ofbiz in an order fulfillment capacity

[Alex Caudill]

Firstly, thanks for contributing this fantastic piece of software to the
global community. If it were proprietary, I would literally be a bit poorer
now.

I'm working on the software for an order fulfillment company. Ofbiz seems
like the best starting point, but the lack of multi-tenancy support is
somewhat troublesome.

To clarify, an order fulfillment company in this context means
a company that fulfills orders for other companies (clients, in our
nomenclature).  Clients have orders associated with them, and naturally
there is a fairly complex pricing structure. OFBiz seems ready to deal with
this sort of association.

My main issue is product management and order entry on a per-client basis.
My first thought was to write a front-end to OpenTaps using Ruby on Rails.

The idea is, when we get a new client, we use the OFBiz party manager to
create a party classification group, and create a new other_organization
party called "Fulfillment Client". Then, we add to this party a
user with web service access.
Each instance of a shipment, arrival, and order will have to then be
associated with a Fulfillment Client.

I then create a set of Ruby on Rails models to speak with OFBiz via
SOAP, and implement a very straightforward interface for order and
product management.


Does this seem insane?
Where can I find, or how can I generate, WSDL files?
 Is there any documentation on this?

Any thoughts, suggestions, links to good reading material?

I'm also working on code to integrate OpenTaps with the FedEx Ship Manager
Server (to automate the printing of shipping labels and pricing, sadly Win32
only but it should also work with their web API), and I'd like to contribute
this back to the community under the Apache license. It's in a rough state
at the moment, I haven't actually set up the Ship Manager Server so I can't
test it yet, but I think I got it mostly right. If anyone is interested in
having a look at this, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Thanks again!

P.S. Yes, it's 4am, please disregard any percieved senility, thanks =)

[BJ Freeman]

I am not the authority on this, just my point of view.
from an ofbiz point of view, it would seem to create a product store for
each new client.  Each client would have their own products.
then create a Facility for warehousing, to receive and ship products.
The Facilities would be the fulfillment House.

Not sure how to associate each client with the fulfillment company,
maybe a fudge in the Internal organization structure. (see demo data)

The orders are then associated with the Product store, Sort of a
glorified Order Entry (in the ordermgr). Instead of being a manual
process, it would be automated.  You could create a Sales Channel that
would be appropriate for this.

Hope that helps.



Alex Caudill sent the following on 8/4/2006 1:49 AM:

> Firstly, thanks for contributing this fantastic piece of software to the
> global community. If it were proprietary, I would literally be a bit poorer
> now.
>
> I'm working on the software for an order fulfillment company. Ofbiz seems
> like the best starting point, but the lack of multi-tenancy support is
> somewhat troublesome.
>
> To clarify, an order fulfillment company in this context means
> a company that fulfills orders for other companies (clients, in our
> nomenclature).  Clients have orders associated with them, and naturally
> there is a fairly complex pricing structure. OFBiz seems ready to deal with
> this sort of association.
>
> My main issue is product management and order entry on a per-client basis.
> My first thought was to write a front-end to OpenTaps using Ruby on Rails.
>
> The idea is, when we get a new client, we use the OFBiz party manager to
> create a party classification group, and create a new other_organization
> party called "Fulfillment Client". Then, we add to this party a
> user with web service access.
> Each instance of a shipment, arrival, and order will have to then be
> associated with a Fulfillment Client.
>
> I then create a set of Ruby on Rails models to speak with OFBiz via
> SOAP, and implement a very straightforward interface for order and
> product management.
>
>
> Does this seem insane?
> Where can I find, or how can I generate, WSDL files?
> Is there any documentation on this?
>
> Any thoughts, suggestions, links to good reading material?
>
> I'm also working on code to integrate OpenTaps with the FedEx Ship Manager
> Server (to automate the printing of shipping labels and pricing, sadly
> Win32
> only but it should also work with their web API), and I'd like to
> contribute
> this back to the community under the Apache license. It's in a rough state
> at the moment, I haven't actually set up the Ship Manager Server so I can't
> test it yet, but I think I got it mostly right. If anyone is interested in
> having a look at this, let me know and I'll send it to you.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> P.S. Yes, it's 4am, please disregard any percieved senility, thanks =)
>

[Si Chen-2]

Alex,

We're big fans of Ruby on Rails here and would *love* to see a rails  
- OFBiz/opentaps integration.  I think SOAP is the right way to go.  
I think you would just modify the services.xml and add an  
export="true" and OFBiz would turn it on for you.  I'd love to see  
what kind of front end you come up with.

Where I'm a little concerned with your idea is the order part--are  
you going to create a whole order entry capability in Rails?  That  
could be quite a bit of work.  The OFBiz shopping cart is not a  
service but a Java object.  Would you need to access that?  I guess  
it'd help to get a little more detail.

A FedEx shipping manager would be great.  We'll try to help out in  
our copious spare time.

Si


On Aug 4, 2006, at 1:49 AM, Alex Caudill wrote:

> Firstly, thanks for contributing this fantastic piece of software  
> to the
> global community. If it were proprietary, I would literally be a  
> bit poorer
> now.
>
> I'm working on the software for an order fulfillment company. Ofbiz  
> seems
> like the best starting point, but the lack of multi-tenancy support is
> somewhat troublesome.
>
> To clarify, an order fulfillment company in this context means
> a company that fulfills orders for other companies (clients, in our
> nomenclature).  Clients have orders associated with them, and  
> naturally
> there is a fairly complex pricing structure. OFBiz seems ready to  
> deal with
> this sort of association.
>
> My main issue is product management and order entry on a per-client  
> basis.
> My first thought was to write a front-end to OpenTaps using Ruby on  
> Rails.
>
> The idea is, when we get a new client, we use the OFBiz party  
> manager to
> create a party classification group, and create a new  
> other_organization
> party called "Fulfillment Client". Then, we add to this party a
> user with web service access.
> Each instance of a shipment, arrival, and order will have to then be
> associated with a Fulfillment Client.
>
> I then create a set of Ruby on Rails models to speak with OFBiz via
> SOAP, and implement a very straightforward interface for order and
> product management.
>
>
> Does this seem insane?
> Where can I find, or how can I generate, WSDL files?
> Is there any documentation on this?
>
> Any thoughts, suggestions, links to good reading material?
>
> I'm also working on code to integrate OpenTaps with the FedEx Ship  
> Manager
> Server (to automate the printing of shipping labels and pricing,  
> sadly Win32
> only but it should also work with their web API), and I'd like to  
> contribute
> this back to the community under the Apache license. It's in a  
> rough state
> at the moment, I haven't actually set up the Ship Manager Server so  
> I can't
> test it yet, but I think I got it mostly right. If anyone is  
> interested in
> having a look at this, let me know and I'll send it to you.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> P.S. Yes, it's 4am, please disregard any percieved senility, thanks =)

[Alex Caudill]

My idea would be to pull down the products/categories for a given client via
SOAP, and have
it posted back to OFBiz in CSV or Entity XML format. With Rails this
could be almost
as easy as my_order.to_xml.

In services.xml, add export="true" to each <service> element I want to
expose? If I were to write some docs on this, who would I send them to?

[Si Chen-2]

You should call a SOAP service to create things in OFBiz (like  
storeOrder service for example) instead of creating entity xml.  That  
way you can use the service layer APIs for all OFBiz both going in  
and out of your ruby application.

Try docs.ofbiz.org - there's a wiki.  Just drop a note when you're  
done on the list--it's hard to keep up with what people are doing there.


On Aug 4, 2006, at 7:57 AM, Alex Caudill wrote:

> My idea would be to pull down the products/categories for a given  
> client via
> SOAP, and have
> it posted back to OFBiz in CSV or Entity XML format. With Rails this
> could be almost
> as easy as my_order.to_xml.
>
> In services.xml, add export="true" to each <service> element I want to
> expose? If I were to write some docs on this, who would I send them  
> to?