BLOG

NEXT STEPS

Archive for the ‘HotWax Media’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Accounting for OFBiz eCommerce

Friday, October 29th, 2010

OFBiz-Accounting-Application

After a long wait and a lot of hard work, I am pleased to finally be able to say that the Accounting application in Apache OFBiz is ready for prime time! By working with internal experts (including Jacopo Cappellato) along with client experts, we have recently launched an enterprise e-commerce system that is using the OFBiz Accounting application more extensively than any of the systems we have previously implemented.

It is no surprise that the mantras of entrepreneurs everywhere often center on revenue generation, and rarely on the underlying accounting thereof! Keeping accurate financial records of all business activities is, nevertheless, essential, and the OFBiz Accounting application has many features designed to help support that critical need for sound financial management.

In an effort to make the OFBiz Accounting application as easy to use as possible for a variety of businesses both small and large, Hotwax Media created additional tools allowing for user export of general ledger account transaction data in the Quickbooks IIF format, as well as the ability to receive payments in A/R batches. (There is a widely accepted perception that Quickbooks is very easy to use. I don’t necessarily agree :) This integration, nevertheless, means users can easily export data of their choice out of OFBiz Accounting and import that data into Quickbooks. We created this integration based on customer demand. I would not have guessed it, but they told us loudly and clearly that accountants love to play with numbers in Quickbooks; well, we aim to please!

Over next little bit I’ll share more information with some concrete examples that you can use for setting up your own OFBiz Accounting system.

- Anil

Anil Patel is Chief Development Officer at HotWax Media as well as an OFBiz project committer, PMC member, and active community contributor. He also studies karate! Anil will join other HotWax Media employees and advisors in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Enterprise eCommerce, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz eCommerce | No Comments »

OFBiz Tutorial: Managing Cross Sell Products in OFBiz

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Building off of other OFBiz catalog manager tutorials that Pranay and Vikas built earlier this year, today I will be diving into how you can manage cross sell information in OFBiz.  We’ll break this up into two separate sections: Adding Cross Sell Products and Editing Cross Sell Products once they are added.

Add Cross Sell Product(s)


Let’s first talk about prerequisite for managing this part of the catalog:

The user must at least have the role of catalog manager.  There are other roles that they can have that encompass catalog management, but they must have the ability to go here and manage this content.

The data must be setup so that the product’s association type is modeled correctly in the system.  Basically what this is saying is that some association types, while they may look like they would fit in here, will not have the product show up correctly on the front end if you do not do this properly.

Now that we know that – let’s discuss adding cross sell product associations to your products.

Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-1

Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 2

A list of products will be displayed based on the search criterion.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 3

Click on any of the products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 4

Click on the “Associations” tab.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 5

Fill in the following details in the “Add Association” form :

    Product Id
    Product Id To
    Association Type Id (Select Association Type as ‘Complementary Or Cross Sell’)
    From Date
    Sequence Number
    Reason
    Instruction
    Quantity

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 6

Click on the “Create” button after entering the information.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-7a

Then you’ve got your association taken care of, and you will see it displayed on the “Associations from this Product to” section of your product management page:

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 8

If your front end supports it, you will see your cross sell items on the front end of your website in the “Recommended Products” section of your product detail or shopping cart pages.

Edit Cross Sell Product(s)

Now that you can add cross sell products to your product associations, let’s discuss how you can edit this information in OFBiz. The prerequisites are exactly the same as for adding cross sells into the system except to edit it, you need to already have created the cross sell product association :) .

Here are the steps for editing cross sell product associations:

Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-1

Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 2

A list of the products will be displayed based on the search criterion.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 3

Click on any of products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 4

Click on the “Associations” tab.
Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 5

On the “Associations” page, click on the “Edit” button next to the complementary product in the “Associations from this Product to” section.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 9

Update the following details in “Add Association” form:

    Thru Date
    Sequence Number
    Reason
    Instruction
    Quantity

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 5

Click on the “Update” button to save the details.

ofbiz-tutorial-cross-sell-11a

Use the “Delete” button to delete the associated cross sell product – if necessary.

Ofbiz Tutorial Cross Sell 12

Now you’ve got your association tuned (or deleted) depending on what you needed to do in your system.  The changes will be reflected on the “Associations from this Product to” section of Associations page and will also be reflected on your front end in the “Recommended Products” section of your product detail page or shopping cart pages.

More OFBiz tutorials to come in the not too distant future – stay tuned!

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media, an OFBiz service provider, as well as an OFBiz project committer and active community member. Tim will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Apache OFBiz, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Verified Agile Workflows and Processes

Monday, October 4th, 2010

October 4, 2010

verified agile workflow management system

Now that we’ve gone through the process of explaining the differences between standard Agile development methodologies and our custom workflow management system called Verified Agile, let’s dig into the different steps that we go through in order to be successful in this environment.

To kick off a project’s first iteration, we dig in on the requirements and create a number of Epics that encompass the entire set of information in contained in the requirements documentation.  If you are not familiar with an Epic it is simply a high level story used for capturing requirements that are often too complex or too large to estimate right away and will need to be detailed and broken down for estimation, planning and eventually implementation.  Once the first Epic is fully fleshed out, and the stories are defined, estimated and prioritized, we can start the process of planning and working through the stories in the next iteration.

As a side note, we do not try to get all Epics defined in one batch – that’s a bit too much like a waterfall process – it’s as iterative as the rest of the process and results in being able to put a working end to end system in front of the customer as early as possible.

As the stories are derived from the Epics and are ready for scheduling in the current iteration, we break down our stories into subtasks that can be easily assigned to different members of the team.  The Verified Agile process has the following steps once you’ve reached the scheduled story level:

    1. Analysis
    2. Acceptance Test Creation
    3. Design
    4. Development
    5. Technical Review
    6. Business Review
    7. Client Review

The steps take you through the process of understanding the story and ensuring that each and every base is covered.  Here is a bit more information on each of the subtask types:

Analysis:

This is an optional step that is there to bridge the gap that sometime exists between the story creation and the ability to build the acceptance test.  If the Epic breakdown is done very thoroughly, or the stories are of a lower complexity level, you almost never need this subtask.

Acceptance Test Creation:

The foundation of a test-driven development environment.  Here at HotWax Media, we build these before development in order to ensure that we are capture all of the nuances found in the story before we start development.

Design:

The other optional step that depends upon the complexity of the task.  Because we are focused on building enterprise application in Apache’s Open for Business, often times the description of the story and the acceptance test is all that we need to get started on development.  For more complex stories, we always perform this step to ensure that the code that is going to be written is following our best practices.

Development:

Self explanatory – where the implementation is executed.

Technical Review:

The first line of internal verification – did the implementation of this story match design in addition to our best practices?  These reviews are done by a team lead or expert reviewer which greatly increases the quality of our deliverables.

Business Review:

The second line of internal verification – does the workflow implemented match the acceptance test and business rules that were provided to us?  These review are done by a business analysts, technical project manager or account manager before it is put in front of the client.

Client Review:

The most import verification out there – does our output match the expectations of the customer?  If not, we start back at the beginning and go through all of the steps until the customer is satisfied.

Hopefully this overview of HotWax Media’s Workflows and Processes gives you insight into how we would approach your project and the steps that we put into place to ensure it’s success.  Next post I will go into more detail about how this all works in our tools and how that makes us prepared to guide your project to completion.

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media, an OFBiz service provider, as well as an OFBiz project committer and active community member. Tim will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Apache OFBiz, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz Tutorials, OFBiz eCommerce | No Comments »

Google Instant: Implications for E-Commerce Search

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
Last week Google rolled out their new “Google Instant” search platform to web users in the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Russia. The launch represents another step in Google’s efforts to provide a more dynamic, predictive search environment. Google Instant updates, in real-time, the search results displayed on the page with each additional typed character entered by the user. Instead of requiring the user to click “Search” or press “Enter” after typing their full phrase or choosing from the list of popular search terms, the results are instantly displayed on the page below and update dynamically with each additional character typed. Google instant also incorporates local information, which will mean some variation in the real-time results displayed depending on the location of the search user.

The change promises to make a typical web search via google much less tedious to the user, and more of an exploratory endeavor. As Tom Krazit describes in his review for CNET;

“Instead of search as an outcome, Google is trying to get people to think of search as a process in which you constantly refine your query without actually ’searching,’ or hitting the button to produce a concrete result.”
Google has been quick to point out via its Webmaster’s Blog that Google Instant has not altered the search ranking process, and could have the effect of increasing the overall number of search impressions because of the relative ease of obtaining a search result in the new platform.

User Distraction and other Potential Impacts
Google Instant may have the impact of distracting potential customers who would otherwise be entering a full search query. As the search user begins typing an extensive phrase, they will be displayed a host of search results during the process which are likely to draw their attention away before ever completing the full query. The more extensive the originally intended phrase, the more of a potential impact this distraction factor may have for the site whose visibility is geared for that exact phrase.  (Never mind the fact that I already have way too many tabs open!)

This will present a new challenge for small sites or those running their own search optimization, because click-through and impression rates are likely to favor the top few positions in the paid and organic search results. It is also likely to benefit sites which have a lock on more generic terms.  (This is due to the fact that page 2 seems infinitely farther away when you are in mid-search scrolling down the page to look at results.)

Google Instant may also generate a new wave of competitive efforts to optimize for search results based on single letters or other otherwise nonsensical phrases, purely because of their appearance sooner in any given search attempt. The introduction of this “time component” to what has previously been primarily a competition over vertical ranking, may become a big factor for optimization experts. (Think optimizing for ‘boo’ — is that user looking for a Halloween costume** or a book on Amazon?)  These earlier results, though less optimized for the originally intended search phrase, could draw customers away from e-commerce sites whose competitors optimize more effectively for the time factor introduced by Google Instant.

The bottom line at this point is that enterprise e-commerce professionals would be wise to keep a close eye on their sites’ search performance and analytics in coming weeks. Be ready to identify and take advantage of opportunities found through testing Google’s auto-complete suggestions, and begin optimizing for more general phrases.

Of course, once you get potential customers to your site, you still have to convert them!  Contact HotWax Media today to learn more about how we can help you build an enterprise e-commerce site that is feature rich on the front and back ends, and makes it simple and enjoyable for site visitors to make a purchase.

** If you are looking for a Halloween costume, skip Google Instant, visit the online leaders at www.anytimecostumes.com, and use coupon code HOTWAX for a 15% discount!

Mike Bates is CEO at HotWax Media and will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.
Mike Bates - OFBiz Expert

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Enterprise eCommerce, HotWax Media | No Comments »

Verified Agile Explained

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
-Verified Agile Explained
The workflows that make up a verified agile process are not that different from the standard set you find in an OOTB agile implementations – with the twist being that technology now allows us to take our implementations to a merit-based, global team instead of being limited by proximity.  In my experience, it is always better to follow the agile doctrine strictly, and have each of your people and your customer sitting in the same room focused on the same topic.  In this age of constant connectivity and a flattened world, that just isn’t the way that people live their lives.  So here at HotWax Media, we’ve made accommodations to give both out customers and employees what they want: the additional flexibility to be where they need to, but not have their project skip a beat!
Agile’s proximity dogma is _the_ problem that geographically disparate teams have been battling with for years – but we are just now arriving at an era where our technical innovation, practice and patience have allowed us to reap the benefits of agile development methodologies across the globe.  In order to be able to offer our services to people all around the world, and still provide the level of quality and responsiveness that we’ve come to expect as professionals, we have added both additional processes and tools to agile workflows that ensure that we are on track and let us know exactly when we stray.
In my next sets of posts, I will start by digging into the details that define our verified agile workflows and processes as well as showing you how leveraging different nodes of a collaboration platform can make life easier on you and your customers.

OFBiz Project Management

In a continuation of my posts about Ecommerce ERP and our Verified Agile Process, managing your project to completion the way that HotWax Media does, I am going to dig into exactly what we mean by Verified Agile Process.

The workflows that make up a verified agile process are not that different from the standard set you find in a standard agile implementations – with the twist being that technology now allows us to take our implementations to a merit-based, global team instead of being limited by proximity.  In my experience, it is always better to follow the agile doctrine strictly, and have each of your people and your customer sitting in the same room focused on the same topic.  In this age of constant connectivity and a flattened world, that just isn’t the way that people live their lives.  So here at HotWax Media, we’ve made accommodations to give both our customers and employees what they want: the additional flexibility to be where they need to, but not have their project skip a beat!

Agile’s proximity dogma is THE problem that geographically disparate teams have been battling with for years – but we are just now arriving at an era where our technical innovation, practice and patience have allowed us to reap the benefits of agile development methodologies across the globe.  In order to be able to offer our services to people all around the world, and still provide the level of quality and responsiveness that we’ve come to expect as professionals, we have added both additional processes and tools to agile workflows that ensure that we are on track and let us know exactly when we stray.

In my next sets of posts, I will start by digging into the details that define our verified agile workflows and processes as well as showing you how leveraging different nodes of a collaboration platform can make life easier on you and your customers.

-Tim

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media, an OFBiz service provider, as well as an OFBiz project committer and active community member. Tim will join other HotWax Media employees and advisors in periodically posting thoughts here related to OFBiz, eCommerce, ERP, and related topics.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Enterprise eCommerce, HotWax Media, OFBiz Tutorials | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »