Contributors Meetup Async Update - April 18th, 2023 - May 2nd, 2023

Working Groups Core Contributors
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Contributors meetup Async Update

April 18th, 2023 - May 2nd, 2023

Welcome to our Core Contributors async update!

1. Working Groups Updates

Working Groups Calendar :calendar:

BTR Working Group

Data Working Group

  • Chair: @jill & @BrianMesick
  • Headlines:
    • Funded contribution updates:
      • Google Analytics 4 is moving along, first PRs merged, will back port to Palm as well as Olive
      • Redis event bus has merged producer and consumer, working on configuration, docs, and Tutor plugin
      • Feelers are out for contractors for OARS data modelling work
  • Highlight :sparkles:
    • EduNEXT has bravely turned on OARS in a production environment and is gathering performance data on the loading side! :rocket:
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:
    • If there are OARS reports you want, now is the time to get them to the Product WG! We’re going to need to finalize a list of v1 reports soon so we can focus on making sure all of the data is in place to support them
    • There is a lot of OARS work to do, reach out if you’ve got some time to work on them and we’ll find the best place for you.

DEPR Working Group

DevEx Working Group

  • Chair: Rebecca Graber & Kyle Mccormick
  • Headlines:
    • They are looking into Grafana and Prometheus, which would be more useful to the community than Okay.
    • Successes:
      • Slow but steady progress on static assets, with help from Andrey from eduNEXT
        • collectstatic without Paver
        • decoupling xmodule styles from LMS/CMS styles
    • Open edX Light/Express (minimalist version of Open edX) #169
    • Persistent mounting interface for Tutor
    • Simplifying edx-platform asset build
    • Prototyping a revamped dev experience for MFEs
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:
    • We can always use volunteers to help us with incremental improvements or refactorings to edx-platform or Tutor.
    • Would anyone be interested in helping lead the implementation of sandboxes*? more info

DevOps Working Group

Educators Working Group

Frontend Working Group

  • Chair: @arbrandes
  • Headlines:
    • Adolfo and Brian Smith’s MFE dev tutorial: feel free to use the material.
    • There were talks about MFE domains (Adolfo) and frontend extensibility (David Joy). See slides and videos on 2023 Open edX Conference Session Talks & Tutorials.
    • FWG conference session was about deprecating old frontends in edx-platform. More details: LMS Endpoints Rendered By Django | Process/Next Steps Suggestions
    • Paragon WG session was about getting feedback about the project.
    • Status of the Palm MFE list
      • ORA Grading: still pending this PR
      • Communications: needs a community maintainer and proper review.
      • Learner Dashboard: will be offered as “experimental”. The maintaining team has agreed to review PRs that address bugs and other changes that make it work with Tutor. It is suggested that a tutor-contrib-learner-dashboard plugin be created in the openedx org.
    • Frontend Plugins
      • 2U is starting to see use cases for frontend plugins to help maintain our MFE architectural boundaries and keep 2U-specific code out of the open source repos.
      • David’s planning on trying to write up a technical specification referencing a few open PRs related to the effort. (JS file config, iframe based experience plugins)
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:
    • Node 18 update: blocked by Enterprise. It will be good to get this in Palm in the next month or so, even if it requires manual backporting.

Large Instances Working Group

  • Chair: Braden MacDonald & Felipe Montoya
  • Headlines:
    • Reviewing the issues on the DevOps Working group board:
      • The issue to update the README for Harmony is now done.
      • Autoscaling PR. They had two options for how to resolve a command (helm dependency update) and Jhony has addressed this so the PR should be ready to go.
      • Jhony is investigating how to allow people to use the helm chart without needing to clone the repo.
      • Monitoring with Prometheus, should be unblocked with the merge of the autoscaling PR.
      • Karpenter issue is also blocked on the autoscaling which will soon merge.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

Marketing Working Group

  • Chair: Eden Huthmacher
  • Headlines:
    • eMOOCs conference:
      • Probably they will have Anant Agarwal performing a talk
      • The Workshops - EMOOCs was confirmed by the organizers. June 14, 2023 at 9am CEST
      • Talk proposals are to be confirmed still.
      • Participants in the conference (axim, edunext, abstract and raccoongang) will meet separately on April 20th to coordinate the details.
    • Open edX Sandbox: The current Open edX Sandbox deployed by edunext is ending its initially agreed period.
    • Brainstorming session: Results of the brainstorming session in Boston and Meeting notes from the 05.04.2023
    • OKRs and tasks: The proposed actions items for 2023 are now organized in the form of OKRs here. Members of the MWG are invited to volunteer to lead some of these initiatives or propose new ones.
    • Launching course instructor How-To video series
    • Market research on what customers are looking for within the Open edX LMS
    • Competitor analysis + external (EdTech) event participation
  • Highlight :sparkles:
    • Implemented an OKR strategy to better report on results and increase efficiency.
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:
    • We are hoping to create site operator training and would love to collaborate with BTR on this.

Maintainers

Product Working Group

Security Working Group

  • Chair: @feanil
  • Headlines:
    • New people are joining the team.
    • They’re working to establish a community security policy.
    • Working to improve their internal processes and documentation.
  • Highlight :sparkles:
    • Excited for @magajh to be joining BTR/Security WG as the Security Patcher!
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:

TOC

Hi @antoviaque! would you like to add any updates?

  • Headlines
  • Blockers and Calls/offers for help

Translation Working Group

  • Chair: Eden Huthmacher
  • Headlines:
    • Deprecating languages in TX that are not reflected in the code and/or have low translation/review rates (below 5%)
    • OEP 58
    • Researching processes to simplify full course translations
  • Highlight :sparkles:
    • Added two new languages with the support of newly created members and are covering a total of 16 languages now
  • Meeting notes:
  • Blockers or Calls/offers for help:
    • Ideas for simplifying full course translations, e.g MU

2. Improvements and Calls/offers for help

If you think you can lend a hand to any of the core contributors that are blocked, feel free to reach out to them!

3. Events

4. Projects

Would anyone like to highlight any new or ongoing projects?

5. Next async update and meetup

  • Monday May 15th - Update async!
  • Tuesday May 16th - Join the meetup here!

Please reply to this post with any questions or comments you may have!

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You can find the full report attached or in Listaflow: https://www.listaflow.com/

Sprint Retro 15th April to 29th April.pdf (30.4 KB)

Is there anything where you could use help from others? Or that you would like to collaborate on? User
#### Featuer toggles/naming
We need to set some clear strategy for naming toggles/settings, while looking if we are already have something I came across OEP-17 OEP-17: Feature Toggles — Open edX Proposals 1.0 documentation

But it doesn’t mention naming of a settings/toggle.

An example of inconsistency can be: Incosisttency of configuration names between LMS and MFEs:
- In MFEs uses SITE_NAME while LMS uses PLATFORM_NAME
- The settings of that points the account MFE:
- In MFEs it’s ACCOUNT_SETTINGS_URL while in LMS it’s ACCOUNT_MICROFRONTEND_URL
- Check this issue for learner-dashboard vs learner-home Rename this repo to learner-home · Issue #140 · openedx/frontend-app-learner-dashboard · GitHub


I think it would be better; (before or instead of reoslving each of theses examples above) to have guide/how to layed out i.e. ammending OEP-17 or any doc, so that in the future when creating a new toggle/settings, developer would be recommend to check the guide…


#### Github action to auto backport
I am suggesting to use a github action to auto backport commits/branch to a release branch, I will mention this in the next BTR metting 1.5.2023. For more context and/or if you are intrested or have a though please attend or comment on the agena wiki page: https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/3739287561/2023-05-01+Meeting+notes.

 Ghassan Maslamani
Adding action items to follow-up on the topics from the town hall: Community Town Hall: What Are Our Action Items? - if we each take even something small, we can move a lot of things. Xavier Antoviaque
After 1 week, Palm testing is now 47% complete with 5 weeks to go. If anyone would like to join us for the rest of the testing, let us know! Dean Mathew
Retrospective - Improvements User
As usual, time and focus are in short supply. Peter Pinch
Retrospective - What went well these last two weeks / sprint? User
So happy to see the enthusiasm and momentum pick up for OARS! Specifically, we had a well-attended data working group, and I’m thrilled to see Cristhian Garcia and Maria Grimaldi from eduNEXT donating some devOps time. Fantastic! Jill Vogel
- good communication with Axim and 2U product folks about Palm features. Still needs to be aggregated and written into the release notes PR. Peter Pinch
The campus project and the OARS project are getting so much good work. Felipe Montoya
The opportunity to watch a user interview gave me some valuable insights into the edX platform from a user’s point-of-view; this is very helpful for the Content Tagging project I’m working on Ali Hugo
The good energy brought up by the conference is still very visible - it’s good to see the activity. @antoviaque
What did you accomplish in the last two weeks (aka “current sprint”)? (Optional) User
Advances in the conversation about changes to the open edX sandbox.
Final reviews to the promotional video about open edX
Advancements in the joint efforts of the campus working group.
participation in the monthly meetup
starting the planning for the participation in the emoocs conference in june		 Juan Montoya
Nothing much other than working group meeting and some minor tweaks to PR before merging it. Zia Fazal
Tasks:
- Review draft survey about CC processes - Obtain feedback & iterate on core sprint checkins & retros · Issue #95 · openedx/wg-community · GitHub
- TOC - Review meeting notes & draft Feb summary - Write public summaries for TOC meetings · Issue #94 · openedx/wg-community · GitHub

Recurring:
- Help with answers to core sprints checkins & bring up items in synchronous meeting - Contributor's Meetup 2023-04-18 · Issue #93 · openedx/wg-community · GitHub
- Meetings working groups: Campus, Large instances DevOps, Product
- Review forums		 Xavier Antoviaque
- Attended a user interview run by Ben Piscopo from 2U
- Worked on a second draft of a survey to evaluate CC processes
- Attended the Product Working Group Meetup and spoke a bit about the goals brainstorming session we help in Boston		 Ali Hugo
- Went through all the Olive tests and added/removed a few test cases to prepare for Palm. - Organised a presentation from XIM University for the next Open edX® Meetup in May. - Browsed the Forum and Slack and replied to people where I could. Dean Mathew
Started a draft PR for the Palm Release notes, at Palm Release Notes by pdpinch · Pull Request #321 · openedx/docs.openedx.org · GitHub Peter Pinch
- Participated in the large instances working group meeting
- Participated in the openedx for campus group meeting
- maintenance of events and filters
- product discovery work on the campus roadmap
- product discovery work on the woocomerce plugin for openedx
- reviewed the ADR-19 for paragon
- moved forward with edunext participation in the OARS project		 Felipe Montoya
BTR related stuff: checked current opened issues for palm, suggested a solution for some, commented on others
- [TC_AUTHOR_87] > Enable/disable Progress page · Issue #278 · openedx/wg-build-test-release · GitHub
- Unable to enable the discussion forum in palm demo instance · Issue #269 · openedx/wg-build-test-release · GitHub
- Reolved at
- feat: upgrade to palm by ghassanmas · Pull Request #22 · overhangio/tutor-forum · GitHub
- feat: enable forum plugin by ghassanmas · Pull Request #26 · overhangio/openedx-release-demo · GitHub
- Account link in User dropdown is failing on the Course pages · Issue #268 · openedx/wg-build-test-release · GitHub
- Suggested fix need review at fix: Add account url in dynamic config by ghassanmas · Pull Request #121 · overhangio/tutor-mfe · GitHub


Other related to plam
- Open a PR to resolve issue learner-dashboard fix: force LMS url to reload when changed by ghassanmas · Pull Request #136 · openedx/frontend-app-learner-dashboard · GitHub needs review
- Made upstream fix/ for cs_comments_service feat: allow to use two arm arch by ghassanmas · Pull Request #411 · openedx/cs_comments_service · GitHub needs review 		Ghassan Maslamani
Was on leave most of this sprint, so didn’t do much :slight_smile: Jill Vogel
Work on Maintainers group, events planning, reviewing translations Gabriel D’Amor
Attended meetup of Build Test Release Working Group.
Attended part of the meetup of the Translation Working Group.
Ran 33 tests from the Open edX Palm Test Sheet.
Watched the Open edX 2023 lightning presentation on commerce coordinator and attended the meetup of the commerce coordinator project on 4/26.
Watched the Open edX 2023 presentation on OARS and privately send Brian Mesick and Jillian Vogel a few questions about it since we want to replace Insights.
Skimmed through Discourse and Slack.		 Pierre Mailhot
What will you work on for during the next two weeks / sprint? (Optional)
I’m over budget for CC work from the last couple months of OARS dev and conference prep, so will be just attending data working group meetings and helping out quickly where I can. Jill Vogel
- Palm Release Notes
- Palm testing		 Peter Pinch
- Attending 2U’s Interview affinity mapping session to review the feedback from the user interviews
- Finishing the 2nd draft of the CC processes survey		 Ali Hugo
- Wiki spring clean - TOC pages
- Write draft OEP for escalation process to TOC
- Contributors WG - Groom github board & tickets
- Upstreaming course - Prepare next sprint
 Xavier Antoviaque
- Follow up on the opened PRs, attend some WGs meetings Ghassan Maslamani
put forward a proposal for an upcoming project in the MWG.
engage in the preparations for participating in the emoocs event in Postdam, DE.		 Juan Montoya
Coordinating Palm testing along with the test team to get it over the line on time. Dean Mathew
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@Dean Thank you for the report! :+1:

@ghassan I don’t know if we currently have guidelines about the naming of feature toggles (maybe @nedbat would know?), but that is something useful to have yes. If not, @ghassan you could suggest an approach if you want, maybe through a PR against OEP-17?

@Dean If someone wanted to do some of the testing, what would be the steps for them? Is there documentation about this somewhere?

@ali_hugo Out of curiosity, what was the context of the user interviews? Was it for the content tagging project itself?

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@Dean @Natalia_Choconta I’ve merged the two threads about the last sprint update, the core contributors being related to the individual working group updates. Would that work for you to do a single thread for updates each sprint? (CC @jalondonot @ali_hugo )

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Hello, I would love to contribute to the Data Working Group and share my team’s observations for the upcoming OARS tools. Where should I apply?

Cheers!

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@vincent.laberge That’s great to hear! You can get the details about the data working group, including the time and place for its next meetings, at https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/3303931917/Data+Working+Group . @jill and @BrianMesick might also be able to help.

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@antoviaque Thanks!

@jill and @BrianMesick nice to meet you! I’m currently working on translating an internal report I made earlier to prepare my team’s migration from Insights to its successor, at the time yet to be determined.

Basically, we asked the users everything about what they do with Insights and what features should be prioritized in the context of a limited replacement.

I look forward to sharing my Insights (pun) and get to understand mOARS about what you’re working on!

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Hi Vincent, welcome!

Our friends in the Product working group are collecting all of this kind of information from various providers and user feedback so this is the right time! If you’d like to email me at bmesick@axim.org we can either just take the report to share with Product, or set up a call with all of us to go over it if you’d like. I’m also always available on Slack if you’d prefer.

The working group meetings are every other Weds, but we just had one today so the next is 2 wks out.

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Hello @antoviaque. Merging the two threads works for me. It’s better to have all the information in one thread. Thank you! :raised_hands:

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@antoviaque The interviews weren’t for the Content Tagging project, but rather for the platform as a whole. I don’t have the full context behind why the interviews were scheduled or whether there was a specific focus, but what I do know if that 2U rounded up some of active edX users and interviewed them to find out more about what they like and don’t like about the platform. I think the interview questions may have been based on the users’ responses to a survey that had been sent to them previously.

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Yup, I precisely asked about it, because I am not sure what would be the exact next step, like should I take green light before start working on amending OEP 17? or any other path

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@ali_hugo @antoviaque Ben Piscopo interviewed me based on my responses to a super long questionnaire, where I identified which features were used, the best ones and where the software could improve.

It was an interesting discussion !

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Thanks for confirming @vincent.laberge :+1:

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@ghassan The way to get the green light is to make a concrete proposal imho - a draft amendment to the OEP would allow to evaluate the impact more precisely. You would also benefit from the review process to keep the discussions going, and get to a decision.

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