Open Source ERP Guru

Lately I’ve been looking into integration between open source BI solution, Pentaho, and Openbravo ERP. After installing and setting up the different components, I decided I would start with a very simple task-a basic ETL process, just to get a feeling for Pentaho.

To make things a bit more interesting, I decided I’d throw SugarCRM into the mix. SugarCRM is the world’s leading open source CRM solution. It is written in php and runs on an Apache web server using Mysql as the database engine. My ETL job will transfer some customer information from Openbravo to SugarCRM – that would be a scenario for anyone who is using Openbravo and would like to start working on Sugar as a CRM solution.

After installing the Pentaho BI suite, I decided to take a look at their ETL offering,Kettel. It’s a java based tool, but since the design-time of ETL is a client-side activity,I decided to run it on off my Windows XP PC. ETL tools are part of every major BI offering  because they are used to upload large amount of data from operational systems (e.g. ERP) to data warehouses.

ETL tools are also used in migration processes-if you replace your ERP vendor, upgrade to a new version or transfer data from ERP to CRM, for example,you will need an ETL tool. Although ETL tools allows you to upload as many or as few records as you like, the true strength of this tools lie in their ability to perform well when transferring very large amounts of data,sometimes tens of millions of records. In our simple test we will transfer a small number of customer records.

Openbravo->SugarCRM, Customer->Account ETL process using Pentaho Kettel

Notice in the screen capture the source (Openbravo business partner table), the fields mapping step in the middle and the destination – a CSV file to be imported into SugarCRM.

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In our last post we walked through the installation of Apache OFBiz. Once you got OFBiz installed and running, you should be able to access the OFBiz software by pointing your browser to http://server:8080/webtools (where ’server’ is your server’s hostname) . We will use OFBiz’s default user – admin (password OFBiz) to login and start setting up the system.

Just like we did with other open source ERP software we setup – Openbravo and Compiere, we will create our company,a couple of users and import a chart of accounts file. Obviously, there are a lot more configuration steps you would take if you would go to production with OFBiz, but for our purposes these steps are sufficient.

Attached to this post you will find the first recorded flash tutorial of Apache OFBiz. We will also add OFBiz to the Flash Comparator, so if you did not visit the Comparator yet it’s time you do.

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The next series of blog posts will introduce Compiere, the most popular open source ERP solution today. I know some would disagree about the open source nature of Compiere, but that is a separate discussion.

We will start by creating a Client – or Tenant – in our vanilla Compiere system. After that, we will create a business partner, a product and a sales order. That would allow us to compare Compiere to Openbravo and later, to additional open source ERP solutions.

Needless to say, a flash tutorial of the Compiere initial client setup is attached to this post.

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One of the important things for many of my blog’s readers is to get an initial feeling on how each open source ERP solution looks and feels.

Therefore, I will start adding flash clips along with some of the tutorials I am writing. The first flash tutorial I made is a recording showing how to create an initial Client in Openbravo open source ERP.
If you plan to follow the flash to create you first Openbravo Client, you should also read the original guide.

I am still working on getting the flash clip to play full screen properly. I would really appreciate comments – on flash clip playing speed,size of screen,level of details or any other suggestion.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://opensourceerpguru.com/flash/InitialSetupOpenbravo.swf" height="250" width="427" play="false"/]

To view the flash ERP tutorial in a larger screen, click on “Read Complete Article”

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ERP software is different from regular software in many ways. One of the most significant differences is the effort required to take an installed system and make it usable for end users. If you install a spreadsheet software, for example, all you need to do to start using it is just launch the application. On the contrary,it might take a year or more from the moment an ERP systems is installed until users can start using it. Open source ERP software made a huge step in simplifying the installation processes, and its now almost as easy to install open source ERP as it is to install your favorite Office suite (we recommend Openoffice).

The next series of posts will demonstrate how easy it is to set up a vanilla (software system that was just installed and did not undergo any changes,configuration or customization) open source ERP installation to a point where users can start using the system.

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