Thank you everyone who joined our February 2023 CHT Round-up call. The event attracted over 57 participants and we had very engaging and informative discussions and presentations. Here is the link to access the Round-up call recording and below are summarized notes from the call.
Agenda 1 - CHT Replication depth
a) CHT replication depth presentation and demo
Replication depth in the context of CHT can be configured to help define the amount of data CHT offline users are able to download on their devices. Configuring the replication depth helps to restrict the amount and type of data that can be downloaded for a specific user or a group of users; to help ensure optimal performance of the app. For example, if CHW supervisors need to access specific CHW and patients level data; an appropriate replication depth can be configured to enable supervisors to access the reports they need to perform their responsibilities.
Replication depth is calculated relative to the user’s home place, setting replication depth for a facility user at 0, the places and contacts that report to the facility will be on depth= 1. The report_depth also works similarly to the replication depth, but it only applies to the reports that are submitted by the authenticated user. If the report_depth is omitted users will have access to all the reports. In the CHT, the replication depth changes are usually made in the app settings. If the replication depth changes are made for a project which is already in a post deployment phase, all the affected users need to clear their data and perform a clean fresh replication for the changes to be effected.
b) Testimonials from a few projects that have configured the CHT replication depth.
The Living Goods team shared their team’s experience when they configured replication depth for the Smart Health App. For some of the Living Goods workflows, especially the muting and death reporting workflows; the reports submitted by CHWs need to be approved by CHW supervisors. The supervisor replication depth is currently set at 1, to ensure that supervisors do not have to download a lot of documents which is likely to affect the performance of the supervisor app. With the supervisor replication depth set at 1, the supervisors cannot access reports for contacts that are below the replication depth 1, the Living Goods team had to add the need_sign off on the specific reports to enable the supervisors to view the submitted reports and approve them. Thank you @rmayore for sharing the Living Goods team experience of configuring and testing the replication depth.
The MUSO Mali project team is using the replication depth at the site supervisor and the TB focal person levels in the hierarchy. This has worked well but with the replication depth for CHW site supervisors set at 1, the supervisors are only able to access the CHW zones but they are not able to access the direct contacts related to the CHW zones. The MUSO Mali team has already shared the replication depth enhancement request on the forum and this feature request has been logged on Github. Thank you @Gilbert and @Victor_ZUGADI for sharing insightful updates on how the replication depth functionality can be improved.
Agenda 2- CHT conf test harness.
CHT Conf test harness is a tool for writing automated tests for CHT apps. Making changes on CHT can be challenging, especially making changes on a form can easily break other components. Manual testing is costly, time consuming and error prone. Automated tests can save time, increase quality of applications and these tests also make it easier for Developers to collaborate when building and updating applications. CHT test harness is a code library that allows one to write unit tests and integration tests, commonly run with mocha and chai. Below are a few useful CHT test harness documentation:
CHT test harness supports test drive development, debugging of the application code and also Developers can use the tool to test the application behaviour before and after the upgrade. CHT test harness is versioned along with the CHT core versions.
Agenda 3- CHT conf-test-harness v3.0 Release
The 3rd version of the CHT test harness was released on January 10, 2023, this release has breaking changes in the harness that matches the breaking changes in CHT v4.0. If your application is still using CHT core 3.x, you should continue to use CHT test harness v2.x. More details about the new release is available here.
We look forward to seeing you at the next CHT Round-up call on March 9, 2023.