dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Peeyush Agarwal <peeyusha@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I came to know about DHIS2 through GSoC and found the work being done by
the organisation really interesting and would love to contribute. I found
the project *Scriptable SMS Parsing* particularly interesting as I have *worked
on something similar in the past* where I had built an SMS based customer
engagement system for retail shops. I have also worked on parsing while
implementing a project in Machine Learning (for extracting features from
data).

*One way this project can be done* is by using Ruby on Rails as the web
framework for the interface. *The interface receives the SMS* [content,
phone number etc.] (sent to the interface by the SMS API provider like
Twilio <http://www.twilio.com/>, Exotel <http://exotel.in/>(only for
India) etc. by making an HTTP request to the interface). The *contents of
the SMS are then parsed *(Preferably in Ruby scripting language) and then
the *response is sent back to the phone after calling the Web API
<http://www.dhis2.org/doc/snapshot/en/user/html/ch28.html>*. Now, one of
the most important thing is *designing the user interface* so as to
increase customization and mapping incoming textual data to data elements
in DHIS2. The way this can be done is to *provide various options like
regex based (For advanced users) as well as intuitive UI based (for others)
ways to create formats and mapping the various parameters received from the
SMS to the appropriate web API data elements*. The *interaction with people
(sending SMS) can be made continuous* [if required] (where the new sms
query is dependent on past queries by the user which can be recognized by
phone number or ID) by storing the data of past queries in a database.

One feature I believe will be very useful is to *provide an interface to
test the SMS pattern where the tester enters the sample SMS and the
interface returns a sample output to the tester*. Also the *design should
warn the format creator when the SMS text length may increase the maximum
size allowed for a single SMS* (Usually 160 characters). An advanced
version can also suggest ways of shortening the format to bring it in the
limit. *If the limit exceeds 160 characters, the SMS can be broken down
into 2 where the 1st one is stored in the database till the 2nd one
arrives.*

It would be great if you could give some *feedback, suggestions and tips
about things I may have missed out or not considered*. The tools suggested
here (like Ruby on Rails, Ruby etc.) are the once I have used in the past
to build something similar. However, I consider myself a quick learner and
can learn new tools if required. I can also make a prototype before the
application period ends if required. On a final note, I am very
enthusiastic about the project and the way it can be used to improve public
health and save lives.

Looking forward to your reply.

Regards,
Peeyush Agarwal
Second Year Undergraduate,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
http://home.iitk.ac.in/~peeyusha