Guide for the 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:

• Community Conventions
• Decision Making Playbook
• OpenMRS Code of Conduct

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.

1. Sign up for an OpenMRS ID - this is a key step for participating in the community.
2. 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)
   1. Join the OpenMRS Slack
   2. Join the OpenMRS Telegram channel
3. 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.
4. 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!

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:

5. Choose Your Flight Path and Begin Contributing

I've met the teams and squads. 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. Some projects have guides that will help you get started with the technologies, tools, and repos they use.

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.

Get a feel for how the squad or team works together by attending their meetings, joining their Slack channel, and going through past meeting notes, Jira boards, or repos.

6. Bookmark these Community Resources

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.

Priority Dashboard

Want to know where the most urgent needs are? These dynamic, draft dashboards 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, these are dynamic, regularly updated pages and those needs can change.

Community Product Priorities

Community Engagement Priorities

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.

Find Help

If you need extra assistance getting started or finding a way to get involved, please post a topic on our Community Board.