On Friday, 10 April 2015 at 19:00 UTC, the OpenMRS Developers mailing list will be moving from Google Groups to OpenMRS Talk. In order to support the community’s growth, we are moving our communications to a central location to which our OpenMRS.org infrastructure team has full ownership. We’ve been using and improving OpenMRS talk for over a year now, are excited about its possibilities, and are excited to have you join us there.
Why the change?
Several reasons. As some current subscribers to the dev@ mailing list know, Google Groups regularly throttles messages since our group is of a large size. As a result, communications and work gets interrupted. Additionally, there is a limited facility to “own” the data that we submit to the group. While we’ll maintain archives indefinitely, we can’t export things like messages to another provider. Google is also (on 20 April) shutting down the APIs we used to integrate group subscriptions with the OpenMRS ID Dashboard. Finally, Discourse (the open source software that powers OpenMRS Talk) offers several benefits in searching & finding related content, re-categorizing them, and taking the messages and content we create elsewhere in the future as technology evolves.
TL;DR: Controlling our own information is awesome. 
As a current subscriber to the dev@ mailing list, here’s what you’ll need to do. If you do not follow these instructions prior to 10 April 2015 at 19:00 UTC, you will no longer receive messages related to developing OpenMRS.
1 - Make sure you have an OpenMRS ID
- Sign up for a free OpenMRS ID at https://id.openmrs.org/ if you don’t have one.
- Make sure your primary email address is up to date: OpenMRS ID - Sign in
- If you forgot your password, go to: OpenMRS ID - Reset Password
2 - Sign in to OpenMRS Talk
- Visit OpenMRS Talk (you’re here now!) and click the “Log In” button in the upper right to sign in with your OpenMRS ID.
- Come back regularly to keep track of all the interesting conversations happening in the community! Learn some of the benefits in this topic:
3 - Get email notifications by “Watching” the “Developers” category on OpenMRS Talk
If you prefer to hear from other OpenMRS developers by email, you still can!
- Go to https://talk.openmrs.org/c/developers and click the round circle icon next to the “New Topic” button in the upper right.
- Choose “Watching” to get an email notification of every new post in this category.
- You can do the same for each category on OpenMRS Talk if you want automatic notifications.
4 - Share with other developers through the web or by email
- Create new topics using in the “Developers” category on OpenMRS Talk at: https://talk.openmrs.org/c/developers
- You can also continue to email dev@openmrs.org from your OpenMRS ID primary email address. After 10 April 2015 at 19:00 UTC, emails will be converted to topics in OpenMRS Talk’s “Developers” category.
Need more information?
If you have questions, concerns, or problems, please open an OpenMRS.org helpdesk case at https://help.openmrs.org/ or write to helpdesk@openmrs.org. We’re gathering all feedback and slowly making adjustments to improve the experience of OpenMRS Talk for everyone.
For more tips about using email with OpenMRS Talk, see this topic:
Thanks for joining us in this next chapter of our journey together!