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Draft notes from the meeting: To be approved / confirmed by attendees.

Attendees: Jacopo Capellato, Olivier Heintz, Catherine Heintz, Pierre Smits, Nicolas Malin, Anahita Goljahani Gil Portenseigne, Youssef Khaye, Sharan Foga

Location: Corinthia Hotel, Budapest

Time: 14.00 - 17.00 (Pierre Smits left at 16.00)

 

Workshop Objective

To gain a common view of OFBiz and the way ahead for the future.

Background

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

  • Project Vision: Do we all have the same vision and understanding of OFBiz and where it is going ? / Which direction do they want to project to go in? / What do they see as important?
  • Project Strategies: What strategies are currently in place? (e.g Communication, Risk, Issue Management,
  • Planning: Is there a High Level Plan?
  • Main Areas of Focus: What is the overall planare the main areas the project is working on
  • Organisation: How is the project being managed, controlled and organised

 

Nicolas' vision of OFBiz was that it was an ERP but also a Application development framework that was very strong on integration

Pierre's vision of OFBiz was that it was solution framework that was scalable. It provides a set of solutions that are not all complete. This means that we need to improve what we have to bring them up to a common standard.

Jacopo's vision of OFBiz came from 3 distinct areas.

The first was as an OFBiz user where he wanted to see a more modern framework that give the benefits such as flexibility, speed and efficiency. It would also make it easier to customise applications.

The second was an OFBiz committer where he wanted OFBiz to be simpler to manage and less dependent on external projects

The third was as part of the OFBiz PMC where he wanted to ensure that the OFBiz brand wasnt being misued. Also that we needed to define some strategies for general OFBiz users and the community (One example mentioned was a roadmap to upgrade from one version to another. NOTE: It was noted that this could be a potential opportunity for someone to build an OFBiz upgrade tool that could be extremely useful to the community). He also wanted it to enable companies to contribute back to the project.

As new OFBiz user Anahita spoke from her experience 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 questions.

 

Gil's vision of OFBiz also covered several areas:

The first was that it was a technical development framework that has application components. The applications are examples and the goal was not to deliver an 'out of the box' solution. Each implementation needs to be deliver a solution for the customer.

The second was that we need to ensure that the framework technology and applications need to be kept up to date (eg. refactoring where necessary, security etc)

The third area was improved communication within the project so that people can see what is in progress and what is planned.

The fourth area was to see improved documentation on the wiki and within the OFBiz product itself (so the online application help)

The final area was to improve OFBiz marketing and also setup a simple end user demo

 

 

Original Project Vision:

Jacopo mentioned that the original vision of the OFBiz was to have an application development framework with some skeleton applications that would be customised per implementation. Over the years because of contributions from the community these 'skeleton' applications have become more and more complete.

 

 

 

Draft Proposals

  • Tidy up OFBiz technical framework or "kernel" link
  • Define and implement a process to manage the cleaned code eg to a sandbox location so could be used by users who want to pick it up and use
  • Tidy up / clean up OFBiz business framework (e.g. ensure business processes have a use case to describe the process and that can be used for validation)
  • OFBiz in application documentation - have been using docbook but two other proposals mentioned
    • 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.
    • 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
  • External dependencies refactoring
  • Build a Roadmap / High level plan that will be used to show details of releases and how they are supported, details of work in development, updates planned. 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
  • Ensure business success stories are documented (as this is valuable info for potential users). Ask users  to add their stories and also get them to list the applications used / implemented. 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.
  • Marketing OFBiz - prepare an end user demo that can be based on roles (e.g accountant, HR manager, Order Clerk, Warehouse Manager etc). 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. Also default user if flexadmin which doesnt have all the permissions for all applications).
  • Common Core Marketing Material - Put together some standard OFBiz marketing information that all integrators / users have access to. Integrators can then adapt it to suit their needs if required. Information could be white papers around supported industries etc. 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!
  • Maintenance - eg. Tomcat etc. Need to keep a watching brief on external products that are directly used by OFBiz
  • Establish a group of  "mini subject matter experts" both business and technical (i.e. dont have to be both but can be). Identify contributors and knowledge. Can refer to these people regarding their specific area
  • Work on a strategy to encourage more business users
  • Look at the testing strategy - unit testing in isolation is not enough. We need to ensure there is an full end to end test flow
  • OFBiz branding and trademarks - need to review the process and contact sites that may be infringing this

 

 

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