2018-05-09 Weekly Check-in

Date

09 May 2018

Attendees

• Felimone Amone Junior (Unlicensed)
• Dércio Duvane
• Craig Appl (Unlicensed)
• Clay Crosby (Unlicensed)
• Antonate Maritim (Unlicensed)
• Wambere (Unlicensed)
• Christine Lenihan

• Ben Leibert

Discussion items

Data Sources 

Q: Should we expect NexLeaf to create an API? If so, we won't need to display the image they provide through their current one.

A: Hopefully they will, but we're not confident they'll be able to prior to the end of June. (Note: we'd need it significantly before then in order to have time to develop against it.) Even if they provide a new API, they'll still retain the one which currently provides the image.

Q: We talked about standardizing the data submitted via email last week. Are there any developments/changes on that front?

A: The format is still undetermined. We'll get Excel files of some sort for e-SISTAFE. We're still awaiting information about the trimestral reports.

Q: It would simplify Nifi development to have files posted to GitHub rather than submitted via email. Would that be okay?

A: It's a possibility, but not ideal. Our users are neither technical nor familiar with GitHub. Ona is thus going to explore whether consuming content delivered within an email body rather than as an email attachment is viable. This would be ideal, given that it fits users' current workflow (and, as we've said in the past, culture and connectivity make our users more likely to send email than visit a website). As a fallback, Ona will look into having Nifi consume the files via Google Drive. Ideally it can authenticate via its API and thereby consume even private files.

In cases where data will be provided via a CSV or XLS file, either will do. Ben has a slight preference for CSV files, though.

Platform

Nobody expresses concern about using Azure. Ona currently uses v16.04 of Ubuntu - its latest release doesn't include everything they need.

The MoH is interested in hosting both SELV and the SELV-Dashboard on servers they own and physically manage. Although they won't likely ask to manage the systems soon, they'll definitely want information about what it would take for them to do so. The takeaway is:

A) We'll need to document hardware/software requirements.

B) It would be ideal to shy away from reliance on proprietary and non-portable dependencies like RDS which will make it hard to port our systems to alternate environments. For this and other reasons, we'll plan to run Postres directly on the same machine hosting Nifi and SuperSet.

With the above decision in mind, Ona will recommend initial hardware requirements soon.

Nobody has qualms with using Scalyr, but will chime in on the Slack forum if they do.

Ona already has Ansible playbooks to provision Nifi, and using them to setup Postgres and everything else shouldn't be difficult. Craig Appl (Unlicensed) recommends we use them, so we'll plan to do so. 

Misc.

Because it may take a while to obtain a domain, we should start working to so do soon. Ideally, we'd use a subdomain hosted by the MoH. If that's not viable, though, we should use a generic one which doesn't suggest institutional ownership. We thus shouldn't use *.villagereach.org. 

Dércio Duvane will ask the MoH if they'd like to provide a domain. He'll let them know that they have until June 8 to do so, after which we'll obtain one of our own.

Because the Slack forum's content is transient, please use Confluence for content which folks will likely want in the longer-term.

Action items

• Clay Crosby (Unlicensed) and the Ona team will investigate having Nifi consume structured data within email bodies (ideal) was well as files uploaded to a private Google Drive (fallback, but still alright).
• Clay Crosby (Unlicensed) will recommend server hardware requirements. We'll err on the side of too little, but won't hesitate to ramp them up if and as we find we need more. (We'll want to buy a reserved-instance, and ideally thus commit to a hardware configuration, prior to the end of June. For now, though, we'll use an on-demand instance that we can easily change if necessary.)
• Clay Crosby (Unlicensed) will have the team send Ben Leibert their public .ssh keys. 
• Craig Appl (Unlicensed) will send Ben their Ansible playbooks.
• Dércio Duvane will ask the MoH for a domain we can use. He'll also let them know that we need it by June 8, and that we'll have to acquire one ourselves if they're unable to by then.