...

Notes from the

...

Meeting:

Table of Contents

OFBiz Workshop Session at Apachecon EU 2014

...

• To understand what OFBiz means to everyone
• To gain a common view of OFBiz and the way ahead for the future
• To discuss any OFBiz related topics
• To create a list of proposals that could be discussed with the wider community

Background

The meeting started with Sharan giving a quick overview of some key areas that she thought needed to be discussed. These were

...

Anahita spoke from her experience as a new OFBiz user and said that she found it difficult to learn and get started with OFBiz. There seemed a lack of logic and organisation of information and it took patience and perserverance to get familiar with OFBiz. Once you are familiar with it then the idea behind the product is amazing and the potential is huge. She found the mailing lists really helpful and the community willing to respond to her questionstake care of any patches she submitted.

Gil's vision of OFBiz also covered several areas:

...

1. In the future he would like to see OFBiz having multiple distributions all based around a common base framework or "kernel".
2. Each distribution would be made up of the common kernel and specific applications (e.g based on industry, sector or country). The common kernel would be the same for all providers and so could be common marketing materials could be used.
3. He also wanted to see if the community could setup or link contributors to a particular OFBiz area (e.g. mini subject matter experts). These people could then give an opinion on processes , potential coding improvements or changes to that specific area.

Catherine's feedback was from an end user perspective. She currently uses OFBiz to capture requirements and process orders and invoices.

1. She believes that very few customers want an OFBiz "out of the box" solution and to make a real business solution more customised or customer specific functionality will need to be added.
2. She thinks the current community is very technically focussed and this needs to be balanced with business people so the project needs to attract business users. She thinks that project communication shouldnt be restricted to just the mailing lists (as having this face to face meeting is really good and we can easily discuss things and respond quickly).

Youssef's vision was that OFBiz was a framework used to build solutions because not many companies could use OFBiz "out of the box".

...

• All project issues are managed in JIRA
• Users need to create a profile and can report an issue or submit a patch
• Committers assign themselves to an issue and then follow it through to resolution (normally this is either fixing the issues themselves or applying a submitted patch)
• Reports and statistics are available

Task Management

• Future tasks or requests for improvements are also managed through JIRA

...

Marketing

• No real marketing strategy in place
• Need to aim to attract more business users
• Look at tools available, may need to link this to communication strategy and also branding management

External Dependencies

There was a brief discussion about external dependencies (i.e. on other projects or functionality) and how they have been implemented in OFBiz. The aim is to have a flexible framework that works with the Apache release process. Any external product needs to be maintained and when a release is made the project PMC are responsible for signing the release which ensures that any external dependencies willl be correctly integrated and maintained for the release.

We currently have cases where some external products should not have been implemented to form part of release but can be made available if users want to integrate them into an OFBiz release.

Technical vs.

...

Business Knowledge

A key point was raised that some of the people classed as technical (i.e developers or integrators) in the project also have very solid business experience too. We need to capture information about who knows about which applications and business processes so that we can encourage them to become part of our team of 'mini subject matter experts'.

Consolidated Ideas and Draft Proposals

These consolidated ideas / proposals are

...

to be raised for on the mailing lists for community

...

discussion and feedback. They will only be implemented if the community consensus is received.

1. Proposal: Tidy up OFBiz

...

1. Technical Framework or "kernel"

...

1. 1. e.g identify what needs to be tidied up and assign the work out to be done
      
      

2. Proposal: Define and implement a process to manage the

...

1. code that has been cleaned out

   1. eg to a sandbox location so could be used by users who want to pick it up and use
      
      

2. Proposal: Tidy or Clean up

...

1. OFBiz Business Framework

   1.  (e.g. ensure business processes have a use case to describe the process and that can be used for validation)
      
      

2. Proposal: Implement OFBiz in

...

1. Application Documentation

   1. We have been using docbook but two other proposals mentioned
   2. Idea 1: Use SVNPUB: This is committer controlled but may be able to switch to setup a business user expert with write access. This means that the "mini subject matter experts" could easier maintain their specific areas.
   3. Idea 2: Wikipedia style documentation where a page linked within the OFBiz application page (e.g. using the '?') will link to the wiki. This is more open and non committer controlled. Means more people can contribute
      
      

2. Proposal: External

...

1. Dependencies Refactoring

   1. specific workstream on refactoring external dependencies
      
      

2. Proposal: Build a Project Roadmap / High level plan

...

1. 1. This will be used to show details of releases and how they are supported, details of work in development, updates planned.

...

1. 2. We need to look at tools available eg. JIRA has options to do planning and roadmap, also look for Roadmap and planning info on the Wiki as may be able to collate
      
      

2. Proposal: Ensure

...

1. Business Success stories are documented

...

1. 1. This is valuable

...

1. 1. information for potential users

...

1. 1. .

...

1. 1. We could ask users  to add their stories and also get them to list the applications used / implemented.
   2. Existing policy is that there should be no direct links from OFBiz website main pages so need to use the wiki. Investigate whether integraters are willing to share their client links and stories.
      
      

2. Proposal: Marketing

...

1. the OFBiz Demo to Business End Users

   1. Prepare an end user demo that can be based on roles (e.g accountant, HR manager, Order Clerk, Warehouse Manager etc).
   2. Link to user stories that can have a script or supporting documentation (e.g currently on main page there are no instructions about how to login to the demo just in case you are thrown out.
   3. Also default user if flexadmin which doesnt have all the permissions for all applications).
      
      

2. Proposal: Build a set of Common Core OFBiz Marketing Material

...

1. 1. Put together some standard OFBiz marketing information that all integrators / users have access to.
   2. Integrators can then adapt it to suit their needs if required. Information could be white papers around supported industries etc.

...

1. 2. Will need to define what tool could be used to prepare the material as it needs to be accessible to a common audience. This is important as everyone will need to be able to edit it!
      

...

1. 1. 
      

2. Proposal: Housekeeping and Ongoing Maintenance

   1.  eg. Tomcat etc. Need to keep a watching brief on external products that are directly used by OFBiz and prepare a plan of when to integrate them
      
      

3. Proposal: Establish a group of  "mini subject matter experts"

...

1. covering business and technical

...

1. 1. i.e. dont have to be both but can be

...

1. 2. . Identify contributors and knowledge. Can refer to these people regarding their specific area
      
      

2. Proposal: Work on a strategy to encourage more business users

3. Proposal: Look at

...

1. developing a full testing strategy

...

1. 1. Unit testing in isolation is not enough. We need to ensure there is an full end to end test flow
      
      

2. Proposal: Actively Manage OFBiz branding and trademarks

...

1. 1. Need to review the process and contact sites that may be infringing

...

1. 1. on the OFBiz brand
      
      

Actions

...

...

• Please Review Apachecon Meeting Notes Jacopo Cappellato, Olivier Heintz, Pierre Smits, Gil Portenseigne, Malin Nicolas, Anahita Goljahani, Khaye youssef