Open Referral
Open Referral Documentation and Designs

Open Referral - Architecture Design
1. Introduction
Briefly explain the purpose of the system, its scope, and what this document covers.
Overview
Purpose
Scope
2. System Overview
High-level description of the system and its main features, without going into technical details.
High-level description
Key features
3. Requirements
Summarizes the functional requirements (what the system should do) and non-functional requirements (performance, scalability, usability, etc.).
Functional requirements
Non-functional requirements
4. Architecture Overview
Describes the main components of the system, how they interact, and includes diagrams.
Main components
End-to-End workflow
Interactions
Diagrams
5. Data Design
Outlines how data is structured and stored, including data models or databases used.
Data model
Storage approach
6. Key Design Decisions
Highlights important technical choices, why they were made, and what alternatives were considered.
Important choices
Alternatives considered
7. Security
Explains how the system ensures security, covering authentication, authorization, and data protection.
Authentication / authorization
Data protection
8. Deployment
Describes where and how the system will be deployed (environments, servers, cloud, etc.) and how updates are delivered.
Environments
Deployments diagram
CI/CD
9. Operations
Covers ongoing management: monitoring, logging, maintenance, and support processes.
Monitoring
Logging
Maintenance
10. Risks
Lists potential risks, their impact, and mitigation strategies.
Potential risks
Mitigation strategies
11. Appendix
Extra material like glossary, references, or supporting diagrams.
Glossary
Reference

Onboarding Document
[Insert NPO name] Onboarding
NPO
[Insert NPO name, hyperlink to their website]
Primary Contacts
[Insert Tech Lead and PM contact (Name, role, position, email, discord handle)]
Repository Links
[List of repositories used for the project in the following format (respository name with hyperlink to gh repo)]
Issue Tracker
[Direct link to gh issue tracker]
Overview
Provide a short description of the NPO [What do they do? Where are they located? Group of people their services are focused on?]
Provide a high-level description of what the project does, what problem does it solve, who will be using it?
Architecture
Include a short explanation of the system's main components:
Core Services
Frameworks. If you are using a niche framework (PayloadCMS, Glom) include a link to their documentation.
Databases
Authentication mechanisms
[Insert the architecture document created before project kickoff]
Challenges
Give a prioritized list of all main challenges your team is currently facing and a possible path to solve them. Encourage them to contribute to the problem solving brainstorm.
What are some of the features that will be worked on next semester?