junior. The organization has multiple members but the content manager does not want all members to have edit privileges

    • Notification system - notifying main admin when someone in your org has made a change
    • Do not want to review everything, but wants to be notified about everything that is changed

After the session and concluding the findings, I shared them with Jonathan, Joe, and Grace and discussed possible features that can be addressed soon. But we still need more discussions on the Feedback and Hierarchy feature.

Further, I lead the Dictionary Manager squad call, discussed the issues in the current application, and created tasks to address them. Also, I reviewed, tested, and merged two Pull Requests in the OCL client application. I also spend some of my time creating backlog issues for subscription module errors [OCLOMRS-1092] Remaining issues in OpenMRS module OCL - OpenMRS Issues.

I have planned to regularly look after Dictionary Manager and OCL and provide support to users during April.

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#49

OpenMRS PM Fellowship Journey 2022

Hi everyone,

I am back with my fellowship updates. I resumed my fellowship in June after two months. During the first week of June, I spent my time catching up with some of our fellows and squad members. I went through the official kick-off call record and learned about the google classroom. I am excited to use the classroom as it is organized and helps to keep the progress of work within a given timeline.

I had a call with my mentor Grace where we discussed the current priorities of OCL and OpenMRS Dictionary Manager. We also discussed my fellowship goals and concluded how I can contribute to metadata management and OCL.

I have planned to use and update my fellowship plan within the document. I will be having weekly calls with my mentor, and attend and lead the Dictionary Manager squad call. Further, I will be focusing on communication and research on different Global Goods OCL users.

I will also revise and document my fellowship goals.

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#50

@suruchi Nice to have you back to the community.

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#51

I spend the last two weeks of June mainly working on alignment and research.

I aligned with my mentor Grace and checked in with my goals this month and discussed the areas I could work on. Then during the last check-in, we discussed my achievement and finalized my new goals suruchi dhungana - Fellowship Plan Template - Google Sheets .

As per my fellowship plan, I aligned with our implementers. I talked with Wamathaga and Casey and found some of the existing bugs and UI sections which users often find confusing. I then forwarded the bugs to discuss with Joe and discussed the UI changes with Paul. Paul and I also discussed the form designs he is working with, now I will be working closely with the design team to enhance Term Browser UI.

Further, I have been working with Joe in designing workflow comparison of OCL and Dictionary Manager OCL/OpenMRS Collection Management Workflows - Google Slides. I have also worked on the roadmap of OCL for OpenMRS by aligning with squad members and presenting in the team OpenMRS Dictionary Manager Weekly Meetings - Projects - OpenMRS Wiki.

In the last squad call, we discussed the idea of the OpenMRS OCL module and from now onwards I will be following up to clear the idea and fix the existing bugs.

In Addition to communicating with different personnel from different organizations and aligning with squad members, I have researched metadata management of different applications which might benefit from OCL. I am going to share my findings on DHIS2, CommCare, and RedCap on the next squad call.

I have planned to work as per my fellowship plans for the next month including the communication, alignment, roadmap, and presentation of my research.