Open Collective
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Development - Cycle Two Reflection and Cycle Three Overview
Published on April 19, 2024 by Shannon Wray

Providing more insight into our product roadmap and subsequently the projects that are being worked on in our six week cycles.  

Here is a reflection of cycle two and an overview of the current; cycle three.  

Cycle Two Reflection 


Implemented

Cycle 2 was affected by the news of the Open Collective Foundation's (OCF) dissolution. This led to urgent unplanned work focused specifically on the response to OCF. On the product front our focus was continuity of recurring contributions for collectives as they migrated to new fiscal hosts. 

  1. On the front end we built a tool with some guidance for switching fiscal hosts (only visible to collectives hosted by OCF).
  2. We introduced a “paused” state for recurring contributions:
    1. We built and executed a script that paused active recurring contributions for collectives hosted by OCF.
    2. For collectives that founds new fiscal hosts on the platform we created a tool to reach out to contributors and invite them to resume contributions with a link to a quick and seamless contribution renewal experience.
  3. For collectives that may need to leave the platform we created a new contributors export in the Collective Dashboard → Contributors tool.

Despite the OCF disruption we were able to deliver other prioritized projects:
  1. We completed work on a new transaction statement for fiscal hosts. This is a report that summarizes ledger activity for a given period of time (eg: month, quarter) and “explains” everything that happens in the ledger. All the numbers in the report are directly linked to the underlying ledger transactions making it possible for admins to better understand the report and validate it against the transactions.
  2. We upgraded the transactions export tool. We’ve re-organized the fields (renamed them, added tooltips and deprecated legacy fields that were causing confusion). We’ve created a new default export field set to reflect changes that we made to the ledger in previous cycles (transforming payment processor fees & taxes into separate transactions, improving the exported payment method information and exporting effective dates) while providing backward compatibility for users who have come to rely on the previous export format. 
  3. We started building an integrated solution for tax forms. We were not able to complete the intended scope due to the OCF situation. We intend to continue working on it next cycle to both complete the planned work and take on the extended scope of building administrative tools for fiscal hosts.
  4. We extended the vendors capability to automatically send contribution receipts for vendors for whom there is contact information.
  5. We are releasing a public beta version of a new expense submission flow. The new flow is an improved step-by-step process, integrated into the dashboard (once the beta feature is enabled, you will find a button for adding an expense in your personal dashboard → Expenses). The beta also includes a feature for duplicating an expense (available in the context menu of an expense). This is not yet a final version but we did want to share our progress and gather feedback to inform our next steps.

Research

Most of our research efforts were paused during this cycle due to the OCF situation. We were able to make some progress on the crowdfunding redesign initiative. Our next steps are:
  1. Draw a target - create a coherent vision of the place we wish to get to.
  2. Internal consent - communicate the vision to the entire OCI team.
  3. Collective working group - since this is a sensitive project that will effect all collectives that are actively fundraising on the platform we intend to invite a small working group of experienced collective admins that can help us by giving early and regular feedback as we engage with this work. We believe that working closely with collective admins can increase the odds of delivering good outcomes and reduce the risk of disruptions. 


Cycle Three Overview 


Our focus for the coming cycle is on tying off loose ends in the dashboard experience (that we built during 2023 and released publicly at the beginning of 2024).

Collectives & Fiscal Hosts


  1. The transactions tool has some catching up to do with recent changes we made to the ledger that are not yet reflected in it. We also intend to introduce some searching & filtering enhancements.
  2. The dashboard contributions tool is still dependent on public profile pages for contribution details. We want to replace this with a drawer inside dashboard for a consistent dashboard experience. We will also redesign the contribution details for a more coherent presentation with links to the underlying transactions.
  3. In cycle 2 we built a transaction report for fiscal hosts. It provides a periodic summary of ledger transactions that reveals and explains the inner workings of the ledger in which each row in the report is directly linked to its underlying transactions. We would like to make this report also available to collectives.

Fiscal Host Efficiency

  1. In cycle 2 we started a project to integrate tax forms into the platform. We were not able to complete the initial phase due to the OCF dissolution. We are going to continue with this work in cycle 3 and to extend the scope to include the administrative tools needed for fiscal hosts to access and work with the tax forms.
  2. Improvements to the Hosted Collectives tool that fiscal hosts use to manage their hosted collectives (fixing balance calculations and enhancing search & sort tools).
  3. Create a Pending Contributions (funds that are expected to but have not yet arrived) tool separate from the contributions tool. 

Research

There are some research threads we want to advance during this cycle:
  1. The team working on the crowdfunding redesign is going to present to the OCI team a proposal for a campaign to revamp the crowdfunding experience on the platform.  Once we have team consent and commitment to the project we will share more about it with the community. 
  2. We have two threads of exploration for additional reporting on the platform. One is trend reporting (eg: contributions over time, expenses over time, etc.) based on ledger transactions for both fiscal host and collective admins. The other is reporting on hosted collectives for fiscal hosts admins.
  3. Enhancing the expense submission tools to enable expense submitters to submit requests to pay new vendors (currently only fiscal hosts can create vendors and expense submitters can only select from existing vendors).
  4. Exploring potential navigation improvements within the dashboard experience. As we’ve been fleshing out the dashboard by adding and enhancing tools we’ve identified opportunities for better and more consistent navigation experiences.  

View our previous cycle update here

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Dread Knight

Posted on April 25, 2024

Progress ftw! 🥳🎉