While the Indian government’s affinity towards open-source software isn’t entirely new, it has recently become far more pronounced. During a recent kickoff meeting for a nationwide AgriTech project backed by the Ministry of Agriculture, we were surprised by their explicit emphasis on using open-source tools, a must-have on the project’s…

We’ve developed a CiviCRM extension to enable Razorpay payments, a crucial step in making CiviCRM more accessible to Indian nonprofits. This solution simplifies donation processing and strengthens CiviCRM’s viability in the Indian social sector. Join us in building more impactful open-source solutions!

Google Cloud Platform provides you with simple ways to access computing resources and services. Using Google Cloud services comes with expenses, so it’s crucial to keep a close eye on your spending. In April, we recently found out that our spending on GCP services, where we host our projects and…

Introduction: Indus Action is a non-profit organization based in India that works to improve access to education and ColoredCow, as a founding member of the Glific development team, is well-positioned to provide complete Glific consulting services. We specialize in helping organizations customize and optimize Glific to suit their specific requirements….

At Glific, we had a solid 2022 where we released a bunch of new features in Glific and onboarded many new NGOs which eventually helped reach out to more beneficiaries and have a greater impact. Check out how last year went in detail in this blog As we continue our…

While building Glific for the past 2.5 years, one of the problems we face while scaling it is that it is difficult to find a one-size-fits-all solution that would work for everyone. As a result, it is often necessary to tailor the solution to the specific needs of each user….

For the past few months, we have been working with Reap Benefit to visualize citizen engagement of their chatbot in a mapping dashboard created in R/shiny. Read more about their journey with Glific and our journey in creating the dashboard here. Initially, we went with the combination of Glific, BigQuery,…

Imagine a nation where problems encountered by locals could be collected in one location and then resolved by locals utilizing local resources and data. A community where each resident takes responsibility for local problems and finds solutions. As Abhijit Naskar said “A nation can run without government, but it can’t…

I am a big fan of conferences as I always get to know a lot of new things which I wouldn’t have thought or heard otherwise. I have gone through most of the videos of past Javascript conferences and it really helped me to understand some core principles and thoughts…

One WhatsApp + Multiple Profiles = Greater Impact! Well, the equation seems simple and makes more sense as we go deeper into the impact of a chatbot and its reach to beneficiaries. Especially for NGOs working in sectors where mobile device availability is not common and thus the same device…

Despite the fact that India is an agricultural country where agriculture is the primary source of income for over half of the people, farmers confront appalling conditions. These scenarios typically arise when crop products do not meet expectations because harvests have been ruined by pests or harsh climatic conditions, leaving…

When do you think a developer is the happiest? For me it is when a piece of code written by you is used by someone and they are happy and thankful for it. That is the best feeling ever. It is so fascinating to be in the technology space in…

Originally posted on Plio’s Blog Plio’s priority has always been building a simple and easy-to-use platform. The team works super hard to ensure any new functionality is properly reviewed, tested, and comes with its own set of unit tests. Rigorous testing cycles that sometimes have taken several rounds of code review before…

After the Covid crisis intensified, everyone was being pushed into tight corners and was still adjusting to the new norm of working remotely. Thus working together in a cohesive environment, jotting down ideas, and discussing work plans felt like a distant memory. However, as the situation in India has begun…

A chatbot for an NGO can be a godsend for keeping in touch with beneficiaries on a large scale, especially when one-on-one talks are impossible to continue in the midst of a global pandemic. NGOs can use chatbots to digitize their programs and distribute them to a wider audience through…

One of the hardest things that I feel is to verify, if a new piece of code will not break another part of the application. A good reviewer can be as good as the knowledge and experience they have, but even they can’t deal with the unknown. Thankfully we have…

What are the challenges we faced?  Being a growing organization, we regularly add, update and check our processes that are followed in the organization. So recently in ColoredCow, we decided to do the same and check for any of the process that is not being followed, any area where a…

BackStory As a growing organization, we usually have many discussions and meetings and we thought to record these meetings so that we can revisit them for further use. We also organize a story club every Wednesday where everyone participates and shares their inspiring stories. With this idea of storing all…

“The most sustainable way to build the foundations of lifelong learning among children and young people of today is by reigniting intrinsic motivation at all levels of an education system” – STiR Education. STiR Education is an international NGO that supports governments to employ practical strategies that promote positive behaviors…

With Covid-19 and the global pandemic surge, NGOs faced major challenges in the delivery of their programs and carrying out their operations which gave rise to many platforms that can help them with their last-mile deliveries and digitalize their programs. That’s how Glific was initiated to bridge the communication gap…

The lifecycle of a product is a journey consisting of understanding novel challenges, the contribution from lots of people towards a solution, and rolling out updates to constantly improve the product and aid the end-user. Over the course of around one and a half years building Glific– a two-way communication…

It’s been around one and a half years since we started working on an open-source project named Glific that would empower communication and help NGOs deliver their programs digitally and manage communication with their beneficiaries at scale.  One of the core features of Glific is the integration of FlowEditor which…

Planning the database schema for the new Plio infrastructure was easy. Or that’s what I thought initially. The previous structure of Plio used to have various JSON files, each representing an entity on its own. For example, a typical user’s JSON file would look like this: So, creating a database…

This is a short story of how I, as an outsider, saw Glific get going, evolve and finally start to solve meaningful problems. I’m hoping there must be others who may share the same story. The beginning It was around May 2020, that I first heard of Glific (I think…

Glific aims to empower non-profits to take their communications to the next level through seamless integration with WhatsApp. While the larger goal is to help various organizations solve severe social problems like illiteracy, climate changes, gender oppression, etc, we also need to make sure that the tool is getting utilized…

The strength of a building is heavily influenced by its construction process. Planning and plotting of the site determine its fitment with the terrain and the society. Well, it’s the same for software too. Like buildings, the foundation of software determines its longevity and adaptability in the world. To sustain,…

It’s been almost a month I’m working on the open-source project with Tech4Dev. Prior to this, I had been a part of many enterprise applications in several domains including the social sector. With a deep desire to explore more areas, I found one of the interesting aspects of this project…

Quick background Small businesses like us face the following problems: Our data is fragmented across various tools. There’s no connection between them. Finances are managed at one platform while hiring at completely different. Difficult tracking organizational activities. Small updates in emails and Chat/Slack are getting harder to track as data…

Ever since I’ve been working on the Employee Portal, I haven’t felt more amazed about Laravel. There are various things Laravel provides out of the box. Many popular third-party integrations are built-in and don’t require anything extra than setting proper configs. However, the best thing about Laravel is its documentation. The…

Just like SesPress came out as a result of our effort towards sending event-triggered emails cost-effectively, we have initiated Employee Portal to channelize both our internal and external operations.   The need Like any small business, we started our journey by adopting various tools for our operations. As our activities started…