dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

["Friedman, Roger (CDC/CGH/DGHA) (CTR)" <rdf4@xxxxxxx>]

Folks --
     I wanted to feed back some experiences from the Ghana
implementation work which has gone on for the last 3 weeks here and also
during Denis Adeletey's visit to Oslo.
     *  If you click Save on just about any form when your session has
timed out, it appears as if the Save has succeeded and the timeout
relogin does not occur until the next menu item is selected.  The user
will already be annoyed at losing work, but to discover it some time
later than when the added element turns up missing will be doubly
frustrating.
     *  The form editor still has an inconsistent, inconvenient
interface with unpredictable behaviors.  I know we are using it less
often due to Word/Excel import, but it is virtually impossible to make
even a minor change to an imported form using the form editor.
     *  The floating window  (data entry and form editor) is still
awkward and too frequently in the way.  Can we go to a taskpane
approach?
     *  There ought to be "Can change password?" and "Password forced
change frequency" attributes to the user table and associated
functionality.  The user should not need edit authority on the user
object to change their own password, but the ability to do so should be
controllable in the case of intentionally shared passwords.
     *  There ought to be some group-based assignments of datasets to
org units and roles.  This is currently a tedious and error prone
process.
     *  There ought to be better group editing capabilities.  It ought
to be possible to start with an existing groupset, clone it, then merge
groups, edit group names, and transfer assigned objects (indicators,
data elements, org units) from one group value to another.
     *  The category combo options mechanism has got to be more amenable
to change.  Right now, you have to deassign the category combo from all
data elements (and indicators and validation rules) that use it, delete
the combo, delete and recreate the category, recreate the combo,
reassign the data element.  In the meantime, the data has become
dissociated from its categories.  I know that there are a lot of
difficulties with changing options, especially in the distributed
context, but at least it ought to be possible to add a new category
option to a category involved in a category combo without destroying
anything.
     *  There need to be some extra text, numeric and object fields in
the org unit table to which the implementer can assign field names and
required status, and which show up on the org unit maintenance form.
One org code is never enough to match up with other systems, there is
always a town or postal code or some other address/contact piece to be
added.  You sinned against the users by simply discarding fields from
the org unit table when you changed its structure.
     *  There needs to be access to the organization table for
calculating indicators, for example, # of facilities of type x per 1000
population.  I know this doesn't deal adequately with the time
dimension, but the whole system doesn't deal adequately with data
elements that change slowly or infrequently.  Perhaps the way to deal
with this is to automatically create a data element with daily frequency
that tracks the current value of an org unit attribute and changes in a
stepwise way.
     *  The user interface should be amenable to more customization,
even on a per user basis.  The DHIS2 logo and flag ought to be locations
fillable from a set of povided and uploaded images.  There ought to be a
place for a "daily" message.
     *  There needs to be more granularity of administrative privileges
and they ought to be assignable on an org unit basis.  Right now, we
have to do too much administration at the national and regional level
because the authorities are too powerful and unscoped.
     *  I have a lot of reservations about the impending demise of
calculated variables.  I understand the impulse to separate inputs from
outputs.  But without calculated variables, the utility of the dataset
report will be lost; the user will need to understand two different
technologies to create the same output.  Also, sometimes the data
collected on the form is more granular than that which is to be put into
the data cube, but not yet so numerous or repetitive as to require a
line listing.  In the case of Ghana, we have a form where the current
use and inventory of each vaccine is recorded by lot number and
doses/vial.  For each vaccine, we have a maximum of 4 lot
number-doses/vial combinations.  The number we want to save is the
current use and inventory of doses of each vaccine, a simple calculation
but soon not to be available to us.
     I hope this raises some discussion and that some of it gets on the
roadmap.
Cheers, Roger