Posts by Asier:

The business impact of installing modules

February 13th, 2012


Hi all,


Recently there have been published some modules that bring to the company the possibility to save daily costs by automating the user tasks in Openbravo ERP.


The first example would be the Clone invoices module . This module not only serves the purpose of showing how easy it is to extend the Openbravo ERP toolbar to add an action-button, but also creates the ability for the user to duplicate an invoice in a "one-click action".




The simple action of cloning an Invoice document (either sales or purchase invoices), lets the user save up to 5 minutes in each similar document he needs to register. This means, that in a monthly basis (taking into account that around 40 recurring documents can be cloned), the user will save up to 4 hours. Regardless the number of users or documents in the ERP, the company will achieve a remarkable saving in costs by the simple use of this module.


On the other hand, another module was published to streamline the creation of GL journals in Openbravo ERP. Using the new technology called Pick & Execute, this module allows the user to quickly insert lines in a GL journal.





Streamlining the task of entering new GL journals is something that makes a lot of sense in order to save the amount of time the user spends in it. From the moment this module is installed, the user will be able to enter more GL journals in the same time, or, entering the same amount of journals, have spare time to do anothers tasks.


Its not easy to calculate how much time the company saves with this module, but what can be said is that the user will save at least 50% of the time entering GL journals from the moment he uses this module. The impact is really remarkable.


Do you have similar modules which reduce company costs by allowing the user to complete daily tasks in less time ? I would love to hear about them.



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Openbravo ERP – Zoho integration module

April 23rd, 2011


Today im going to show you a simple module that will integrate Openbravo ERP with Zoho reports. The aim is to set up a background process sending data from the ERP to Zoho. Then, after creating custom reports on Zoho, publish them in your Openbravo ERP workspace so that relevant data for your company is always on hand.

Pre-requisites:

• Zoho user account (free)
• Zoho integration module for Openbravo ERP 3.0

Setting up the data transfer

First of all you need to have a new database in Zoho reports.


Then find the Zoho API key for your account. (Mandatory for sending data to your zoho account).



Now lets configure the process in Openbravo ERP. Create a Zoho integration header with the folowing information:
• Zoho database (the one you created in the previous step)
• Zoho API key
• Zoho username
• Zoho password
Then, configure an HQL for sending data to our Zoho database.
• Import type: Choose between "Delete all and import data", "Append" or "Update".
• Zoho Table (this process will create this table in Zoho Reports)
• HQL query. (In this example I created a simple query for "Sales by Organization"



And last, schedule the process for sending this data to Zoho. In this case, I have configured this process to be run every 1 minute. Then hit "Schedule Process".



From now on, this process will create a new table in your Zoho Reports account, with the data of your ERP.




Report Creation


Time to create a report in Zoho reports with this data.





When done, save the chart and click on Publish and "Embed in Website/Blog".



Copy the HTML snippet and return back to Openbravo ERP to add a widget with this HTML code. Create an "User defined HTML widget".



Then just paste the HTML code from Zoho Reports:



And... Voilá !




Meaningful information for you company updated in real time in your Openbravo ERP workspace. And the best: No need for development skills to do it !


This article shows the power of how different separate parts of Openbravo technology can be combined to create a great solution.
Openbravo widgets
Openbravo Process Scheduler
• Openbravo - Hibernate integration
And this is just an example of why web solutions are so powerfull these days. Their ease of integration with other tools make them a must !!


Any doubts or inquiries, I would be glad to answer them :)





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The progress of the user experience redesign

November 5th, 2010




Hi,


As a Openbravo ERP consultant and member of the Openbravo Community, I am always curious about what is coming next in the product; in particular, I am now interested in the progress of the new user interface for 3.0.


To satisfy my curiosity, I often ask Openbravo Product Development team fellows to show me what they are working on. I would like to share some screenshots I made while testing some of these features.


As a disclaimer this is work in progress and not an announcement of availability of these capabilities. There is a ton of work to be done to complete these cool features and it is evolving everyday. Just wanted you to be aware of the great features that will come in the new release, so we all can sense the power that is quickly reaching us... ;)


My Openbravo user dashboard and the new user interface are two of the main new capabilities Openbravo ERP 3.0 will have. Look at the screenshots to see what's coming...

http://imagebin.org/121579



The new My Openbravo where many different widgets can be configured. Custom webs, transaction widgets, reports, graphics...

http://imagebin.org/121581


Master detail view. In this example, as the user selects 3 modules and clicks on the DB_Prefix tab, the system shows the prefixes of all 3 modules.


http://imagebin.org/121580





Edit any record fields in grid mode.


This is great! What do you think ?

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Openbravo Cloud Appliance. Using it effectively

August 26th, 2010

The other day a customer running a Cloud appliance needed to replicate its production environment into 3 new servers. These were the options

1. Deploy Openbravo ERP by doing a custom installation in the 3 servers and then move the actual installation to these 3 new servers.
2. Deploy Openbravo ERP using a community appliance and then move the actual installation to the 3 new servers.

Using an appliance for deployment makes things not just quicker but a lot easier for the system integrator. You won’t just save some hours deploying each new server, but you will also be sure that everything is well configured and optimized.

Similar reasons apply to the task of moving the actual instance (database + modules) to the servers. It’s a time consuming task, moreover when you need to repeat it three times. There are a lot of manual commands to be executed and mistakes can happen. Even doing the steps correctly, this task for the 3 servers should take around 2 working days.

But, as the customer was using the Openbravo Professional Edition, they had the Cloud appliance up and running.




This made much easier the replication of the environment. The Cloud Appliance does not introduce improvements in the deployment of Openbravo ERP compared to the community appliance, but provides significant advantages to Professional Edition Subscribers managing the instance, as the steps went down to these:

1. Download the last backup from the production environment
2. Upload it to each 3 servers
3. In each server click on Restore that backup.



As you can see, the Openbravo Cloud Appliance (manual) does not only allow you to spend more effectively your time maintaining your instance, but also avoids unexpected errors and problems in these critical manual tasks.

In the end, the replication of the original environment in 3 (counting that they all use the Professional Edition) was done in less than 4 hours.

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Skinning Openbravo ERP in 5 minutes !!

July 26th, 2010


Hi,


Skinning Openbravo ERP to fit a company's corporate colors is usually a required task in an implementation project. Let me show you a few easy steps to start creating your new skin and seeing the effects from the beginning.


What Im going to do is to create a skin that for now, only changes the user logo in the login page, and the Openbravo logo in the application.


Step 1: Follow the steps to create the folder structure of your new skin module


At the end of this point, the result should be something similar to this.



Step 2: Edit the Openbravo_ERP_250.css file and state that you want both images ( User logo and Openbravo logo ) to be used from inside your module and not for the standard skin.





Note that any other image you want to change ( usually the green colored bars ), should follow the same guidelines as this examples.


Now put the modified images in your folder structure.





Step 3: Create the skin module inside Openbravo ERP


Step 4: Compile, restart tomcat, and see results ;)








Have you made your own skins? Thought it was a difficult task? Think again!

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Using Openbravo ERP on the iPad

May 21st, 2010 With the release of the iPad ( http://www.apple.com/ipad/ ) a new range of possibilities can be discovered regarding the ERP mobility world.


See this example about launching a Stock report in Openbravo ERP on an iPad.





See also a Sales invoices dimensional report or Completing a goods receipt in youtube just using a search with the following keywords. openbravo ipad


Let your imagination run wild and ... make it happen!

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Openbravo ERP 2.50 MP8 released

November 9th, 2009 Hi all,

My name is Asier and I am a consultant at Openbravo. As you know, Openbravo releases a maintenance pack for 2.50 version every month with several bug fixes and a few new features. I would like to comment these releases from a consultant point of view.

Last Friday, October 30th, 2.50MP8 was released. See here the release notes.

The main new feature is the total implementation of the DateTime reference. From now on you will be able to distinguish between Date fields and DateTime fields. In other words, apart from the usual date fields, you can set a field to be able to show not only a date but also hours and minutes. See here the details for this new reference.

One immediate effect is that all audit fields in the ERP will from now on show not only the date but also the exact hour, minutes and seconds when it happened.
So, when delivering support for a customer, you will now know the exact date and time when a register has been created/updated. In my opinion, it is a great help for any task regarding user support.

Another use that you can give to this new reference is to change an existing Date reference to the new DateTime reference, so the user can retrieve more exact data for some date fields in the application. Lets say, for example, you convert OrderedDate column in Sales order window from date reference to DateTime reference because knowing the exact timeframe of the sales order is crucial for your customer.

Just change the column length from 10 to 19 (to be able to get the hour:minutes:seconds) and the column reference from Date to DateTime and compile the window. Here is the result.

The bottom line is that you have another great tool to help you satisfy your customer needs.

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