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Codesquare Helix is a complete warehouse inventory and sales system. It takes the power of the OFBIZ OFBiz backend and adds a Java based desktop client interface. This provides an easily installable client that lets customers determine what aspects of OFBIZ OFBiz are made available to its operators. By making use of a chat client to traffic serialized inventory processing requests, Helix can support multiple client installations asynchronously.
The main aspects of the Helix client are management of warehouse items, locations, use of hand-held scanners, point of sale, and order fulfillment. The user interface can be highly customized for each type of business and allows the addition of a business logic layer that makes decisions before any information is sent to or retrieved from the OFBIZ OFBiz backend.
Codesquare Helix has also made use of the OFBIZ OFBiz web site capabilities to provide an online sales portal that is linked to the warehouse inventory. The web site content delivery system has been modified to provide greater support for stylesheets to improve customization of sites.
Finally, another application, Helix RNA, synchronizes the web site and warehouse systems to provide integrated order fulfillment capabilities. At specified intervals, it replicates the inventory and order data from the central OFBIZ OFBiz database and any satellite databases used to support Helix based web sites. This allows for truly scalable and distributed data management and delivery.

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We are a multi channel retail services business selling through stores across the United Kingdom and over the Internet. We have ambitions to extend this to television, mobile phones and gaming consoles in the future. We have been using Ofbiz OFBiz to provide key services for our business for some years with lots of success. We combine it with Postgres and run it on legacy hardware and have consistently had very high availability from the earliest days.
We originally started working with Ofbiz OFBiz because it provided us with the full e commerce services that we needed at the time. Since then, as extra functionality has been added, we have incorporated it into our enterprise as fast as possible. We are still doing this and try to keep up to date with stable releases for our live system. We have some in house technical support but have made regular use of the services available (both for free and at a cost) within the Ofbiz OFBiz community. We contributed both documentation and some of the localisation for the United Kingdom. This has been built on by others in the community.
We also run the ofbizOFBiz.co.uk community group although this is not too active at the moment. Our technical efforts tend to be concentrated in bursts as we are dedicate a time period to the business. Besides our own implementation we have managed two other company implementations which are currently live. We are strong in project management and business analysis with experience within financial services, telecommunications, retail and channel management. We are constantly looking for partners with whom to deliver new and interesting projects.

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I (we) are currently using at least the Entity Engine portion of ofbiz OFBiz in a production application. I have planned to evaluate/include other portions of the project as soon as I have the time to do so. My company, Vision Information Services, is in the supply chain management, Vendor managed Inventory, and Retail systems management. Unfortunately, all of our current web sites that utilize ofbiz OFBiz are not public. The public site is not written in Java and is very old (not too exciting). If anyone is looking for supply chain/retail solutions though, feel free to contact us! Our customers range from large home entertainment suppliers to large retailers.

We really appreciate everything that you've put into the ofbiz OFBiz package, and hopefully as we get more familiar we will be able to make some valuable contributions to the project.

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I am working for a service company called Telaside, just created (www.telaside.com).

I started studying and using ofbiz OFBiz 3 months ago, while building a proposal for an e-commerce site here in France (budget between 250 000 - 350 000€). Our answer was a mix between ofbiz OFBiz for the e-commerce 'plumbing' and an opensource content management solution for the visual front office parts. The customer was a big company, we were short listed, but they preferred a 100% Microsoft/.NET solution.

Nevertheless, I was convinced enough of the huge ofbiz OFBiz potential that we built another proposal, for a customer selling on-line lessons mainly to people who would like to learn about arts, food, wine and so on. The budget is quite different, the global envelope is about 15000 Euros. We won the deal, so I started developing on the ofbiz OFBiz platform.

So a first point I would like to emphasize is that whatever big is the targeted site, ofbiz OFBiz can be an answer.

How have I overcome the obstacles and supported the important things for my organization?

• The site I am developing www.labelleecole.fr is a mix and match of the principles found in ofbizOFBiz, so I did not have to change a lot of things. The big difference is mainly that a product is a lesson, and there is a schedule attached to it. I am linking a product to a fixed asset (already existing) but modified a couple of things here and there in order to be as close to my needs as I can. For example I've modified the order cancellation process in order to decrement the seats occupation in the fixed asset calendar, the checkAvailability() of the ShoppingCart not to compare with now() but with the fromDate of the fixedassetproduct, otherwise my future lessons are never available (the same apply for the createOrder() dates filtering), the filterByDate method of the EntityUtil class to include the given date instead of using only after or before, for the same reason...etc.
• One important thing that I know now is to always look at what has been done in the code before trying to do it from scratch. Often, somewhere, there is a bsh file, a service, a static method or something else probably waiting to be called and that will do nearly what I am looking for. And if it does not, then a combination of elements will probably answer my question. 'Study a lot, code a little' is in one of the docs. I totally agree with that!
• Also, the fact that I was involved with Si in the entity test engine suite helped me a lot discovering the entity engine features. Need less to say that it was a great help. So helping the community helps you also. That is a very important point I think.
• The book 'The Data Model Resource Book' is also a must have, in order to understand the data model.
• There is quite a learning curve, that is sure. But the efforts really worth it. There is so much to win using all those technologies.
• This community model is really interesting. It's very pleasant to work and share with people all around the world.

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Businessesnetwork.com developed a SAS service between Suppliers and Users.
It was based on MS SQL and Access ADP.
The MS SQL was very procedure oriented to perform task that fetched data, imported data, and allow user to format and export data to their Stores.
In 2000 I started looking for solution that freed me from Microsoft but was powerful enough to accomplish my goals.
I selected Java as the language and started doing OO programming.
In 2001 I ran across Ofbiz OFBiz and liked the design. At that time it was not really what I wanted but kept my eyes on its development.
I evaluated many other java-based systems over the next few years. I kept coming back to OfbizOFBiz.
With the release of version 2.0 I finally had something to sink my teeth into and became serious on using Ofbiz OFBiz as my framework.
I admit the Ecommerce side was my attraction since I have 5 domains.
The Main attraction was that I could define data (entitities) and have the database taken care of as well the UI. As well the UI was web based, which meant it was usable across all the platforms that had a browser, and I did not have to worry of upgrades of platform to break my system.
So I set about converting my MS-SQL/Access apps to OfbizOFBiz., and putting them on linux based servers with Postgresql db's. I created a swing UI that read the Ofbiz OFBiz WebPages and converted them to a swing presentation. The Swing UI has a parser that takes care of communications between Ofbiz OFBiz and the Swing app This way they did not have much learning curve from the ADP User Interface they were use to and the New UI.
I am currently running 5 Ofbiz OFBiz systems. One handles my 5 domains, one handles the Services I had On MS-SQL/access ADP clients, and a few handle my Online Game.

Ofbiz OFBiz handles each situation well.

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Vincey "Kanip" Hall CEO, ie08.com

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Ofbiz OFBiz Content Manager Rocks

I recently implemented Ofbiz OFBiz using pieces of its vast framework to build a site for a major Research Funder. Major modules used in my implementation are: Content, Project (and WorkEffort by implication). The response has been great. Working with the Content module has been challenging but rewarding. I love this framework and the freedom it gives me to customise on a solid, elegant framework.

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I was hired to add inventory control for a POS written in Ruby. The decision to use OFBiz was made prior to my coming on board, but nothing was done except for the ruby calling add product and physical inventory control services. When a food ingredient is added in the POS it would add a product to OFBiz, and when it was sold it would use physical inventory control to remove it. I was asked to implement purchase order and receiving as well as to modify the physical inventory adjustment screen. The first few weeks were spent doing any tutorials I could find online and reading up on how to get a environment. Once I got used to using OFBiz it made a great deal of sense, so take the time to learn the components available and the structure of the directories. I found a great deal of documentation available. The Wiki has a great tutorial, and some good examples. Google will give you what is available online and the mailing list is also invaluable resource. I also decided to purchase all available books. There are some good ones from lulu press and Pact. I especially found the developers guide handbook and the accounting book helpful. I decided to use the MRP module to look at minimum quantity to make requirements based on quantity on hand. These can then be made into purchase orders and received. I was able to understand the technologies in use fairly quickly. The best way is to learn the components and what screens are available. You can view the source of the screen which will let you know what in ofbiz OFBiz is providing the screen. you go to the components folder and find the controller.xml. This tells you what screens are being used. You can find the screens.xml in the component and it will set the data up for use in the action area and call the screen parts. Some are in forms.xml (widgets) and some are FTL. The data is usually made available using either an entity call in action or a call to groovy, some use a service. I used grep to find where these items lived. I created a hot-deploy project to house my version. In this way when I moved from 12.04 to 13.07 it was easier than if I had modified the original code in the component folders. Using my hot-deploy I would copy the controller.xml for the screens I needed to modify. I did screens parts from MRP (the generate requirements button), the requirements, purchase order, receiving. and a few others like shipping and company address and add supplier. I also did inventory control. OFBiz screens after a few months made great sense but my boss wanted very simple screens, so I removed much of the detail and made very simple screens. I was able to convert the unit of measure when going from a requirement to a purchase order, and back again when I received, so purchase order had supplier quantity. Not only is it fairly easy to modify the existing components, OFBiz gives a robust platform for building your own applications. I was able to write an EDI module and integrate to the purchase order screens. I was able to create a easy to use front end. I used groovy and FTL, but there are many tools that make it easy. OFBiz has a component called webtools (i used interactive entity alot and xml import and export) that makes it clear what is OFBiz expecting giving you the names of the entity and the fields in a format used by the Database (I used postgres) and what to use in groovy or xml, or java.

 My experience was very positive. I highly recommend OFBiz. I finished my project in 6 months working solo. My only advice is to spend the money for the books. I waited till about the second month and it would of been a big time saver to have read them first. Be careful on modifications especially if you move stuff to your hot-deploy. Some of OFBiz functionality is through what is call SECA and this is like a trigger reacting to actions taken. Just be sure you move those as well. It is extremely logical in its layout. The entity engine is very easy to understand and use for your own tables. There is a data folder in each component that had two forms of data. Demo which I recommend you set this up in a non development place. I was using a windows host and Ubuntu for my dev, so I did a demo version on my windows box so I could reference their examples. there is a ofbizOFBiz-component.xml file that lays out what is where for that component and you can use that to add additional demo or seed data. I used seed to create my initial admin user, and initialize stuff like accounts used, and suppliers, and my edi configuration. There are some important folders like servicedef and entitydef. These details what OFBiz expects and where. Some times you do not see a path in controller.xml and the servicedef folder will detail that. It can be tricky as sometimes the services are call from one component but live in a different component and this help clear it up. I found great support available through the mailing list in 2014. Use google and mailing list and  most of grep OFBiz itself and you will never not figure out how to accomplish your goals quickly and easily. I loved my experience in this very cool robust platform.

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Joel Fradkin (joelfradkin@gmail.com)

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We have been working with OFBiz for 2.5 years and plan to rollout OFBiz to 5 companies across 8 countries and a total of 1800 users.

 

So far we have completed 1 company which comprises of these applications:

• Telecentre System and lead management
• Sales Orders
• Invoicing
• Product configurators
• CRM
• Human Resource
• Purchase Orders
• Stock Management
• Hand Held

 

All of the above applications have taken the OFBiz components as a starting point and then we have extended and added our own customisations (some quite heavily) to get OFBiz working how we want it to.

Going forward we are looking to introduce:

• Service Management, this will allow us to make planned warranty visits and breakdowns. We have a network of 11 branches around the UK and 250 service engineers out on the road.
• MRP – We manufacture in 2 different countries
• Installation Scheduling – We install our products and need a way to optimise our installations team.
• We are also continuing to make changes to the current live OFBiz components, as we remove more of our legacy systems.

 

Most of the above will be introduced into the remaining 4 companies and we feel confident that each company/country will be quicker than the previous as our code base builds up.

My view on OFBiz is that it’s a great product once you have taken time to really understand it and it's probably this that is the biggest barrier for companies taking it up. When we first started looking at OFBiz almost everyone outside of IT was against it, we had to do numerous presentation and explanation as to why we should go with OFBiz as opposed to going with a product like SAP.  Now we have got it working for one company and people can see the benefits,  we are now being asked to delivery it into the business faster(Now our presentations are setting expectation on when it will be delivered)

Anyone wanting to introduce OFBiz, should be prepared for the difficulties at the beginning of the project but I am sure by the end of the project they will be more than please they chose OFBiz.

Just like to thank all the committers and contributors who have worked on producing a great product.

Simon Maskell (Simon.Maskell@Stannah.co.uk)

Stannah

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