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HotWax Media and OFBiz – 2009 Contributions – Part 4

Monday, February 8th, 2010

For the final chapter in our series highlighting the contributions of HotWax Media to Apache’s Open For Business (OFBiz) in 2009, we will focus on the OFBiz integrations related components:

  1. Shipping Integrations
  2. Multi Channel Sales Integrations
  3. Payment Processing Integrations

Shipping

OFBiz Shipping USPS UPS

During 2009, the available shipping integrations in OFBiz got a boost from some much needed power users — clients with real-world business needs driving development efforts is always the best scenario for an open source project!  We focused on enhancing the integrations by implementing new aspects of UPS standard web services, UPS World Ship, USPS standard web services, FedEx and Endicia.

  1. Added UPS integration support for sending Shipment Return Label email to customer. This option will be available on order detail screen and as well on the return screen when order is in the “Completed” status and the return is in the “Accepted” status.
  2. Added functionality for getting online shipping charges from UPS if an order is in the “Approved” status with associated shipment in the “Picked” status and it has been hold due to an overage in the shipping charges from the Weight Package only screen.
  3. UPS integration enhancement for supporting shipping quote based on dimensions.
  4. Built a custom component for integrating OFBiz with existing UPS World Ship terminals.
  5. Added support for USPS international rate estimates and label printing.
  6. Built a custom component for integrating OFBiz with the Endicia services to provide additional features that were not supported in standard USPS web services.
  7. Built a custom component for integrating OFBiz with the new FedEx web services to provide additional features that were not supported by the version of the FedEx SDK that was currently utilized.

Multi Channel Sales

OFBiz Multi Channel

Over the past 10 years, possible sales channels have increased from catalogs and brick and mortar stores to include standard ecommerce, public marketplaces, and shopping comparison sites.  HotWax Media has played an active role in expanding the different multi-channel integrations that are offered to OFBiz users.  Here is a list of integration improvements to eBay, Google Base and Amazon:

  1. Added multiple store support to eBay and provided sample data to document how it works.
  2. As part of adding  multi-store support to the eBay integration, improved the Category Association management by adding  a new ProdCatalogCategoryType “PCCT_EBAY_ROOT” and adding a worker method in the CatalogWorker class to fetch the top level eBay categoryId.
  3. Implemented new services available in eBay – GetOrders and GetMyeBaySelling to allow single transaction (one per import) as well as multi transaction (multiple per import) support.
  4. Added a new screen to optimize the import orders and transactions workflow.
  5. Create support for eBay configuration from the new entity EbayConfig.  Provided the GUI support to update configuration values.
  6. Added a new entity, EbayShippingMethod, to support custom shipping methods from eBay. Also provided GUI support and included demo data for reference and documentation.
  7. Fixed the Google Base product feed – it was broken when we started working on it.
  8. Provide entity support for Google Base configuration.
  9. Updated eBay and Google Base customer error messaging.
  10. Added multiple store support to Google Base and provided sample data to document how it works.
  11. Built a custom component for integrating Amazon web services for: a) Sending product information (feeds for product, price, relationship, image, inventory) to Amazon;  b)Sending order adjustment and fulfillment information to Amazon; c) Retrieving order information from Amazon.

Payment Processing

OFBiz orbital google paypal

OFBiz flexibly integrates with a growing number of different payment processors.  2009 saw a number of new Payment Gateway options become available, and HotWax was able to provide updated or new integrations to many of these services.

  1. Implemented Chase Bank’s “Orbital Payment Gateway” – supported features are credit card authorization, capture, authorize and capture, release, and refund.
  2. Provided entity support for the configuration settings of Orbital Gateway – since this was created after the community switched to maintaining this in entities – property file configuration is not supported at this time.
  3. Analyzed the Google Checkout integration that was started in the OFBiz trunk – found it to be insufficient.  Provided a new implementation utilizing the updated Google Checkout SDK.
  4. Users can now create and order using Google Checkout – including the checking of existing customer information.
  5. Added support in OFBiz for fulfillment of orders created from inside Google Checkout.
  6. Added additional shipment, order state change, and other notifications into the Google Checkout integration.
  7. Provided seed & demo data so that user can test Google Checkout with merchant and seller accounts.
  8. Because this integration was stared when property files were used in OFBiz, we maintained backward compatibility to allow existing users to use property files for configuration settings in Google Checkout.
  9. Provided entity support for the configuration settings of Google Checkout per the current OFBiz standard.
  10. Added support to Google Checkout to support Google shipping methods in OFBiz.
  11. Added GUI support for GoogleCheckout entities to easily handle configuration settings. The name of entities are: GoogleCoConfiguration & GoogleCoShippingMethod.
  12. Provided documentation for the community to show how Google Checkout works.
  13. Made a number of improvements to the standard PayPal IPN integration.
  14. Implemented PayPal Express Checkout (both the Payflow Pro and standard PayPal account versions) allowing for order payments and refunds using a PayPal account.
  15. Provided entity support for the configuration settings of PayPal Express Checkout.
  16. Upgraded PayPal’s PayFlow Pro from version 2 to version 4 – helping the community to stay up to date while the existing implementation was deprecated and taken out of production in September of 2009.

What’s Next?

Spending our 2010 helping take the Apache Open For Business project to the next level of usability, flexibility, testability, and accountability.

Contact us today to learn how HotWax Media can help you achieve your business goals using Apache Open For Business.

- Tim

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media 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.

This post is part of a 4 part series. Please find the other posts in this series here:

Read Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 |Part 3 | Part 4

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Posted in Apache OFBiz, Apache OFBiz Development, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz eCommerce | 1 Comment »

HotWax Media and OFBiz – 2009 OFBiz Contributions – Part 3

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

For the third volume in our series highlighting the contributions of HotWax Media to Apache Open For Business (OFBiz) in 2009, we will focus on OFBiz ERP-related components.  Specifically, we will review our OFBiz development contributions to:

  1. Accounting
  2. Manufacturing and Facility Management

Accounting

OFBiz Accounting

The Accounting Manager (along with the A/R and A/P applications) in OFBiz have come a long way recently.  HotWax Media is proud of our recent contributions to OFBiz Accounting, which include the following:

  1. Added the generation of a PDF for the AcctgTrans and related AcctgTransEntry.
  2. Allow the user to void a payment.
  3. Fixed Accounting invoice section the InvoiceSubBar Menu.
  4. Added the ability to receive payments in A/R batches.
  5. Fixed the Commission Invoice to show correct price and quantity.
  6. Added a screen under Accounts Payable -> Invoice, which will search for a purchase invoice within a given date range.
  7. Added JUnit test cases for the Accounts Receivable -> Batch Payments.
  8. Added JUnit test cases for the Accounting -> Void Payment and Cancel Invoice services.
  9. Added JUnit test case for the Accounts Payable services which create payment groups for given invoices.
  10. Created a new screen under the Accounting -> Report tab to show comparative income statements.  Added the functionality for generating CSV and PDF from this same form.
  11. Added the ability to cancel a reconciliation.
  12. Created a new accounting screen to associate GL Accounts to “Cost Centers”.
  13. Added the ability to create sales tax entries on an invoice without an order.
  14. Added a Deposit/Withdraw facility for user to deposit/withdraw payments in the Bank Account.
  15. Added a deposit slip facility to the Bank Account/Fin Account so that user can make a logical group of Payments for bulk deposit/withdraw.
  16. Added the ability for the user to create a new payment and directly associate to the current Bank Account.
  17. Added the ability to add a facility to reconcile a Bank Account by creating a new GlReconciliation record and assign bank transaction to that reconciliation id.
  18. Fixed numerous issues in the reconciliation of Gl Account.
  19. Added a new field to the FinAccountTransaction entity – statusId, Created/Approved/Canceled.
  20. Added a new field to GlReconciliation entity – statusId, Created/Reconciled.
  21. In Accounts Payable -> Invoice -> Purchase Invoice – User can now issue a check payment for incoming invoices with a given bank account id.
  22. In Account Payable -> Invoice -> Commission Run – Added a search for outgoing invoices which require a commission payment and ability to easily create commission invoices from there.
  23. In Accounts Receivable -> Payment -> Batch Payment – Added a new feature by which user can create a group of payments that can be used for reconciliation.
  24. Added/Updated most Accounting reports – Inventory Valuation, Income Statements, Comparative Income Statement, Transaction Total, Gl Account Trail Balance, Monthly Trial Balance, Cost Center, etc.  Added ability to export each to CSV and PDF.
  25. Added consolidated balance of its ROLLUP party for the aforementioned reports.
  26. Prepared JUnit test cases to verify GL Account Balance updated after execution of various accounting business process.
  27. Added support Hindi UiLables for Accounting and Party and Common component.
  28. Improved Commission Invoice services and fixed issues in Commission Invoice screens

Manufacturing and Facility Management

OFBiz Manufacturing

HotWax Media also made some solid contributions to the OFBiz Manufacturing and Facility Management components in 2009.  These OFBiz development contributions include:

  1. Enhanced support for product costing algorithms: cost formula, manufacturing costs, standard and actual costs.
  2. Implemented ability to define and import content for production runs.
  3. Added a new fulfillment process by introducing Verify Pick and Weight Package Only screens.
  4. Pick User can now select options for preparing a group on the basis of shipping method, warehouse area and number of order items – the group of orders is created according to selected options.
  5. Added additional options on the picking screen to show detailed information for each order (shipping method, number of order items per order, etc).

What’s Next?

In the final chapter in our series (Part 4), I will discuss HotWax Media’s OFBiz development contributions in the area of integrations: shipping, multi channel sales and payment processors.

- Tim

Tim Ruppert is Chief Operating Officer at HotWax Media 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.

This post is part of a 4 part series. Please find the other posts in this series here:

Read Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 |Part 3 | Part 4

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

OFBiz E-commerce and ERP: 3rd Party Integrations

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

Apache Open For Business (OFBiz) offers an amazing amount of functionality across a wide variety of business processes. The scope of OFBiz, as with most ERP systems, is very broad — including e-commerce, inventory and order management, accounting, manufacturing, and much more. As you consider all of the ground covered by OFBiz, it follows that any given OFBiz system is likely to encounter other systems with which it needs to gracefully interact.

3rd party integrations can sometimes become very complex. For my post today, however, let’s consider a few simple example together: we will look at three types of integrations commonly used by online e-tailers running OFBiz direct-to-consumer e-commerce storefronts.

There are many ways that HotWax Media helps our customers drive traffic to their e-commerce sites, including various SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) tactics, but we will leave detailed discussions of those tactics for a separate post. For our example today, our story begins with a visitor arriving at the OFBiz e-commerce storefront.

Upon arriving at the merchant’s OFBiz e-commerce site, the visitor browses products. There are some really effective merchandising features available with OFBiz, including cross-sell, up-sell, layered navigation, promotions, and so forth. As our visitor navigates the site and finds the products she wants, she adds them to her shopping cart. Eventually, she has her cart loaded up and is ready to checkout.

Using OFBiz, HotWax Media creates completely custom checkout experiences for our customers. One-page checkout, split shipments, anonymous checkout, coupon codes — it’s all available through OFBiz. There are, however, additional 3rd party checkout options that are also available. So these will be our first examples of 3rd party integrations available with OFBiz.

OFBiz Payment/Checkout Integrations

Google Checkout and PayPal Express checkout are both available to OFBiz merchants.

OFBiz Integration Google Paypal

The idea with these 3rd party checkout services (as with most concepts in online retail) is to boost conversion rates. This works well for users who already have established checkout preferences. For example, if our site visitor prefers PayPal Express, she simply selects that checkout option, enters her PayPal username and password, chooses her shipping method, and she is done. The benefit is that she may have saved a minute or two, and presumably she is comfortable with PayPal and confident in the quality of her purchase transaction.

OFBiz Shipping Integrations

We mentioned shipping, and this is our next example of 3rd party integration options.

OFBiz Shipping

Unless our merchant is exclusively selling digital products that are downloaded by the end user, he needs to offer shipping options in order to fulfill his orders. Using OFBiz, HotWax Media offers many integration options with 3rd party shipping services. The idea is to make this as simple as possible for the shopper by allowing her to see custom, real-time shipping costs (based on her shipping address) from a variety of carriers and allow her to select her preferred method.

OFBiz Shipping Options

Shipping integrations available with HotWax Media and OFBiz include the biggest names in shipping, such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, and DHL. We also offer more specialized integrations with Endicia (includes USPS support) and Oagis Shipping. (As of December 2009, Endicia (with USPS support), UPS WorldShip, and a more complete FedEx integration are currently not offered out-of-the-box with OFBiz, but are available through HotWax Media.) These 3rd party shipping integrations allow our online merchant to control rate display in the user’s shopping cart (using real time shipping rate quotes that the merchant can then adjust as needed — see screenshot above). Once the order is picked and packed, the merchant can automatically print shipping labels, email a tracking number and shipment confirmation to the customer, and more.

OFBiz Payment Gateway Integrations

Finally it is time to submit the order and process payment. Our visitor has her products in her cart, has selected her shipping method, and has entered her payment information. She clicks “Submit Order,” and this is where the payment gateway comes in.

OFBiz Payment Gateway

Using OFBiz, HotWax Media offers integrations with a variety of 3rd party payment gateways. The industry leaders are PayPal, Authorize.net, and Orbital, so we generally recommend one of these. These integrations offer credit card processing along with fraud monitoring, scoring, order separation for manual review, and many other useful features for our online merchant. The order is submitted, the card is processed, and there you have it — e-commerce!

That was just a simple example of a very common e-commerce use case that makes use of a few 3rd party integrations. Of course, there are many other 3rd party integrations available using OFBiz, such as multi-channel sales (eBay, Amazon, etc.), single sign-on (Crowd), and integrations with other systems like Magento. I plan to address many of these in future posts. In the mean time, for a more complete list of 3rd party integrations available from HotWax Media / OFBiz, take a look at our 3rd Party OFBiz Integrations page.

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

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Posted in Apache OFBiz, Apache OFBiz Development, HotWax Media, OFBiz, OFBiz Development, OFBiz eCommerce | 4 Comments »