Just a bit of a comment on this...
As a deceiving generality (but hopefully helpful nonetheless) there
are two major ways to try to use OFBiz:
1. OOTB (Out Of The Box)
2. heavily customized, ie custom apps based on OFBiz
Of course, many users fall in between somewhere (hence my prelude).
The setup guides have two purposes as I see them, one for each of the
groups mentioned above:
1. a way to get going quickly without worrying too much about how
every little thing works (hence the starting with demo data)
2. a way to get the boot-strap an iterative development cycle and get
to something quickly that can be the basis for review and planning
for the initial iteration(s)
In general for #2 what Jacopo described is true. There is no way you
can create a document aside from describing recommended OOTB use that
would be applicable to any sort of majority of prospective users.
Business and industries and individuals running businesses just vary
to much.
Going forward we may try to address different industries more
specifically OOTB so that they get what is more relevant to them.
This is really the only way to provide something that is fairly
complete and usable for small and medium sized business, and is why
most enterprise app companies (including SAP) have industry-specific
templates or packages to give people something close to an OOTB
experience (ie one that does not involve a complete analysis, design,
develop, test process for everything they might want to do with the
software).
In general though, I highly recommend not trying to pigeon-hole OFBiz
too much, even based on what people in the developer and leadership
positions say (including me!).
OFBiz has been and always will be what people make it to be. In other
words, OFBiz is a combination of what dozens of companies in various
industries, but mostly in retail and manufacturing, have needed.
As a side note on accounting: you should note that most of the
accounting setup (outside of basic payment and invoice processing) is
handled best using the financials module from Open Source Strategies.
Unfortunately that is a separate project from OFBiz and we can't
change that until one of two things happens: either OSS decides to
contribute it, or someone groups enough resources to create a clean-
room implementation that serves that same general requirement. In
other words, for accounting setup regarding which accounts to post to
and what not, the documentation from Open Source Strategies is the
only way to go (of which there certainly is some pretty good stuff).
It doesn't even really make sense for us to document that along with
the OFBiz documentation, though if Si wanted to add in links to his
stuff or comments clearly marked as relating to it, then I think
that's fine and great as it will make things easier for end-users.
As always, enjoy! And yeah, if you're interested in documentation
submitting some proposed changes would be great, and if you really
want to get into I'd be happy to give you change privileges there on
a trial basis.
-David
On Dec 30, 2006, at 4:41 AM, David Goodenough wrote:
I notice that the documentation for getting started has recently
been split
in two, one technical the other business. This is excellent and
makes it
much easier to read.
Reading the Business Setup document I am struck by the way in which
it is
assumed that the only way to get started is to take the default
seed data
and modify it, no-where does it describe how to start from scratch.
When this is coupled with the discussion about who OfBiz is aiming at,
and which bits of what is a very extensive offering are regarded as
basic
this has the effect that you end up disabling bits that you do not
want
rather than enabling the bit that you want. This also means that
there
are things that are configured but about which you (the user) know
nothing
and for which you have no use.
Is the subtext that defining from scratch is so complicated that it
should
never be attempted. If so perhaps this should be stated.
Of 15 pages (when I printed the document) basic company setup talks
about
how to set up the basic business and occupies just one page, and
then about
10 page cover the ecommerce aspects. Tax is only mentioned as an
adjunct of
the ecommerce section, and the setup of the accounting section is
not even
mentioned.
There is also no mention of localisation. Getting OfBiz to default
to other
than the Dollar and American style Sales tax (and I am aware of the
recent
discussion on VAT on this list) is not mentioned, and worse, it is not
mentioned that what is being described is a US model.
Perhaps a further subdivision is needed. The basic company setup
in one
document, accounting and localisation issues in a set of documents
identified by country (or groups of countries where they do things
sufficiently similarly), and then separate documents for the other
bits
like ecommerce, manufacturing and warehousing.
Breaking the documentation up like this may also make it easier to get
contributions as the task is less daunting.
Just a thought.
David
