David,
Not much to say, so far
I have learned a new word : vagaries.
eZBiz could be considered a competive name also, but not in the same area
(watch my eyes : CMS, anyway joke)
OK, in one word I'm certainly interested but not much time to spend at short
term.
Also I don't know how they progress but the Noegia team wants to get closer to
the OFBiz trunk.
They are developping an addon concept (for a year now, but I don't know much about it) which should allow them to contribute more to
OFBiz while keeping some their own stuff aside (I guess for licence reasons, but I'm not sure what they really want to share).
Aynway, to the point : Nicolas Malin (who owns his own company but is part of the Neogia team) has developped (with a "town
administration") an accouting application specialized for French (maybe not only) SMEs.
Hopefully, a collaboration around your concept might be done...
Jacques
From: "David E Jones" <[email protected]>
I've started work on a new application for OFBiz, and tentatively decided on the name "EZBiz" for it. I considered "QuickBiz",
but that's maybe too suggestive of a certain competing commercial application. ;)
The main idea is to create an all-in-one application in OFBiz for smaller businesses. Another key part of the idea is to
collaborate as a community on designs long before any development gets underway.
I've spoken to a few people about this idea in the past... and am finally getting around to working on it! A few people have
expressed interest in this, so hopefully we'll get some good feedback and collaboration fleshing out designs and then eventually
building the thing.
On a side note, yes it is true that I have mostly skipped requirements gathering and documenting processes. There are a few
reasons I decided to do that. One is that this application will be more simple and generic and won't get into the vagaries that
come up when doing custom software or software for larger organizations. Another is that the current UBPL stories cover nearly
everything that will be needed and more, and we can use them as-is (or with small refinements as we go), when doing a review of
designs to see how well they cover the requirements (noting that the intent is NOT to cover all requirements, ie business
activities, in the UBPL stories). Another reason is that there is a lot of this small business software out there that has been
in use for decades and refined a lot, so we have a lot of sources for design ideas without starting from scratch.
Anyway, here is the intro page for EZBiz:
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/OFBiz+EZBiz
On that page there is a short concept write up and some screen outlines. The screen outlines I've done so far are meant to help
establish scope, general organization, and certain configuration/setup options that will drive how other parts of the UI are
built. The main outlines I've worked on so far are:
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Select+Company
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/New+Company+Setup
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/EZBiz+Main
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Reports+Main
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Quick+Setup
For anyone interested in working on these... by all means go ahead! You can participate in discussions on the mailing list,
recommend changes to what should be on screens and how to organize things (based on whatever your favorite small business
accounting/etc software might be, or other experience you've had), and eventually we'll get down to doing wireframes for the
more complex screens (ie after outlining what will go on them), and then mapping everything to existing OFBiz entities and
services, and then start building!
I'll personally be working on this quite a bit as it's getting too cold around here to do manual labor and I've managed to finish
all my homework (hint, hint... looking for work ;) ), and I'll be happy to work with whoever else is interested (or would that
be whomever?).
-David
