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Most of our accounts had the need and desire for sophisticated eBusiness applications, but just could not justify the cost of other business suites. They were very receptive to the OFBiz value and were excited to have eBusiness tools to offer their customers and sales staff.
We highly recommend web developers and web designers that have cost conscience customers to develop OFBiz sites. The future looks very exciting.
Vincey "Kanip" Hall CEO, ie08.com
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OFBiz Content Manager Rocks
I recently implemented 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.
Gavin Mabie (gavin.mabie@urbannex.co.za)Emerging Researchers Network
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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 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 OFBiz-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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