Main New Features in 2009
December 2009
Starting this month it is required to use Java 1.6 or greater to build OFBiz trunk versions.
- Framework: webservices upgraded
- A long outstanding upgrade has now been done: the move from Axis1 to Axis2. Now it is possible to have webservices with complex parameters, REST and more.
- Birt
- Finally the runtime has now been committed to the trunk.
- Added Birt/warehouse sales reports
- BI, data warehouse
- Entities extended with InventoryItemFact, added related Birt reports.
- Help system and document
- Accounting agreement help screens completed
- Junit test explained.
- Ebay component help screens added.
- OFBiz website
- The OFBiz website can now be ran in the OFBiz system itself. It can also be used as a basis for other languages. try: http://localhost:8080/ofbiz on a local installation
- Accounting
- Converted simple events in FixedAssetMaintEvents.xml to services.
- Sage payment integration
November 2009
- SFA
- SFA accounts/contacts/leads have been rewritten to use forms and the perform find service instead of the ftl and findparty service in order keep the maintenance costs down.
These functions now show by default the parties as shown in the party component with the possibility to assign them to certain users. - The first page now shows the calendar for events and the possibility to receive and send email.
- The event function has been added to assign tasks to one self and others and being informed about the status. The will show up on the SFA front page.
- SFA accounts/contacts/leads have been rewritten to use forms and the perform find service instead of the ftl and findparty service in order keep the maintenance costs down.
- BI/Dataware house
- The Data warehouse has now been extended to the sales order in order to be used by the upcoming Birt report generator.
- Birt
- created the addbirt branch for general review. This report runtime can run reports which are prepared in the Eclipse environment
- POS
- There is now a 800x600 setting (there was only 1024x768 before)
- It's easier to deal with credit card external payment (using an external payment terminal)
- There is now a French version of the Till Manual (Manuel du point vente) and the English version has been updated
- The POS Technical Setup Process has been enhanced, also the POS System page
- You are now able to switch on/off the virtual keyboards from the Admin screen
- Ebay
- Multiple Product Store support provided in eBay. Now user can have multiple Product Store and can maintain hierarchy to support multiple business using different product store.
- Improved Ebay export screen and shown the WebSites that are associated with the Product Store.
- Removed the dependency of search form on eBay from catalog component.
- Improved association of eBay category records with Catalog. Created new category type "PCCT_EBAY_ROOT" and maintain heirarchy of category association with catalog. This provides clear picture and easy to understand association of category with the catalog.
- Couple of error message improvements.
- In case low ATP proper error message was not coming for any product while importing order to the system. It was redirecting the blank page with one line message, that was not verbose enough. Improved error message for this.
- Fixed bug: Error or Success message was not displaying for buziness time theme.
- Google Base
- Multiple Product Store support provided in Google Base. Now user can have multiple Product Store and can maintain hierarchy to support multiple business using different product store.
- Improved Google Base export screen and shown the WebSites that are associated with the Product Store.
- Removed the dependency of search form on Google base from catalog component.
- Google Checkout
- Process payment notification of Authorization, Capture and Refund from Google Checkout.
- Improved refund code because it was not sending correct refund amount when we were returning more then one quantity.
- Send item shipped request from OFBiz to Google in a collection instead of sending multiple request for each item shipped. Also show limitation messages for Google orders, while updating manual adjustments from order detail page.
- Accounting / AR /AP
- Refund for orders placed from PayPal express checkout was not working. Fixed this issue.
- Payment Batches are created by assigning of Payments to FinAccount. In batching FinAccountTrans record is created and then it is assigned to Payment. So on cancelling payment batch if FinAccountTrans status set to cancel. And then association of Payment to FinAccount break and it will available for another batch.
- Modify AR/AP main screen to be a portal page. Show list of "Past Due Invoices" and "Invoices Due Soon" in different portlets in AR/AP.
- List Reconciliations under Financial Account must bee associated to the Finanacial Account.
- FinAccount Reconciliation Search Result Table - Add new column for Cancel Reconciliation.
- Add new field - Closing balance to Reconciliation Screen - This will sum of Opening Balance(default 0) + Reconciled Balance (default 0).
- Improved error message while cancelling payment batch.
- Add new feature to Bulk Print Invoices.
- Add bulk status change action on AR find invoice screen, also add ability to print bulk invoices.
- Financial Account Transaction - Enhance Deposit Slip Popup.
- Reconciliation Screen Enhancements. In Financial Account At Reconciliation Screen (https://ofbiz-vm.apache.org/accounting/control/EditFinAccountReconciliations?finAccountId=ABN_CHECKING), rename field name "Reconciled Date" by "Reconciliation Date". A write a scheduled service (autoFinAccountReconciliation) which will call once in a day and get all of the reconciliation records whose reconciliation date is set in between current date.
- Updated Check Run process to use PaymentMethod of paying organizationParty instead of FinAccount. finAccountId is now fetched from PaymentMethod and finAccount Transaction is created.
- Added bulk action for updating invoice status. Also cleaned up javascript code to take advantage of prototype library. Still remains to move javascript in separate file and also css trick to show button disabled when it is.
- Removed duplicate definition of CommonPartyDecorator. Added partyDecoratorLocation parameter to ar/ap web.xml file so they can find CommonPartyDecorator.
- Added view entity to fetch Payment, PaymentType desc, PaymentMethodType desc, status desc and Party names for display in UI. Fixed depositWithdrawPayment.ftl, now uses view.
- Adding mass payment status change to find screen. Also added few more details in payments list.
- Renamed CommonAdminDecorator to CommonGlSetupDecorator, new name is close to the purpose. Added commonGlSetupDecoratorLocation context parameter. Allows easy way to override decorator in derived applications.
- Adding a view to fetch data from Payment Group Member, Payment and FinAccountTrans entities.
- When creating AP payment use PaymentMethod of organizationParty. FinAccount Transactions are created by fetching finAccountId from PaymentMethod.
- Adding Find Bank Reconciliations screen.
- Screenlets for Quick view into invoices past due and invoices coming due soon.
- Improvements to PaymentGroup UI.Fixed issue with List of deposit slips displaying under FinAccount tab are not associated to FinAccount.This list should contain only those deposit slips which are created for selected FinAccount.
Added ordering, Show deposit slips in search result in descending order of effective date.
- Ecommerce
- Moved few js files from Ecommerce to Ordermgr as Ordermgr screens can't be depended on Ecommerce component.
- One of the biggest featured introduced in Ecommerce and which was "Layered Navigation of Categories." Layered navigation in an Ecommerce application allows the user to filter the product listing based on categories, features and price ranges. The user can apply multiple filters to the given product listing. He can narrow or expand his search and try different filter combinations so as to find the desired product.
- HTML cleanup for Product Detail and other pages.
- OFBiz Change cart item price according to the price role.
- Shopping cart on checkout page does not gets update when a gift item is added in cart after applying coupon code.
- Order
- Add additional screen for gift card certificate buying functionality by CSR in Order manager application in add item page. Also add feature to fill survey on same page. Also if CSR selects "Create as new order" from Actions block for Gift card products then survey responses will be created automatically for the new order, which will be same as last order.
- Better supportability for products of type MARKETING_PKG_AUTO in order processing and fulfillment process.
- Show associated products for product of type "MARKETING_PKG_AUTO" on order items section of show cart page in order manager application.
- Marketing packages should only shown backordered when ATP of product which compose Marketing packages product are less than quantity added in cart.
- Pick sheets should show Products of type Marketing Packages along with the products which compose Marketing Packages.
- Show link of production run created on order items section of Order detail page while placing order for product of type MARKETING_PKG_AUTO.
- Product of type Marketing Packages should be shown on Verify Pick Screen along with Products they are composed of.
- cancelAllBackOrders scheduled service should not attempt to cancel "Completed" Orders.
- Fixed Bug: On order view page when clicking on "Create As New Order", the adjustments Shipping and Handling and Sales Tax are duplicated.
- Order confirmation email doesn't send verbose content when any party doesn't have userlogin associated with it.
- Product / Facility
- New feature to upload multiple Additional View Images at Product Content.Moving services to correct component | location and renaming services so would be verbose enough to understand its purpose.
- Added user friendly error messages on Shipment screens.
- Framework
- Setting viewSize and viewIndex in screen context for list forms wasn't functional, it's fixed now.
October 2009
- POS
New Client Profile screen (from Promo button in promo panel) allows you to search for all clients (all fields empty) or to focus on a client (at least one field filed) and edit his/her profile.
You may select a client, then his/her card id will be used as a promo code. The idea is to generate promo codes and to use them as card numbers when creating physical cards.
Also this allows much more possibilities as now the POS is customer aware...
September 2009
- Content.
- Docbook documents and help screens now showing in the proper visual scheme.
- Most if not all upload content screens now also allow to select existing content using the content navigator. This will enable the reuse of documents
- New component: Setup.
With this component you can start with a system only containing seed data. Then create an admin user and setup the system with this webapp, entering minimal information for the company, productstore, catalog, category and a first product. Enter also the first customer and you can create your first sales order entry, even the glaccounts will be loaded from a external file and the invoice will be properly generated. This can be done in less then 5 minutes.
To start of an empty system was never that easy. See the official ofbiz document for more info.
- SFA.
- added the linking between companies and contact according the party manager principle.
- add the function to assign an existing lead to a sales person.
- Accounting.
- Added more help screens for Invoice, Payment and billing accounts
- Catalog
- OFBiz supports Product Type Hierarchy. But in case of products of type MARKETING_PKG, the logic doesn't applies to sub types when hierarchy is implemented. Now the code is modified to consider the sub product types as well.
- Framework
- The selenium tests can now be run from the webtools application. An example is provided there.
- Upgraded the seleniumXml sytem.
- Added UEL support of variable name modifiers for an object accessed via key in a Map. Added a variable name modifier for BigDecimal.
- Added a utility method CommonWorkers.hasParentType() which takes entity name (Type Entity), sub-type, parent type, and checks if the passed in sub-type has parent type as its parent somewhere in the hierarchy.
- Ebay
- Implemented new calls in eBay - GetOrders & GetMyeBaySelling. Now we are able to import single transaction as well as and order that contains multiple transaction to OFBiz. Order having multiple transaction will remain as it is in OFBiz.
- Provided option to import order & transaction from Single screen.
- Moved values for ebay configuration from property file to new entity EbayConfig. Provided the GUI support to update configuration values.
- Also new entity introduced EbayShippingMethod to support custom shipping method from eBay. Also provided GUI support. Included demo data for reference.
- Code refactoring in eBay and did cleanup in old eBay single transaction search screen. Encouraged use of Generics in Ebay code.
- More then one Product export to eBay was not working so fixed that issue.
- Improved error message shown to customer. Also improved the success messsage shown on the User Interface.
August 2009
- Human Resources
- Added Training management.
- Framework
- Added Selenium test tools to enable user interface testing both on-line and in batch.
- With addition of JSONServiceMultiEventHandler multi forms can now invoke services via Ajax calls.
- Content
- The DocBooK document xml format http://www.docbook.org is now supported including the generation of an HTML version. This opens up the possibility to move all documents inside the ofbiz system and an integration with the help system. The internal documents can also be made visible without having to login. An example OFBiz document is available at the url: http://demo-trunk-ofbiz.apache.org/cmssite/cms/APACHE_OFBIZ_HTML
- The Help system is improved by adding the pospossibility to have help files internal in the OFBiz system.
- Accounting
- Now possible to create sales tax entries on an invoice without an order.
- Added following new things to FinAccount(Bank Account) section -
- Added a Deposit/Withdraw facility for user to deposit/withdraw payments in the Bank.
- Added deposit slip facility to the Bank Account so that user can make a logical group of Payments for bulk deposit/withdraw
- User can create a new Payment from here and can directly associate to the current Bank Account
- Add a facility to reconcile a Bank Account by creating a new GlReconciliation record and assign bank transaction to that reconciliation id.
- Fixed the issues in Reconciliation of Gl Account
- Modify FinAccountTransaction entity and added a new field - statusId to it.
- Added a new field to GlReconciliation entity - statusId.
- Added new feature to AP -
- Added a new feature to AP - Invoice - Purchase Invoice - User can issue CHECK payment for incoming invoices for given bank account id.
- Added a new feature to AP - Invoice - Commission Run - This will search for Outgoing invoices for which any commission have to be paid and create commission invoices for selected invoices.
- Added new feature to AR
- In AR - Payment - Batch Payment a new feature by which user can create a group of payments that can be used for reconciliation.
- Added/Modified reports to Accounting,
- Inventory Valuation,
- Income statements,
- Comparative Income Statement,
- Transaction Total,
- Gl Account Trail Balance,
- Monthly Trial Balance,
- Cost Center (New)
- For above reports also provide facility to different exports - PDF/CSV.
- Now Above reports are showing consolidated balance of its ROLLUP party.
- Prepared JUnit test cases to verify GL Account Balance updated after execution of various accounting business process.
- Added new Payment Gateway in OFBiz - The name of that Gateway is "Chase Orbital". Document for its use will be available soon.
- Hindi Translation
- Now supports Hindi translation for Accounting, Common, Party components.
- Google Base
- Improvement in Google Base. Code was broken in trunk so fixed those problem. Now the generated XML string support namespace specific tags.
- Moved configuration settings from property file to Database using new entity GoogleBaseConfig.
- Added Sample data for Google Base so anybody can use it in their custom projects.
July 2009
- Chinese Translation
- A Chinese translation was added to all components.
- Work Effort
- Improved and expanded iCalendar support. OFBiz can be used as an iCalendar server - enabling users to share calendar information using their iCalendar-aware client (Mozilla Sunbird, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, Windows Vista Calendar, cell phone, PDA). Users can publish department calendars, project calendars, company vacation calendars, etc. They can check on the availability of a conference room, or find out when service is due on a fixed asset - right from their calendar client.
- Facility
- facilityId was not processed correctly in case of quickShipPurchaseOrder. This is fixed now.
June 2009
- MyPortal
- System notes. It is now possible to notify the logged on user of any events which are important to him such as incoming email or tasks assigned to him.
The last three messages are shown in the flat-grey scheme in the header. They are also shown in the mypage 'main' portal page. Can easily be extended to other system events.
Using the firefox "update scanner' plugin at http://updatescanner.mozdev.org/en/index.html a user can be notified of new events even if you is not logged in if this plugin will interrogate the url: https://localhost:8443/myportal/control/showPortlet?portalPortletId=SystemInfoNotes&USERNAME=admin&PASSWORD=ofbiz (adapt to your system) regularly - System status. Also on the main portal page is a portlet of items which are 'open'. Examples are tasks which are assigned but not finished or incoming email which has not been dealt with. Also this can be extended to areas interested for the particular logged in user.
- day/week/month calendar. On the myportal main page is now a calendar where private or public events can be posted within the same portlet. Projectmanager tasks will also appear on this calendar
- System notes. It is now possible to notify the logged on user of any events which are important to him such as incoming email or tasks assigned to him.
- Order
- UPS integration support for sending Shipment Return Label email to customer. This option will be available on order detail screen and as well on return screen when order is in COMPLETED status and return is in ACCEPTED status respectively.
- Functionality for getting online shipping charges from UPS if an order is in approved status with associated shipment in PICKED status and it has been hold due to an overage in the shipping charges from Weight Package only screen.
- Credit in case of order returns now can be stored in Financial Account of type STORE_CREDIT. Product Store now can be configured to set default store credit account type, either Financial Account or Billing Account. Now the basic process of storing credit at time of return will first look for a billing account with negative balance, if none found will use billingAccountId or finAccountId if explicitly supplied, else will store credit based on the default ProductStore setting. If a Financial Account at the time of Store Credit doesn't exists a new one is created.
- PaymentPreference is now being created for cross ship replacement order.
- Payment Authorization and Capture is now possible for replacement orders. Order payment preferences are created and payment method (credit card) is set for replacement orders. But authorization and capture of the payments was failing since the order grand total is set to zero.
- Facility
- Introduction to "Weight Package Only" screen for the verified orders from Verify Pick process with support of UPS integration.
- UPS integration enhancement for supporting shipping quote based on dimensions as well.
- Recieve PO functionality was broken, there were some major issues with the database changes on receiving PO in different scenarios. This is now fixed.
May 2009
- PartyMgr / myPortal
- A built in web email client has been completed for the receiving and sending of email. Further it is possible to edit other parties email if the relationship in the partyRelationShip entity is recorded. Emails can be converted into customer requests and assigned to tasks in a project and assigned to a project member all on one screen.
- Accounting
- Support of Authorize.net 3.1 and use the new Payment Gateway Config features.
- Integration of new RBS WorldPay Select Junior and support of new Payment Gateway Config features.
- Added screens to see billing accounts and returns information under Fin. History tab in Party.
- Order
- After a return for refund, now exchange order can be created against original order.
- Added new return type "Replace Immediately". This could be used with returns for which items are not expected to be returned and even item(s) cost less then the shipping charges.
- Added new filters on find order page. This filter is about finding orders ship to a country. This work along with the option "Include Only" and "Do Not Include". With the former option system will display only orders that are ship to the selected country and with latter it will display only order that are not shipped to the selected country.
- Added Optional input field where user can specify an orderId while creating a purchase order from Requirements.
- Enable audit for few fields on ReturnItem entity namely returnTypeId, returnReasonId, returnQuantity, receivedQuantity and returnPrice. The history of changes on these fields can be viewed through new tab Return History.
- Adding the feature to show/hide out of stock products on site. This new implementation is configurable through a new field showOutOfStockProducts (by default equal to Y) on ProductStore.
- Enabled audit on few fields on OrderItem to archive changes in OrderItem price and quantities as well as on OrderItemShipGroup to archive changes in shipment method for an
order.This can be viewed through "Order History" link under Actions screelet on Order Detail Page. - Added an option to add a new shipping address from Order detail page.
- Added feature to generate pick sheet PDF for an order from Order Detail Page.
- Added few more search filters on find order page. They are shipping method, order viewed and PaymentGatewayResponse - gatewayAvsResult, gatewayScoreResult.
- A zero amount replacement order gets created in held status when a return is accepted by using return type "Wait Replacement Reserved". If the return is not received within 30 days then all these replacement orders are canceled by a scheduled batch process.
- New return type "Refund Immediately" which trigger refunds on when return is accepted.
- New functionality added for when existing replacement order (in held status) get cancelled because of return is not recieved in minimum number of days, but if the return is received later on then a new replacement order will be created for the return received.
- Added new feature to mark order as viewed.
- Catalog
- Now Shipping Total adjustments can be applied using promotion. User can specify percentage discount on a specific shipping method. This may be used for free shipping if needed.
- Marketing
- Added two new reports in Marketing component. These reports are related to emails sent, bounced and opened, subscriptions and canceled for given time period.
- Ecommerce
- When inventory is found or returned for a Discontinued Item then update ProductCategoryMember so that this item is shown in front-end store.
- GoogleCheckout
- Broken code is fixed in OFBiz trunk to send the cart details to Google Checkout area.
- Sending cart info using Java API is introduced. Then saving Order is done based on the Order Notification is comming from Google Checkout server.
- Other things are Introduced new entities to provide the configurable option for user on the GUI.
- Couple of things are handled from Order Notification api like update order info which includes cancel order, charge order.
- Introduced the concept to send Flat Rate Ship estimate to google and very soon we should introduced Merchant calculated Option for sending Ship estimate.
- Provided link on the Ecommerce facing so that end user knows that this feature exists in OFBiz.
- Facility
- Added missing Enumeration data for InventoryItemDetail Reasons - "Mis-shipped Item Ordered
" and "Mis-shipped Item Shipped
".
- Added missing Enumeration data for InventoryItemDetail Reasons - "Mis-shipped Item Ordered
April 2009
At this point the Release 9.04 was introduced
- Web Pos
- Changed some services to support BigDecimal
- Accounting
- Misc improvements on Manual Payment Gateway Transaction (manual transactions supported are : authorize, capture, credit, refund, release).
- Support of CyberSource v5.0.2 and use the new Payment Gateway Config features.
- New Payment Gateway Configurations and use of it on Product Store Payment Settings.
- PayPal is now using the new Payment Gateway Config.
- PayflowPro is now using the new Payment Gateway Config and support API v4.31, v2 & v3 will be end of life from September 2009.
- Projectmgr
- Survey Implementation for testing scenarios of ecommerce application. Sample data preparation, services & UI is done. In next phase improvement will be done using Prototype library.
- Product
- New screen with Facility Tab: "Verify Pick" to allow user to verify a pick.
- Packing screen improved to use verified orders from Verify Pick screen by using existing shipment and invoice created from "Verify Pick"
- Facility-->Picking User can select options for preparing a group on the basis of Shipping method, Warehouse area and Number of order items (one to two, three or more). So that group of Orders are created according to selected options.
- In picking screen after grouping orders per selected factors by the user functionality for printing pick sheet of group of orders, which will show detailed information of each order like shipping method, and number of order items in each order.
- Order
- Introduced new return type "Wait Replacement Reserved" for returns of order, with this when return is accepted immediately create replacement order, in the "Held" status and when original item return is received HELD replacement order(s) auto-set the status to APPROVED to clear them for fulfillment.
- Framework
- Label Manager in Webtools is completed for the moment.
- User Interface
- New smoothfeather theme, still some issues to fix but very promising. BTW this style is also used for the main site and documentation
March 2009
- Framework
- Security : security against XRSF has been enforced.
- User Interface
- You can now change the language used an stay on the page you where. This is working both in backend and eCommerce. It uses a new feature which allows to stay on a page (view-last) or/and to store a page to come back to it after (save-last-view)
- Most of harcoded labels have been internationalized
- More online help accessible (in accounting for instance)
- Debian
- An effort to package to Debian is currently in progress and well advanced
- Order
- Now while placing purchase order, orderId can be supplied explicitly. If not supplied then it will be created automatically.
- Added new field for "cancelBackOrderDate", like others for OrderItem(purchase order). Field is shown in order detail page and on Purchase order PDF if exists; Also added scheduled service (midnight daily) which searches for purchase orders with Cancel Back Order Date and cancels order if the date is in past.
- Now possible to add more then one product at a time to purchase order in order detail page with single add form.
- Now While recording PO, when the unit price of the item is edited the new value automatically gets set as last price on supplier record.
- After placing purchase order estimatedShipDate and estimatedDeliveryDate can be entered by editing order items in order detail page.
- Now while waiting for the inventory to arrive, user can lower priority on inventory allocation so that other orders can be fulfilled while waiting for sufficient inventory to fill the large sales order. Priority of order can be set from order detail page explicitly.
February 2009
- Framework
- Security : a work in progress has already solved all XSS issues
- MyPortal
- The component is completed now, see http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBENDUSER/My+Portal?decorator=printable
- User Interface
- Thanks to the Labels Manager (WebTools) the French translation is now complete. It will be checked and updated monthly
- You can now define a Visual Theme for the eCommerce (see in Product/Store)
January 2009
- Accounting
- Payrol invoice/payment check. It is now possible to create a payrol invoice/payment and print the related itemized check
- Framework
- A new labels manager in Webtools greatly improves dealing with labels l10n
- It's now possible lo login through CAS remotely
- A tarpitting mechanism to protect pages from data thieves (with login/pwd on hand) has been introduced
- BigDecimal completly replaced Double where relevant
- User Interface
- Nearly complete labels l10n cleaning done
- New "blue-light" theme with drop-down menus
- MyPortal
- It is improving
- It is improving
- Party
- Geolocation added with demo data for parties, facilities, container (not much used in OFBiz yet) and fixed assets