Revised Guide for New and Curious
Why Join?
Thank you for your interest in joining the global OpenMRS Community! We're made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and skill sets, from development to translation, to create and maintain solutions to various countries' problems, as shown below. This is an open source project where your code, documents, QA testing, and translations can literally help save lives. Your contributions help OpenMRS improve health care delivery in resource-constrained environments.
This page will help you get started by joining our communication channels and finding the right project team or squad that you want to contribute towards. Whether you are looking for a short-term project or to grow your contribution and skills over the long term, we hope this guide gives you the information you need to join the community and get started.
1. Learn about OpenMRS
If you've spent some time on our website or our Wiki, you've likely heard a lot about how OpenMRS is transforming medical record digitalization. However, take a little more time and learn about how we operate as a collaborative global network through these helpful guides:
2. Sign up for Communication Channels
With a global network of members, staying connected digitally is important. Follow these quick steps to get set up on all our relevant communication channels. Different groups and teams may use different platforms, so learn about their differences with our Communication Channels guide. Then, come back here and go through the following steps to begin receiving access and meeting core OpenMRS members.
- Sign up for an OpenMRS ID - this is a key step for participating in the community.
- For real-time or near real-time communication, you can find us on the following platforms. Slack and Telegram are both synced with our IRC channel, so no need to join all three! (Note these are more developer-centric, but everyone is welcome)
- Join the OpenMRS Slack
- Join #OpenMRS on irc.freenode.net
- Join the OpenMRS Telegram channel
- Sign into our Community Forum, OpenMRS Talk, with your OpenMRS ID. Introduce yourself to other members of the community! If you're new to Discourse, click on your first notification to begin the interactive tutorial.
- Make yourself familiar with the OpenMRS Wiki, or bookmark it for later!
3. Meet the Teams
OpenMRS is made up of teams whose work is crucial to routine and long-term community activities, projects, and/or modules. Our teams draw on a wide range of abilities and skills. Read more about our current teams and find your fit!
| Strategy and Operations | QA Support | Technical Action Committee |
|---|---|---|
The Strategy and Operations Team provides overall governance of our community and operations. That includes community conventions, budget planning, collaboration with third parties, and upholding community values. If you're interested in helping the strategic direction of OpenMRS, come learn more about us. All are welcome. | Healthcare systems demand reliable software, so we must always focus on testing OpenMRS code. Whether or not you’re a developer, consider helping us test OpenMRS Releases. | The Technical Action Committee (TAC) oversees OpenMRS' overall technical and system architecture. Their goal is to ensure our software products are built and released correctly. Anyone is free to contribute to TAC starting with participating in weekly team calls. |
| Project Management | Documentation | Global Events |
The OpenMRS community is a dense and interlinking web of collaborators. To help stay organized and ensure anticipated milestones are being met, the Project Management Team helps ensure everyone is on schedule. | The OpenMRS project has been around several years now, and our source code repository contains over 6 million lines of code. That makes for a lot of documentation. Some of that documentation is good, some of it needs help, and some of it’s missing. That’s where you come in. Do you love writing? Enjoy organizing? Like information architecture or project management? We can use your help. | The Global Events eam is responsible for bringing the OpenMRS community together, globally and locally, in-person or virtually, Our primary purpose is organizing the annual Implementer's Meeting, from developing the budget to planning individual events. If you have a passion for event planning, we can use your enthusiasm and skill. |
Squads
Looking for a short-term or a more focused commitment? Squads are smaller groups working on discrete/time-limited community activities, projects, and modules. Squads are supported by Teams, which perform more general work. Here are the primary Squads looking for contributors:
| Squad | Project(s) (with Jira links) | Looking for | Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microfrontends & 3.0 Frontend Squad | Microfrontends Architecture - Extensible, configurable and independently deployable frontend features. Get your frontend live and updated fast. Frontend architecture designed for extensible and configurable apps and widgets. and Next Generation Frontend for OpenMRS ("OpenMRS 3.0") - re-doing the frontend with Carbon Design System and new workflows and functionality (e.g. labs, orders)
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| Analytics Engine (including ETL and reporting improvement) | Analytics Engine MVP - Tools for transforming OpenMRS data into a FHIR based warehouse |
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| OpenMRS Dictionary Management (OCL for OpenMRS) | OpenMRS Dictionary Management - A front-end for organizations to manage, edit, and share medical terminologies.
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| COVID-19 Response | COVID-19 DHIS2 Integration improvement |
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| Platform & RefApp Maintenance | Update core platform (the universally shared backend of OpenMRS) and the Reference Application (recommended bundle that creates a frontend) with necessary tech stack updates, bug fixes, and urgent feature requests. Platform 2.5 Release: Stack Upgrade (learn more) |
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After I've found a project I want to help, how do I begin contributing?
Every project will have a home page full of relevant information including meeting times, group members, communication channels, and other helpful links and resources. As some projects operate differently from others, make sure to thoroughly read over their project pages to find the best means of contributing. This can include attending weekly meetings, assisting with documentation, or visiting a project's Jira board.
5. Bookmark these Community Resources
OpenMRS Academy Squad
If you are interested in education and instructional design, the OpenMRS Academy Squad creates educational materials to be used in the OpenMRS Academy Course.
Community Meeting Calendar
Interested in learning more about any of the teams or squads listed above? Join one of the weekly meetings listed below - click on the links for more information on how to attend.
Project Help
Want a project suitable for a team, or an adventurous individual? Look at our Available Projects list, and click on the project name for more information and contact information for the project's author and/or mentor.
If you want to work on a new project, we would love to entertain your ideas. To create a new project, either start a topic on OpenMRS Talk to gauge community support or learn if similar projects have been started. When you're ready to move forward, copy the New Project Template into the Unassigned Projects section. You can also share your idea with us in our Discussion Platform and members of our community will be happy to facilitate you.
Priority Dashboard
Want to know where the most urgent needs are? This dynamic, draft indicator shows the top three strategic priorities to achieve our mission, and the status and current needs/gaps of the projects supporting those priorities. While many of these needs/gaps are developer related, this is a dynamic, regularly updated page and those needs can change.
Community Engagement Priorities
Find Help
If you need extra assistance getting started or finding a way to get involved, please post a topic on our Community Board.