OpenLMIS Pain Points

This is a running list of pain points end-users, developers, and implementers experience with the current version of OpenLMIS. 

• No documentation on how to get OpenLMIS up and running

  • This is true for an implementer.  Developer steps are decently documented

• Insufficient developer documentation

  • Please clarify.  Agree, for example, little guidance on domain, solution design, etc.

• No database documentation

  • What is required?  ERD, for example, is now part of a build job

• Average BA/non-dev type can't get started - hard to install (vs OpenMRS, etc.)

• Scant API & documentation

• Monolithic app tightly coupled with UI: 

  • Not extensible and causes lots of forking/toggling (e.g. new screens)

  • A lot of the variation is in reporting

• No way to contribute without stepping on the toes of others.

• No CI Server/no Continuous Delivery:

  • Update (3/16): We now have Jenkins running to exercise unit tests and DB integration, but functional testing is weak and needs enhancement (e.g. JS tests are not enabled). 

  • Successful build are not being deployed to Demo

• Insufficient test coverage

• Supportability:  inadequate error handling – lots of errors are caught and swallowed; logging is insufficient.

• Older tech stack – Some outdated tools and approaches:

  • For those that we want to keep, we need to update to latest/later versions

• Large number of tools & shared libraries that overlap &/or duplicative: Security is a concern and burden

• Poor architectural choices (eg: use of Lombok and approach to exception-handling) 

• Using the APIs requires first doing an interactive login

• No end-user documentation of test cases for manual/regression testing

• End-user documentation is lacking; falls to implementor to write it; reference documentation

• No way to provide user feedback

• UI is non-responsive: fails to size and scale, even on large desktop displays

• Poor performance in low-bandwidth environments

  • need baseline metrics!

• Lack of "offline first" design for occasionally connected environments for certain business processes

• No user training guide

• No deployment planning tools (e.g. facility list, users/roles, seed data, etc.)

  • Or is this a process/project management toolkit?

• No framework for creating dashboards or reports for a country

  • default reports have insufficient business value; Jasper isn't solving the problem

  • no user-friendly tools for creating custom/ad hoc reports

• No security model or transaction logging to help manage the system –

  • Need updated threat analysis (e.g. penetration testing)

• No way to create country-specific data collection forms (e.g. IVD monthly form) without forking

  • can't create custom screens/tabs to expose and collect custom fields

• Very hard to initially configure the system – 

  • all the seed/reference data for upload configuration is onerous, manual and time-consuming, e.g. master facility list, or the ability to pull in from DHIS2

• No way to add additional features needed for a country implementation without forking the code

• No auto-update/upgrade/migration process

  • e.g. security updates