2014 Google Summer of Code Wrapup – Bigger and Better than Ever

It’s been just over a month since the 2014 Google Summer of Code program has officially concluded so now that things have settled down it’s due time to recognize our fantastic students, their dedicated mentors, and their long-lasting contributions they have made to the community. Each of our students excelled in their projects and have cemented themselves as anchors in the community, eager to contribute more code and continuing as they’ve done this summer. A huge thank you to Google for allowing us to be a part of GSOC – Carol, Cat, and company have done a remarkable job with the program in its tenth year.

Apart from the students, the biggest round of applause goes to our mentors who each in their own personal style, motivated and invigorated their intern,  kept them on schedule and most importantly broadened their minds about coding, collaborating across cultures, contributing to an open source community, and collectively creating a world of 3 Billion Maries. This program was truly a team effort as many of our mentors paired to up to give their students full attention every step of the way and our students, themselves were so incredibly helpful to each other. I lose track of how many times each student would resolve another’s issues on the call or mailing list, and how students were forking each others’ code and building off it midway through the program.

Thank you to Markus Geiss for taking Rishabh Shuklah under his wing on the Batch APIs project. to James Dailey and Pramod for shining the light on PayGoSol for Antonio Carella, Vishwas and Nayan for harnessing the passion and talents of Ishan Khanna, to Kojo and Vishwas for channeling all of Gaurav’s energy into user-driven improvements to the Community App, to Nayan for rigorously coaching Diunuge throughout his project, Sander for shepherding Channa on the Client Impact Portal, to Anuruddha, Nick and Nayan for guiding Oleg on his business intelligence journey. An extra special thank you to Nayan who was co-admin and seemed to be co-mentoring with nearly every student. To Markus as well who was on nearly every weekly check-in call ready to congratulate each student. I already miss our weekly check-ins and Ishan teasing about all my note-taking 😉

Here’s a brief run-down on what each of 2014 interns completed during the summer – much of it has already been shipped and you’re probably already benefiting firsthand from their contributions

• Ishan and the Android Client – With a sense of determination like not other, Ishan dove headfirst into building out the native Android field operations app for Mifos X users. Singlehandedly with guidance from Satya and Vishwas, over the course of the summer Ishan took the community from no mobile app to having a fully functioning alpha version of the Android client covering all the basic use cases.  The Mifos X Android app allows field staff to view clients and all their account details including data tables, conduct all savings and loan transactions. on and off-line access to the collection sheet, and the ability to upload photos and other client documents. We need users to test the app and provide use cases on where it goes next. Grab the source code, download and install the APK and browse the user manual.
• Gaurav and Optimizations to the Community App – Gaurav was one of our most agile interns this Summer of Code as his project completely changed from his original assignment. Gaurav was initially tasked with converting the Community App into a cross-platform native mobile app; because Gaurav had such strong AngularJS skills and we had a queue of high-priority UI optimizations, Gaurav became our lead UI developer for the summer and quickly started ticking off the many much-needed improvements to the Community App User Experience. Rishabh responded directly to user feedback and shipped throughout the summer  a number of features – just to name a few: complete redesign of the clients, groups, centers pages, a revamped homepage/dashboard design, and long-awaited bread crumbs and support for the thousands separator!
• Rishabh and the Batch API – Rishabh too was met with a shift in project goals at the onset but was quickly able to take on a high-priority tasks that underscored others’ projets like Ishan’s collection sheet for the Android Client. Originally Rishabh applied to work on system-wide notifications and alerts but we quickly recognized his strong skillset and immediately placed him on the Batch API project that would deliver immediate value to all our developers and users across the community. Following a regimented schedule laid out by his mentor, Markus, Rishabh quickly delivered on this valuable technical improvement that allows Mifos X to pass instructions for several operations in a single HTTP request.  Ishan took Rishabh’s code midway through the summer and used it for the Android Collection Sheet. Rishabh also delivered on one of the top customer-facing use cases for this feature – bulk Joint Liability Group loan applications.

• Diunuge and Data Import Tool: Diunuge was entasked with taking the robust excel-based data import tool that Avik had built last year and fully integrating it into the Mifos X platform (previously it was stand-alone) and extending it to support new use cases.  Faced with a busy courseload, Diunuge had to kick into high gear at the end of the summer but fully delivered on his proejct goals and then some. The community can now access this powerful data import tool directly from the Community App with new functionalities supporting the import of groups, savings accounts, savings transactions, loan repayments, and more.
• Channa and the Client Impact  Portal: Working under the close mentorship of Sander, Channa was able to deliver a revamped Client Impact Portal that lays the foundation for providing a transparent view for external stakeholders and management into the summarized and individual financial and social performance of each and every client. Channa built out the back-end as well as the front-end with charts and visualizations to allow MFIs to communicate their social impact rooted in data and social performance metrics.
• Antonio and PayGoSol – Antonio had a lofty project in front of him and delivered on all accounts – with James as his visionary and product champion and Pramod as his technical mentor, Antonio built a completely new app, PayGoSol – the back and front-end  as well as a native Android app that give microfinance institutions an end to end solution for providing Pay as You Go solar systems to their clients. This application has great potential to help usher in a new wave of digital finance innovation as the many PAYG products seeks to scale their business models to bring electricity and clean energy to the more than one billion lacking it.  Antonio has built out the alpha version of the application so there’s a lot of work left to make it complete – we’re actively seeking volunteers!
• Oleg & Ad-Hoc Query Builder – Oleg, under the mentorship of Nayan and his colleague, Nick, tackled the project of building out an ad-hoc query builder to provide management and end users drag-and-drop style reporting. Oleg worked on both integrating Saiku as well as building custom code to deliver this important business intelligence feature. We’re currently facing some gaps in the Saiku roadmap before we can ship the full-fledged integration with Mifos X but applaud Oleg’s persistence and diligence throughout the summer.