IHRIS Ideas List

If you wish to work on any of these projects, you can contact us at our Project Communication page.

Please see our blueprints on launchpad.

Completed iHRIS Ideas List has any completed features for historical purposes.

iHRIS Core System Improvements

<poll> Please vote for the iHRIS Core System Improvements you would most like to see completed. Add XML Representations of Field Data Self Service Mobile Updates Convert Configuration Data (MagicData) to MongoDB (or others?) Form and Page Editors Context Sensitive Help Web Services Write MagicData Objects as C Replace MDB2 (with PDO or ?) Explore Alternative Database Types (NoSQL) for Form Storage More Task Oriented Architecture </poll>

Add XML Representations of Field Data

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Defition: Standard XML Representations of Field Data

This would create a standard way of representing form field data safely as structured xml. Would be used by the report export as XML.

Self Service

Status: In Progress

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

This would be an expansion of the current role/task system that would allow person records in the system to login and have access to certain information about themselves or the people they supervise. The current access system is handled by tasks and roles. Certain pages and template content can only be seen by users who can do the associated tasks. With Self Service, the permission parser needs to be modified to allow checking for tasks based on the record that is being seen or modified. In some cases there may be multiple levels of checking such as a supervisor being able to modify records of all supervised employees or a facility manager being able to view all employees working in that facility.

Mobile Updates

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Build an interface that can work on various levels of mobile phones to interface with iHRIS. Perhaps using OpenRosa. This would allow remote users to look up or make small data updates through SMS or over the Internet. This work would involve building the SMS gateway as well as creating an easy way for administrators to define pages that will be viewed and updated from the mobile application.

Convert Configuration Data (MagicData) to MongoDB (or others?)

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Low

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Build a faster interface for MagicData to save using MongoDB instead of MySQL to try to improve speed to this information since it is access so frequently. Will possibly need to retain mysql as a write storage mechanism so that magic data form storage remains fast.

Form and Page Editors

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint(forms) and blueprint(pages)

Build an administrative interface to allow customization of forms through the application instead of using module configuration files. Building on that, create an interface to define display and edit pages based on the existing forms so more customization work can be done through the application instead of manually editing XML configuration files. More information: Custom Forms and Custom Pages.

Context Sensitive Help

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Set up more help links within the application so users can get direct access to help instead of having to find the relevant section in the manual. Perhaps even rewrite how the manual is used in the application.

Web Services

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Build a web services interface so other applications can access and update allowed data without having to export/import at regular intervals.

Write MagicData Objects as C

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Rewrite the MagicData PHP classes in C to speed up usage.

Replace MDB2 (with PDO or ?)

Status: Not Started

Date Added: 31 Jan 2013

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Replace MDB2 with a more modern database abstraction layer. Also review any queries to utilize the database abstraction layer so it's easier to support multiple database types based on user requirements.

Explore Alternative Database Types (NoSQL) for Form Storage

Status: Not Started

Date Added: 31 Jan 2013

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

This is to evaluate the possibility of using other database types such as MongoDB for form storage as an alternative to using MySQL. This would need to see the possible speed issues or other problems that could arise from using other database structures besides SQL.

More Task Oriented Architecture

Status: Not Started

Date Added: 31 Jan 2013

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

This is related to both the web services and form and page editors. This would involve creating a new page type that would be task oriented and can be called as a web service. The user interface pages would need to be modified to call these task actions instead of complete pages. This would require more AJAX functionality but would help to separate the display from the business logic and make it easier to create new tasks the can be based on user requirements and function by modifying multiple forms as the task requires.

Upgrade to PHP 5.4

Status: Not Started

Date Added: 31 Jan 2013

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Take advantage of the new features available in PHP version 5.4 to clean up the code when it is more widely available.

iHRIS Modules

<poll> Please vote for the iHRIS Modules you would most like to see completed. Leave Tracking Module Leave Management Module Mobile Roll-Call Organizational Chart Job Application Questions </poll>

Leave Tracking Module

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Add a module to iHRIS Manage to track an employees leave.

Leave Management Module

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

If done in concert with Self Service this could allow employees to request and view leave details directly. This would involve working with users in other countries to make sure the specifications fit their needs as well as being able to generalize it for the core system.

Mobile Roll-Call

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

The Roll-Call module is an extension of mobile updates to allow supervisors or workers (i.e. community health workers) to log their activity.

Organizational Chart

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor:

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Produce a org chart for iHRIS Manage that show employees and their supervisors. Could make use of the position report that has an employee and their supervisors Two main possibilities. Make it ajaxy and put everything on the client (maybe use canvas?), or produce org-charts on the server via graphviz.

Job Application Questions

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Low

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

A module to ask applicants a series of standard questions

Reporting

<poll> Please vote for the Reporting you would most like to see completed. Dashboard Reports Replace Flash Charts with Images JavaScript Charts General Reporting Improvements Geographic / OpenLayers Reporting Data Entry Reports </poll>

Dashboard Reports

Status: In Progress

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: Carl Leitner

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

The developer will Provide a new "Dashboard" page to the web-interface of this iHRIS Suite of software. This dashboard should be expected to contain 4-6 reports targeted to the user.

Replace Flash Charts with Images

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

We would like to remove the Flash charts and replace it with images. This can be done using pChart or anything similar.

JavaScript Charts

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Medium

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

A second step would be to add the option for using Canvas for the charts as well. We'd like to add some additional features to the reporting to allow more complex charts to view the data.

General Reporting Improvements

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: Low

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint(report view) blueprint(report builder)

There are also some smaller additions like displaying all the limits chosen for a particular report so it's clear what is being displayed and improving the interface for end users to work with reports. Interface improvements can also be made for the form relationship and report builder pages.

Geographic / OpenLayers Reporting

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

Launchpad Blueprint: blueprint

Incorporate OpenLayers and/or Google maps into the reporting system: Reports which are tagged with geo-data (e.g. Lat and Long coordinates for a facility) will have numeric and aggregate data for the report plotted on a map.

Data Entry Reports

Status: In Progress

Date Added: 31 Jan 2013

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

This would involve improving the User Statistics module to allow more display options for users to better evaluate the data entry as well as review changes made to the site.

Country Implementations

Status: Varied

Difficulty: Varied

Mentor: TBD

Countries where iHRIS is installed may have additional needs for assistance on customizations and modules. Capacity Project's iHRIS Suite page has more information on countries where we work. Please contact us if you're interested in this type of work.

Non iHRIS Ideas

Use Cases Wiki

Status: Not Started

Difficulty: High

Mentor: TBD

The iHRIS Project was built using use cases, but we would like a more open model to work on updates and customizations to our systems. This would be a module for a wiki (whichever seems best) that will allow easier editing of use cases so this work can be shared. It will make it easier for people making customizations to modify use cases for their purposes.