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Posts Tagged ‘Tim Ruppert’
OFBiz Tutorials – Looking Up Orders
Friday, March 25th, 2011OFBiz Tutorials: Manage Suppliers for a Product
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011To continue on the various applications of the OFBiz Catalog Manager, today we will dive into the world of managing Manufacturers and Suppliers of specific products.
Many times there are more than one supplier for a product, so we will learn how to create a new supplier as a preferred or alternate supplier. Once that supplier has been set up and is available in the Catalog Manger, we can then associate the product or products with the supplier.
Create Supplier(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 product(s) should already exist in the system.
Now that we know the requirements, we can begin creating a new supplier:
Go to “Catalog” component and click on “Products” tab.
Fill in the search fields on “Find” Form to search existing products in system.
Click on the “Find” button and the system will display a list of existing products based on search inputs.
Click on “Product Id” displayed as search list on Products Page.
Product details will be displayed on the “Edit Product” page.
Click on “Suppliers” tab.
Click on “Create New Supplier” button in Add Supplier section.
Fill in the following details in “Create New Supplier” form:
Group Name
Employees
Office Site Name
Address 1
Address 2
City
State
Zip/Postal Code
Country
Country Code
Area Code
Phone Number
Ext
Email
Click on the “Save” button.
As a result of this, the supplier’s profile will get displayed on the “Product and Catalog Manager” Page.
Associate Supplier with the Product
Now that we have the supplier entered in, we can associate the supplier with the product(s).
To review, there are a few prerequisites to accomplish this:
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 product(s) should already exist in the system.
The Supplier(s) should already exist in the system.
If the above prerequisites have been met, we can associate the Supplier(s) to the product with the following steps:
Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Products” tab.
Fill in the search fields on “Find” Form to search existing products in system.
Click on the “Find” button and system will display the list of existing products based on search inputs.
Click on “Product Id” displayed as search list on Products Page.
Product details will be displayed on the “Edit Product” page.
Click on “Suppliers” tab.
Fill in the following details in “Add Supplier” form:
Supplier Preferred Order
Supplier
Supplier’s Product Name
Supplier’s Prod Id
Available From Date
Expected Delivery Time in Days
Min Order Quantity
Last Price
Drop Ship (Select this check box only when supplier allows drop shipment for that particular product).
Click on “Add Supplier” button.
At this point, the Added Supplier will get displayed on the Suppliers page.
Edit Supplier(s)
The last portion of managing the Supplier(s) for a product is being able to edit the Supplier details:
The prerequisites for this task are:
The user has the role of at least Catalog Manager
At least one Supplier has been associated with the product.
If these have been met, lets edit the Supplier details.
Go to “Catalog” component and click on the “Products” tab.
Enter values in the search fields on “Find” Form to search existing products in system.
Click on the “Find” button and the system will display the list of existing products based on search inputs.
Click on the “Product Id” displayed as a search list on Products Page.
Product details will be displayed on the “Edit Product” page.
Click on the “Suppliers” tab.
Click on “Edit” link to edit the supplier on Supplier page.
Update existing supplier details and use the “Add Supplier” button to save the changes.
Use the “Remove” button to remove existing suppliers.
The expected outcome of this is that all the changes will be reflected on the “Supplier” page.
Stay in the know about OFBiz- 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.
OFBiz Tutorial: Associating Product with Multiple Categories
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010Building off of other OFBiz catalog manager tutorials that have been posted earlier, today we will look into how you can associate a product with multiple categories. This will be broken down into two sections: adding a product into a category, and then updating the product category association.
Add Product to a Category
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 associating a product with a category.
Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.
Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.
A list of products will be displayed based on the search criterion.
Click on any of the products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.
Click on the “Categories” tab.
Fill in the following details in the “Add Category for this Product” form :
- Category
- Select “Category” from look up which contains following information :
- Product category Type Id
- Primary Parent Category Id
- Category Name
- Description
- Show In Select
- Select “Category” from look up which contains following information :
- From Date
- To Date
- Comments
- Sequence Number
- Quantity
Click on the “Add” button after entering the information.
At this point the added “Category” will be displayed in “Categories” section with the following details:
- Category
- From Date
- To Date
- Comments
- Sequence Number
- Quantity
Update Product Category Association
Now that you can add product to a category, let’s discuss how you can edit this information in OFBiz. The prerequisites are exactly the same as for adding product to a category except to edit it, you need to have the product associated with a category.
Here are the steps for updating the product category association:
Go to the “Catalog” component and click on the “Advanced Search” Button within “Search Products”.
Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.
A list of the products will be displayed based on the search criterion.
Click on any of products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.
Click on the “Categories” tab.
Following details will be displayed in “Categories” section of added category:
- Category
- From Date
- To Date
- Comments
- Sequence Number
- Quantity
Update existing category details.
Click on the “Update” button to save the details.
Use the “Delete” button to delete the category association – if necessary.
Now your updated category details will be displayed on the “Categories” section of “Category Members” page.
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.
OFBiz Tutorial: Managing Cross Sell Products in OFBiz
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010Building 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”.
Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.
A list of products will be displayed based on the search criterion.
Click on any of the products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.
Click on the “Associations” tab.
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
Click on the “Create” button after entering the information.
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:
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”.
Fill in the search values on the “Find” screen and click on the “Find” button.
A list of the products will be displayed based on the search criterion.
Click on any of products and the “Edit Product” page of the selected product will get displayed.
Click on the “Associations” tab.
On the “Associations” page, click on the “Edit” button next to the complementary product in the “Associations from this Product to” section.
Update the following details in “Add Association” form:
- Thru Date
- Sequence Number
- Reason
- Instruction
- Quantity
Click on the “Update” button to save the details.
Use the “Delete” button to delete the associated cross sell product – if necessary.
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.
Verified Agile Workflows and Processes
Monday, October 4th, 2010October 4, 2010
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.