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For the complete DHIS2 documentation index, see llms.txt.
Support and documentation

Support

The DHIS2 community uses a set of collaboration and coordination platforms for information and provision of downloads, documentation, development, source code, functionality specifications, bug tracking. This chapter will describe these in more detail.

Home page: dhis2.org

The DHIS2 home page is found at https://www.dhis2.org/. The Downloads page provides links to downloads of the DHIS2 WAR files, the Android Capture mobile application, the source code, sample databases, and links to additional resources and guides. Please note that we provide maintenance patch updates for the last three versions of DHIS2. We recommend that you check back regularly on the download page and update your online server with the latest stable patch for your DHIS2 version. The version information and build revision can be found under the About DHIS2 page inside your DHIS2 instance.

The navigation menu provides clear descriptions of the content of the site, and a search field in the top header allows you to easily search across the website.

Collaboration platform: community.dhis2.org

The primary DHIS2 collaboration platform is the DHIS2 Community of Practice. The site can be accessed at https://community.dhis2.org/ and is based on the Discourse platform.

The Community of Practice is used to facilitate community support for DHIS2 user issues, as well as to help identify potential bugs in existing software versions and feature requests for future versions. It is also a place where members of the community can share stories, best practices, and challenges from their DHIS2 implementations, collaborate with others on projects, and offer their services to the larger community. Users can set up their Community of Practice accounts based on individual preferences for notification settings, and can reply to existing topics by email.

The Support section of the Community of Practice includes all topics that were created using DHIS2's previous collaboration platform, Launchpad, which is no longer active.

Bugs identified on the Community of Practice should be submitted to the DHIS2 core team on Jira

Reporting a problem

If you encounter a problem while using DHIS2, take these steps first:

  • Clear the web browser cache (also called history or browsing data) completely (you can use the Browser Cache Cleaner app in DHIS2; select all options before clearing).

  • Clear the DHIS2 application cache: Go to Data administration -> Maintenance check "Clear application cache" and click "PERFORM MAINTENANCE".

If the problem persists, go to the Community of Practice and use key terms to search for topics that other users have posted which describe similar issues to find out if your issue has already been reported and resolved. If you are not able to find a thread with a similar issue, you should create a new topic in the Support category. Members of the community and the DHIS2 team will respond to attempt to assist with resolving your issue.

If the response you received in the Community of Practice indicates that you have identified a bug, you should post a bug report on the DHIS2 Jira.

Development tracking: jira.dhis2.org

Jira is the place to report issues, and to follow requirements, progress and roadmap for the DHIS2 software. The DHIS2 Jira site can be accessed at https://jira.dhis2.org/.

If you find a bug in DHIS2 you can report it on Jira by navigating to the DHIS2 Jira homepage, clicking create in the top menu, selecting "bug" as the issue type, and filling out the required fields.

For the developers to be able to help you need to provide as much useful information as possible:

  • DHIS2 version: Look in the Help -> About page inside DHIS2 and provide the version and build revision.

  • Web browser including version.

  • Operating system including version.

  • Servlet container / Tomcat log: Provide any output in the Tomcat log (typically catalina.out) related to your problem.

  • Web browser console: In the Chrome web browser, click F12, then "Console", and look for exceptions related to your problem.

  • Actions leading to the problem: Describe as clearly as possible which steps you take leading to the problem or exception.

  • Problem description: Describe the problem clearly, why you think it is a problem and which behavior you would expect from the system.

Your bug report will be investigated by the Testing/QA team and be given a status. If valid its status will be set to "TO DO" and will be visible for the development team in their planning of milestones and releases. It can then be assigned to a developer and be fixed. Note that bugfixes are incorporated into the master branch and branches of up to the three latest (supported) DHIS2 releases - so more testing and feedback to the developer teams leads to higher quality of your software.

If you want to suggest new functionality to be implemented in DHIS2 you should first start a discussion on the Community of Practice to get feedback on your idea and confirm that the functionality you are suggesting does not already exist. Once you have completed these steps, you can submit a feature request on DHIS2 Jira by clicking "Create" in the top menu and selecting "Feature" as the issue type. Your feature request will be considered by the core development team and if accepted it will be assigned a developer and release version. DHIS2 users can vote to show support for feature requests that have been submitted. Existing feature requests can be browsed by using the "filter" function on Jira.

Source code: github.com/dhis2

The various source code branches including master and release branches can be browsed at https://github.com/dhis2