Re: Users - [OFBiz] Dev - Any interest in End-Userandother documentation?

[Matt Midson]

Hello David,

Thanks, I have seen that document, but I think I lack some of the skills and resources needed to get a production version up and running.  I can get a test version running very easily and from an server engineer's point of view it is one of the easiest applications I have had to install on Linux, but when it comes to customising it to suite the business that is where I start to get lost.

I am sure with time I could work it out and teach myself, but I just don't have the resources to do it.  Hence my call for help so someone can guide through the process.

The good news is thanks to my last post I have been contacted by some consultants in the community that can hopefully put me on the right path.

If I end up with a live system, customised for Australian tax law, I hope to give back to the community some of what I learn to help other SMEs take up this product.

Thanks,

Matt


>>> [hidden email] 06/02/06 10:30 AM >>>

For basic deployment and setup information check out the Basic Production Setup Guide.

For more advanced things, that's a bit tricky and not possible to guess in advance as the needs of different businesses simply vary too much. So, for that some more experienced people or more time from people interested in learning is needed.

-David
 
Matt Midson wrote:

> Jacopo,
> > I tend to agree with your comments about needing a consultant to assist with ERP implementation.
> The problem is trying to find someone who can help.  I recently replied to a post in this user forum about consultants, asking the community if anyone knew of, or would like to contact me
> to help me with an implementation of opentaps/ofbiz in my business.  (Am I making a mistake here
> opentaps and OFBiz are one and the same??)
> > So far, I have not seen any replies on the list and no one has contacted me.  Perhaps I have done something wrong or offended the community with my first post by asking.  If I have I am sorry.
> > I have also noticed posts asking about how to get more people to take up and promote this project.  I was hoping to learn from a green field deployment in my own environment and provide some of that information back to the community.
> > IMHO - I think the project needs some type of consultant training due to the speciality nature of this type of product. My suggestion would to come up with some type of training program designed to teach consultants a methodology on how to correctly implement OFBiz/opentaps from start to finish.
> > This could then be backed up by some of the more specialty from partners/contributors that can help with customisation remotely.
> > Perhaps a step by step checklist or best practice project/implementation plan so that consultants and server techs like myself can take this project to the SME environment without needing to know how to code.
> > So as a Small Business owner, that is new to this project and would like to use and promote this project in
> his business here in Australia, this is what I see from my point of view.
> > Kind Regards,
> > Matt
> > > > >>>> [hidden email] 06/01/06 6:43 PM >>>
> Hi,
> > I'm replying to this interesting thread (born in the dev list) in the user list because the content of this message is more user oriented.
> > I'm not so surprised to see that David's announce is getting a tepid feedback from the community.
> > The main reason, in my opinion, is that, even if a lot of persons ask for end user documentation, the real problem is that many of them really want some magic tool to implement, without any effort or cost, complex ERP processes in their company; these processes can be succesfully implemented only with the help of persons with deep business/ERP knowledge, not simply by (even motivated) IT managers.
> Nowadays, you can set up a web server even if you are not a system administrator; this is not true for setting up an ERP system for your company.
> SAP, Oracle, Movex and many other big ERP systems are bundled with a lot of end-user documentation (for some of them, not so much as you could imagine...) but I've never heard of a company that even tried to deploy these systems without the support of a consulting company.
> > In short, the underlying demand is for free consulting, not free documentation.
> > In my opinion, Undersun's end-user documentation will greatly help the ones that, after they have received good OFBiz consulting by some expert guys, will need a reference guide to help them refresh some concepts (or explore new ones).
> > Just my 2 cents.
> > Jacopo
> > David E. Jones wrote:
>> There was a bit of discussion following my message last week about the proposed new end-user and other document site using Confluence to run the site. More of the messages were more related to the tool to use to run the site. I still like the idea of using Confluence, even after briefly looking into other alternatives mentioned. It is available for free for this use, and we already having a hosting arrangement in place with people familiar with administering the software.
>>> There is also the potential of consolidating the documentation managed by a small group and more openly managed documentation in the same system by simply migrating the content from the existing OFBiz wiki.
>>> What I'm more interested in though is: is anyone interested in this enough to help with it?
>>> I'm basically saying that the documentation that Undersun has paid about $30k to put together and maintain can be made available for free. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in this, or perhaps I wasn't clear enough about it, or perhaps people don't like the approach?
>>> There is a lot of work needed to reformat this to work in a different content management system because of different data structures and such. It doesn't matter which system we go to, the structures will be different. So the choices are either to extend the OFBiz content management piece (based on the work that Al Byers did a couple of years ago) to do everything we want, or just move the content to another tool. > > Both will require manual work. My opinion is that moving the content to another tool will require both less time and a far smaller skill set for whoever does it. This is based on some analysis of what would need to be developed, and on a couple of hours of manually moving content from the Undersun end-user doc site to the new OFBiz Confuence server.
>>> So, a few questions:
>>> 1. is anyone interested in using this documentation?
>> 2. is anyone interested in helping move over documentation from other sources?
>> 3. is anyone interested in spending a few hours per week to help maintain this?
>>> I'd like to see this move forward... It's basically free content it someone will just help move it over. The only learning is required is about how to use Confluence, and there is pretty good documentation for that. It is also very simple, being a wiki-based system. The work involves copying from a browser and pasting into the WYSIWYG text editor box, reformatting it, and also saving off images and uploading them to the new system and inserting them in the text.
>>> -David
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