Thank you everyone who joined our August 2022 CHT community call. The event attracted over 58 participants and we had very engaging discussions and demos. Here is the Round-up call recording and the summarized notes from the call.
Agenda 1- A community story presented by the Partners in Health (PIH) Malawi project team on deploying HIV workflows in Neno District.
Agenda 2. CHT product management updates
a) CHT UI/UX evolution updates
The product team is working on UI/UX changes which will make it easier for users to start using CHT and also make CHT be more scalable, intuitive and consistent with other Android experiences. The first initiative the product team is working on is how filtering is done on the reports tab and this update will be coming out soon. The next UI initiative would be to update on how the search field appears on the CHT app. The product team recognizes that it is not always easy to roll out the UI changes and the plan is to make it possible for partners and community members to deploy the changes over time in batches of users. This will ensure that the old and new versions of UI will be available for a period of time, the default setting will be for users to see new versions but for existing users they can be transitioned to new versions over time by assigning them a permission that has a temporary opt out. Over time the old versions will be removed. Also all UI changes will be accompanied by default training content which will support remote training of users within CHT. The training content can be customized to meet the specific project or program needs.
b) Offline User Replace feature
This feature allows a supervisor to replace a CHW without connectivity. To replace an existing CHW, a supervisor will submit a new contact form entering a secret code and the supervisor will issue the phone to the new CHW. When all new reports are synchronized by the new CHW, the reports will be reparented to the new CHW and a new contact will be created for the new CHW. Until then, new CHW can operate without connectivity allowing supervisors to switch CHWs. The product team is planning on releasing a feature release for this feature to allow community members to test this feature.
c) CHT Docker Helper
One of the problems that App Developers face when setting up a CHT instance is that Developers are expected to download all assets, start up docker and if they want to connect to a mobile device they will need to enable HTTPs by either accepting invalid certificates or purchasing certificates. CHT Docker Helper helps to automate the process, improves the app development setup experience and performs the same functions as docker-compose. The Helper allows one to run multiple CHT versions, provides a simple text based interface showing the status along the way and Fauxton URL is available which allows one to access the database. More details on the CHT Docker Helper feature is available here.
Agenda 3- CHT core product features, releases and improvements.
a) Form validation with cht-conf
New actions have been added to cht conf-utility, these actions are accessible when one runs the cht command. The goal of these actions is to validate forms. Previously validation of forms used to happen when forms were uploaded to the server. The product team is in the process of adding more and more bits of validation into the system to help identify bugs before forms are deployed. These actions are available for one to run against a form and check if it passes the validation, these validations will be added in the new versions of cht-conf. If you have any new ideas on new validations that might be helpful when building forms please share them on the forum.
b) CHT v3.16 Release
CHT v3.16 was released on August 10, 2022. The CHT v3.16 supports bulk user upload from CSV, localizing the Admin app which makes it possible for the Admin interface to be translated. Version 3.16 also allows for Feature Releases to be versioned in CHT Admin UI. The release has a lot of other bug fixes and improvements, please read the CHT v3.16 release notes for full details.
We look forward to seeing you again at the next CHT Round-up call on September 8, 2022.