Announcing the Esha K Release

Development is underway on the final major functional release on the Mifos 2.0 codebase. Since this will be the last feature development before before we transition development over to Mifos X, we wanted this to be a big release that closes many existing gaps. This is definitely the case as we’re tackling a number of areas across the product.

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Mifos 2.5 (Samiha J) Ships!

Once again a special thank you to Jakub Slawínski, Lukasz Chudy and the entire SolDevelo team for developing and proceeding over Samiha J. Mifos 2.5 is another big release that brings a strong mix of functional improvements, technical enhancements, tools for getting data into Mifos, and integrations with other systems.  Continuing with our 2012 goal of making Mifos 2.0 a functionally complete group lending MIS before we transition development over to Mifos X, Mifos 2.5 smooths out some of the core areas of the product and fills some of the major outstanding gaps.

View the release notes for a full list of all issues resolved.

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Announcing the Samiha J Release

Our issue and feature planning is complete and we’re ready to announce our upcoming Mifos release targeted for shipping the first week of September.  This release will be code-named Samiha J. Samiha J will provide support for daily loan repayments, ability to bulk edit existing client data, import transactions via spreadsheet, a configurable chart of accounts, and additional REST APIs

Samiha is a borrower at Al Majmoua, one of our largest Mifos users serving more than 31,000 clients in Beirut, Lebanon.  Samiha has been a borrower since 2009, taking out loans to expand her 15-year Mouneh production (food preservation) business. By expanding her business, Samiha has drastically improved the quality of life for her family through these loans – funding her husband’s medical treatment, her daughter’s education, and serving her handicapped son’s needs.

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Mifos X API – Call for Feedback

We are embarking on an exciting time as we advance the next generation of the Mifos platform, Mifos X.

Keith and John Woodlock have released the first version and published and documented the full API.

We’re seeking the feedback and questions of any past, current, and interested developers or for anyone who has ever wanted to build anything on top of Mifos. As we build out the next generation Mifos platform, we’re designing it be easy to extend and we want to know if that’s true with what we’ve shipped so far.

This API will be the foundation of Mifos as an extensible platform that can easily be extended to support the delivery of financial services to the poor. We are hosting two meetings this week to discuss and gather feedback on the API and the vision for Mifos X.

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Mifos 2.4 (Vinolia I) is Live!

Since the community has transitioned in leadership from Grameen Foundation to the Community for Open Source Microfinance, we’ve been pushing full speed ahead on development driven by user feedback. Mifos 2.4 (Vinolia I) directly responds to this feedback, aiming to solve the major pains felt by the community and to take Mifos one step further in ease of use and going hand-in-hand with your business processes.

SolDevelo has been the guiding force behind ongoing development and once again has done a stellar job, shipping another timely release, stewarding community contributions, and developing long-requested new features.  When we’ve asked you what causes the most pain in Mifos – the answer is almost always reporting or accounting integration.  This release addresses those critical gaps by embedding Pentaho reporting directly in Mifos and including an integrated module for simple accounting support. Mifos 2.4 also smoothes out other core functionality through streamlining mobile money integration with KopoKopo, strengthening the loan workflow, increasing efficiency through support for transfers, improve handling of GLIM loans, and better control over historical transactions. Here’s a quick list of the major features with a detailed overview and screenshots of each feature.

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Mifos X – The Next Generation

Fresh off the recent Margaret H release, we’ve published the product roadmap for 2012. SolDevelo will be leading the community as it develops new functionality and extends the reporting and accounting capabilities for the upcoming year.  With current development plans squared away, I wanted to share with you what’s in store for the future. Our vision for Mifos is to be the operational platform to deliver financial services to the poor – whatever your methodology, however you reach your clients, we want to be the lightweight technology powering your outreach.

 I sat down with the leads for our community architecture team, Keith and John Woodlock, to discuss with them the Mifos X project, the long-term development initiative that will provide the community a revamped platform for scale and extensibility.

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Announcing the Vinolia I Release and 2012 Product Roadmap

We are pleased to announce the 2012 Product Roadmap including our next major upcoming release of Mifos, Vinolia I.  Vinolia is a member of Lumana Credit in Atorkor, Ghana. With access to credit and entrepreneurial training from their staff, she is increasing her income and improving the lives of her seven children.

Vinolia has been a fish monger her enter life and has been using her loan from Lumana to supplement her income and expand her business to selling spicy porridge.  Unfortunately Vinolia recently lost her entire house including her savings and loan passbook to a fire.  With up to date records in Mifos and utilizing the notes field in her client profile, Lumana was able to craft a flexible approach to disaster relief and repayment for Vinolia.  Lumana’s outreach is focused on rural women in Ghana – they are looking forward to continued enhancements on the way in Mifos improving ability to survey and capture information through mobile devices.

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Announcing the Margaret H Release

Following the transition of Mifos from the Grameen Foundation, we’re pleased to announce the first major release of Mifos fully supported by community members.  This release will be code-named Margaret H in recognition of Margaret Matinde, one of the many women that Nuru Kenya has been empowering to rise up from extreme poverty.

Margaret Matinde has been a Nuru client for three years. Throughout this time, Nuru gave her the ability to save and the opportunity to take out a loan to start a successful restaurant business. Now instead of struggling to provide for her children, she can send them to school and focus on building their future. For the past year and a half, Nuru has been using Mifos to administer loans and savings accounts to clients like Margaret through their Community Economic Development program.  Rebecca Herrington and her team have been an active and engaged community member throughout the transition.

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Mifos 2.2.3 is Released

SolDevelo released Mifos 2.2.3 on January 4, 2012.  This is the last maintenance release before on the Marie G branch before Release H. It contains more than 67 resolved tickets including numerous fixes to the user interface, various fixes to improve stability of embedded BIRT reports, and the completion of APIs to apply transactions to Mifos.  You can see these new APIs in action in version 1.2 of the Mifos Android Client which SolDevelo launched on December 23.

The JIRA release notes contain a full list of all the tickets resolved in Mifos 2.2.3.

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Mifos 2.2.2 Ships

SolDevelo released Mifos 2.2.2 on November 30, 2011. This release contains more than 20 bug fixes, a new German translation, support for adding question groups to the close savings/loan account workflow, and completion of the first set of APIs for Mifos.

SolDevelo’s inclusion of these additional APIs completes the REST API Module for all read/view functionality. This means that you can now build an external client/app/module that calls and reads anything from Mifos (i.e. viewing clients, groups, centers, accounts, repayment schedules).  SolDevelo used these APIs as the foundation for the first version of their Mifos Android Client which is available for download in the Android Market. Conflux Technologies and Udai Gupta are also using these APIs as they proceed on their offline client which is being developed as a Chrome Browser Extension.

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