Developer and Implementer Documentation Improvements
Primary mentor | |
Backup mentors | |
Assigned to |
Abstract
Every week, several new volunteer contributors approach the OpenMRS community to get started doing programming work. We have quite a bit of material available for new developers to help them get started, but it's poorly organized and some of it is out of date. In this project, you'd work with our community and engineering teams to re-structure and improve this material. You'll work with recently-started volunteer developers to help understand what kind of challenges they have and help to provide resources that answer those questions and problems.
Additionally, OpenMRS users often face challenges is using some of the popular add-on modules to extend the functionality of the system. The OpenMRS Reporting add-on module allows people who implement and use our software to build customized reports for colleagues, funding organizations, governmental agencies, etc. This module is extremely useful and valuable to our users, but the current documentation and resources for using it are somewhat difficult to understand. This project will also improve and expand upon the existing resources by organizing the current documentation, and working closely with users of the Reporting module to describe the key aspects of getting started and creating reports with its tools.
Project Champions
@Burke Mamlin
Objectives
Update and create incremental improvements to the OpenMRS "Implementers Guide" book on FLOSSmanuals.net.
Identify and create documentation improvements for the OpenMRS Reporting Module documentation on the OpenMRS wiki, including optional video presentations or other multimedia materials.
Create a standalone "Getting Started for Developers" book on FLOSSmanuals.net, using the existing implementers guide as a resource.
Extra Credit
Because we're a free and open source software project, it's common for people to download and use OpenMRS without ever letting us know how they're using the software. We'd like to start featuring in-depth interviews and profiles with our implementers around the world to help our existing community and potential new users to understand some real-life applications of our software, and to learn about the people using it. These profiles would be featured on our OpenMRS.org blog as well as archived on our wiki. They may also be used in other marketing material for our project.
Identify and improve areas for "clean up" in the OpenMRS Wiki and its information architecture.
Resources
Downey, M., Jazayeri, D., Korytkowski, R., McCallum, G., & Plunkett, N. (n.d.) OpenMRS implementers guide. Available from: http://flossmanuals.net/openmrs-guide/
Maddox, S. (2012). Confluence, tech comm, chocolate: A wiki as platform extraordinaire for technical communication. Laguna Hills, CA: XML Press. http://xmlpress.net/publications/chocolate/
Morville, P. & Rosenfeld, L. (2006). Information architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing large-scale Web sites. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596527341.do
More TBD.