Getting Started

[Matt]

Hello!

It sounds like we're in agreement to use cakephp for this project.
Next up, is to specify the sections, design the wireframe views and
then the database layout. I'm mainly interested in the financial
management section, but I hear you guys are planning more for it?

One mantra of software development is to release early, release
often. I'd like to have a release out by March 1. That gives us a
month to get some basic functionality working. Also, we need to lay
out some milestones and figure out which ones we want to get working
for this release.

A little to get us going:

Features:
* General features
** Easy to use web based interface allowing multiple members and
treasurers to access it at the same time.
** Easy to use mobile web based interface.
* Finance management:
** Members can mark if they've paid for a month
** Parse paypal payment notifications
** Scheduled emails reminding members if they've not paid for a month.
** Members can fill out a request for receipt. This gets converted
to PDF and emailed to the parties able to print and sign the receipt.
** Concepts of donation box, purse, and bank account to keep track
of funds at each step of the process.

For wireframing, I've only kinda used Balsamiq a little.
http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-web-demo/
Another possibly useful tool is Pencil.
http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx

I'll start putting together what I envision for views at least and
email that out later.

I'm excited to work on this project and especially excited to hear
each of your thoughts about this. I don't mean to shape this project
away from anything you two have already planned, I mainly want
something better to use for our shop.

#matt

[Dan Hess]

Joe and I both have looked a little at Cake and it's just going to take some getting used to how it works.  All in all though it seems pretty easy, we layout the database the way we want, and tell cake what to get from where and what to do with the data it finds.  Seems to lay things out quite nicely.

I think the releasing often sounds like a good idea.  It always seems that people are more likely to use something that is in active development than they are something that's only updated maybe once in a blue moon.  Even if we're only releasing a few things at a time it still shows anyone else that might be using it that things are being worked on and new features/fixes are likely to be out in short order.

As for what to do for the start, I think since there are things that we both want that are the same that's the best place to start, and that would certainly be the finances.  Joe and I have plans for this to provide quite a few things.  Finances is just one of those, but in my mind the absolute most important.  If I have something to manage the finances better (and automatically more or less) it frees up my time to work on and do more.  I would say that we probably want to work on any sort of mobile web interface separate of the first release, but that's just me.  I've got a feeling that just the general web app auth and then merely tracking transactions will be a good bit for us to start off with.  The first because it's necessary to access the app, and the second if we design it right, adding in the things like automated receipts, paypal tie ins, and invoices will be an easy add in if we're not able to get those in by March 1st.

I'm hesitant to want to have it where members are able to just "mark" that they've paid.  I'm not certain exactly how you've had it at ML in the past, but I would think you'd want some sort of approval or verified process to that.  Something where that the finance officer is the one to actually put the mark, or they have to approve the members filing it before it actually goes down in the books.  Just seems to me that it could be a point of distrust in the books if someone really wanted to question it.  Granted we don't do the "pay what you can" type method, but still just seems concerning.

If you think you might be available Sunday evening to talk about this some, I know that Joe and I will be up at the space around 6 PM and could hop on to chat with you.  Aside of chatting, is there somewhere or something you have for a suggestion on how we might start listing said features we'd want and then prioritizing them so that we can set out milestones and expected releases?  I know I've seen Mantis used for bug tracking and roadmapping.  Would we want to use the issue tracking on google code for the roadmap as well as actual issues? 

Thanks,

Daniel H.

Google Voice:  (901) 214-5326
URL:  http://www.midsouthmakers.org

- Copying one is plagiarism, copying many is research.

[Matt]

On 01/29/2011 11:34 PM, Dan Hess wrote:
> Joe and I both have looked a little at Cake and it's just going to take
> some getting used to how it works. All in all though it seems pretty
> easy, we layout the database the way we want, and tell cake what to get
> from where and what to do with the data it finds. Seems to lay things
> out quite nicely.
>
> I think the releasing often sounds like a good idea. It always seems
> that people are more likely to use something that is in active
> development than they are something that's only updated maybe once in a
> blue moon. Even if we're only releasing a few things at a time it still
> shows anyone else that might be using it that things are being worked on
> and new features/fixes are likely to be out in short order.
>
> As for what to do for the start, I think since there are things that we
> both want that are the same that's the best place to start, and that
> would certainly be the finances. Joe and I have plans for this to
> provide quite a few things. Finances is just one of those, but in my
> mind the absolute most important. If I have something to manage the
> finances better (and automatically more or less) it frees up my time to
> work on and do more.

Ok, sounds fine with me.

> I would say that we probably want to work on any
> sort of mobile web interface separate of the first release, but that's
> just me.

That's fine too. I honestly don't expect to have this usable by
Makers Local until about the 3rd release or so, and then it'll just
replace what we have now, not necessary add in any new features.

> I'm hesitant to want to have it where members are able to just "mark"
> that they've paid. I'm not certain exactly how you've had it at ML in
> the past, but I would think you'd want some sort of approval or verified
> process to that.

That's it exactly. Members can only toggle between Unpaid and
Pending, then when an admin toggles it to Paid, it's locked out from
the members.

> If you think you might be available Sunday evening to talk about this
> some, I know that Joe and I will be up at the space around 6 PM and
> could hop on to chat with you.

Sure thing!

> Aside of chatting, is there somewhere or
> something you have for a suggestion on how we might start listing said
> features we'd want and then prioritizing them so that we can set out
> milestones and expected releases?

There's a wiki attribute to google code and there's a away to do
some roadmapping and issue tracking. This'll probably be fine for
us. I really want to keep all of this inside one interface. Tool
creep is horrible.

#matt

[Joe Ferguson]

This all sounds good to me. This is going to be my first group oriented software project for me. So please feel free to smack me around a bit. This is also the first time I've done any framework coding from the ground up. I've used smarty templates before and I've done quite a bit of custom phpBB, phpnuke, and Vbulletin hacking/modification.

I think finance is a great place to start, but I want to make sure we can keep an open mind on how much we want to tie into that, and make sure we're not coding ourselves into a corner. IE making sure our design is open enough to be easily modified without entire section rewrites. Maybe the framework makes this a lot easier to prevent.

I work really well with lists. Give me a list, I can get it done. For me to be successful in this project I'll be making lists of lists and then listing those on other lists. I think we should come up with a list of functionality that we want to release on March 1st, and go from there. If we can get other features/benefits by then great, but I want to make sure we're sticking to a wish list for each release as much as we can. Even if we don't make the full list for a release it'll be easier to sort what has been done and even easier to focus testing on new releases VS old releases.

I'm really excited to be involved in this, and from talking about this project to some of our members at the open house, it may look like we have a couple others interested in helping out. They may not be as comfortable with PHP as the 3 of us, but it'd be a great way for them to learn.

--
- Joe Ferguson
http://www.midsouthmakers.org
Google Voice - (901) 451-9256