Now is the time to label Intro tickets! Here’s how.

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Do you ever review or file Jira tickets? Have you filed some issues that you can’t get to, but wish others would pick up those tickets?

We need your help! With GSOC opening up in a few weeks, we expect to see an influx of volunteers looking for intro tickets. We want to make sure that we have:

  1. Lots of intro tickets for people to choose from

  2. Some clarity and guidance in those tickets so that people can quickly make progress on tackling an issue

An Intro Ticket is:

  • Low complexity

  • Possible for someone brand new to the community to address

  • The more detail, the better

How to label an Intro Ticket:

  1. Find a ticket to label. You might want to review issues you’ve created in the past - here’s a simple search query you can use: creator = currentUser()
  2. Add the intro label:
  3. Details: Description should give background information and a proposed solution/outcome, so a newcomer knows where to start, as well as any expected files to edit. Bugs should describe the problem, expected behavior, observed behavior, and instructions on how to recreate the problem.

Members of our PM Team and GSOC Admin Team are trying to do this in multiple projects, but the more help, the better.

Thanks everyone!

Other info: OpenMRS Ticket Conventions CC: @mozzy @dkayiwa

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Thanks for this @grace .

and by the way , youll note that some “Low complexity” tickets may be more complex than others ,meaning Practically not all “Low complexity” tickets may qualify to be intro tickets.

But atleast to make a ticket become as “intro” as possible , we would add as much details as possible ,since in theory its meant to be taken up by some one new to either coding or to the OpenMRS eco System or both

in other words an intro ticket atleast would be a well curated Low-complexity ticket

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I agree with you @mozzy, for a ticket to qualify getting a tag intro, it should at a great percentage be answering the what to do and how to do it.

Actually, i have been looking at the introductory tickets on the OpenMRS issue dashboard.
example

image
image1013×123 6.26 KB
the image above shows the current number or introductory issues. If one ticket is claimed for work by an OpenMRS developer, the total number of intoductory issues on the dashboard will change from 15 to 14.

But the rate in reduction of the total number of introductory tickets on the dashboard is extremely low, compared to the number of new developers joining OpenMRS.
I deduced as above because in like a month time(since January 30th), only 4 introductory issues have been claimed (the total number at the dashboard changed from 19 to 15). This shows that either new developers have less interest in working on these issues or the issues are too tough for those new to OpenMRS.

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Thanks @grace for reaching out. Thanks @jnsereko for also sharing a very good concern!

Our current number of intro tickets is very low (only 8 as i type). And at the time when we need them most. So let us fold our sleeves to add more. For those who may want to help but are not able to identify such tickets, one possible way to help is by looking through existing intro tickets that have been in progress for long (more than a week without an update). You can simply ping (with a comment on the ticket) the assignee and ask them to confirm if they are still working on it. If they do not reply after a couple of days, or simply say NO, that becomes a good candidate to take back to the available pool of intro tickets.

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I feel like we need to set some sort of guideline regarding the number of intro tickets that one can work on. I have seen some volunteers finishing up tickets from our intro tickets pool, yet when they have done enough to a level where they should have moved on to more complicated (e.g low complexity but not intro) ones. :slight_smile:

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