Hi All. I just discovered your website last night. When I read that one can set up multiple parties, or companies, in the same installation, I was excited. But then, looking at the BPL referenced on your site, I was disappointed as it seems to deal only with the buying and selling of products.
To put this into context, I was asked by a local contractor to investigate the availability of software that is easy to use and that would help him keep track of inventory, labou costs, and to relate these material costs to 'jobs'. That is, if he gets a contract to repair or re-shingle a roof, he needs a) support for entering the data that tells him how large or small the job is, what materials are used, and how many labourers work on it and for how long. And he wants output in a form that he can just pass to his accountant (for task purposes). And he wants support for the task of entering the parameters that determine the size or scope of the job and estimates, from the history of himselve and his labourers, how long it will take and what the cost will be (so, e.g., he can tell prospective clients what the upper limit on cost and duration will be based onthe upper 99% confidence interval of the mean cost and time; and this is so he can build a reputation for being early and under-budget when he gives his estimates). The contractor I spoke with told me he had seen insanely expensive software that the really, really big contractors use for this purpose, but he also said that when he spoke with the people that actually have to use that software, they indicated they hated it because it was hard to understand and harder still to use. Ease of use, and an interface that is intuitive even for a secondary school graduate with limited knowledge of either business or IT, are high on my list of priorities. He also told me that while the contractors he knows are capable people, when it comes to IT they are 'luddites', unaware of what IT can do and how it can be used. This means that, if I find something useful for him and his peers, the interface has to be simple and intuitive to anyone who can read. Now, before I spend a large amount of time investigating how to install and configure OFBiz, and working through the documentation (which seems unusually good for an open source product), can I trouble you for some quick yes/no answers, perhaps accompanied by URLs where the subject of my questions is discussed at length. I can deal with technical information, having developed commercial software. products for close to three decades in Pascal, C/C++, Java (and related, such as JSP/JSF), Perl, HTML/Javascript, and SQL. (So, if need be, I can dig into the OFBiz code and extend it: but only if there is no other option). Let's suppose, for the sake of my questions, that I am looking to help Fred the plumber, Sam the roofer, and George the carpenter. 1) Is it true that I can set up OFBiz on one server (probably in the cloud), and then set up Fred, Sam and George as separete companies, each with his own, limited, inventory? (many contractors do not keep an inventory, which is something I'd have to be able to support also, but some hhave observed they can get, and thus offer, better prices if they buy certain raw materials in bulk - I think I'd need also to be able to provide support for timing purchases, so that the contractors know how long, on average, their suppliers take to fill and ship an order, so they then know at what inventory level they ought to place their next order to ensure they don't run out of stock on critical supplies) Or did I misunderstand what I have read so far? 1a) would it be much of a stretch to have some sort of integration with suppliers' systems, so that if a supplier's systems support it, the contractors can use OFBiz to place orders with their suppliers online, and then either subsequently pick up the order or wait for it to be delivered to either their warehouse or their job site? What would be involved in configuring Fred 's company and supply chain so that he could query a supplier's API to verify the supplier has stock on what he needs, and then place an order for these supplies, &c. &c., &c.? 2) Is there an interface, that displays well, and is usable, on any mobile device, so that any of them can go into any of the building supply companies they rely on, purchase what they need, and enter that fact into OFBi, so the items purchased can be added to their respective inventories? 3) Is there a similar interface that lets them go to a job site, with some portion of his inventory, and record the allocation of that inventory to that job, as well as assign selected labourers to that job (some of whom may be regular employees and others being casual labourers or subcontractors)? In fact, the contractor I spoke with said he'd like to be able to take all the inventory required for a job to the job site at the beginning, and record the time his labourers begin work, and then return to the job site at the end fo the day to record how much inventory had been used and when the labourers quit for the day. And, he wanted QA info, relating amounts of warranty service he needs to provide given the materials (and their source) and the labourers he has used on each job, so that he can then know what to correct in terms of materials selected for future jobs, retraining of labourers, &c. 4) This is a question of security. If I set something up for these guys, I'd want both server and client ceertificates. Thus, the question has a few parts. a) How does one configure it so that it uses a server certificate (wheher self signed or from a CA)? and b) Can it handle creation of a local CA and use it to issue client certificates to each of the users, and this online through a special page (accessible only over the latest version of TLS, and using stong, single use credentials) that presents the user with a series of challenges, and if the responses returned are consistent with what the user gave the RA, proceeds to walk the user through the process (as simple as possible) of creating, signing, and installing the required client certificate? I know how to configure Apache's httpd server to require client certificates for a specific location, but how does one do that using OFBiz? And, finally, for this question, is there support for using client certificates to encrypt and sign documents; and for use of client certificates to support non-repudiation in the ecommerce modules of OFBiz? 5) For the ecommerce modules, just how far in supporting electronic transactions do you go? I have developed my share of gateway APIs, and integrated them with the APIs provided by certain processing banks and other gateways. To use your ecommerce modules, does one need to do some programming to complete the integration with the user's bank or gateway, or is that complete and all that remains is that the user configure it with his mid information? And, related to that, is there reporting provided to let the merchant assess the performance of each mid (approval/decline ratios, refund and chargeback ratios, &c.) and risk related to refunds and chargebacks (which determines just how much funds the merchant should have in reserve in order to be able to fund any refunds and chargebacks that arise after some catastophe that results in him being unable to process further sale transactions? I suspect that the answer to most of my questions will be yes, and someone will point me to one or another portion of your documentation. I do have browser windows open the the beginning pages of each of the documents you have. However, time is short and before I spend a lot of time on studying that material, I'd like confirmation that what I would need to be able to do is possible or even easy. Show stoppers would be no support for the concept of a job, along with allocating inventory and manpower to each job, and inadequate support for security, including proper generation and use of client certificates. So, can all this be handled out fo the box, as it were, by OFBiz, or would I have to do a lot of programming myself to provide complete support for everything these guys would need? And if I would have to do a lot of programming of this myself, would it be easier for me to start development de novo and build it all using Perl, HTML5/Javascript, and SQL (in iether Postgres or MySQL)? I really don't want to be spending days or weeks building/installing/configuring it only to find it can't handle everything I need to do. I'd appreciate any information you can provide. Thanks Ted
