While solutions like Openbravo and OpenERP appear to get the headlines WebERP has been slowly gathering fans and adding functionality.

webERP is a complete web based accounting/ERP system that requires only a web-browser and pdf reader to use. It has a wide range of features suitable for many businesses particularly distributed businesses in wholesale and distribution. The feature set is continually expanding as new businesses and developers adopt it.

Features include:

• Financial Ledgers
• Purchase Orders Processing
• Sales Order Processing
• Stock/Inventory Management
• Manufacturing
• Wiki integration

A more detailed list of features are available on the weberp website here

The overall functionality of the core integrate ledger looks good and comparible with similar products but one feature that did stand out was the wiki integration.

Wiki’s, popularised by Wikipedia and the like, are great ways for small and large teams to share and update information so can be great to update information on Customers, Suppliers and products.

WebERP can be set to work with WackoWiki or MediaWiki (the Wiki software used by Wikipedia) in the WebERP settings and wiki entries for customer, supplier and produce records can be set automatically.

Well it’s been a very long time since my last published post, in fact it we was just about to come up to the two year anniversary. So much has happened in the world of open source in this time so I have no excuse that there was not lots to write about.

No excuses for the length of time between posts but one of the things that did happen in the intervening period was the server the blog was hosted on was hacked. This was not due in anyway to the WordPress software used for this blog but actually an old forgotten install of Joomla. Again not really the fault of the software but more of the owner, me,  for not keeping it updated or better still deleting it as I was not using it.

This is not a very interesting post, I appreciate, but at least it breaks the drought and allows me to summarise some thoughts on the site going forward. First I plan to tidy up the blog, although I managed to recover all of the posts and comments from the backup quite a few of the images were not backed up or hosted elsewhere so are currently missing.

Once a little tidier I then plan is the to post regularly (well at least more than once every 2 years) and also to add a bit more variety including a podcast about open source business software.

I have many blogs but this is the only one that I have Google ads on and  although I have never earn’t more than a few pounds it all goes towards hosting costs so I will continue with these for the moment.

Thats about it for now. Hears hoping that the next post is not two years away.

Alfresco, open source enterprise content management, have recently announced the release of the final version of Labs 3.0. This is a land mark release for Alfresco and includes many enhancements. Probably two of the key areas of functionality of Alfresco Labs 3.0 is its integration to other open source software and its implementation of the CMIS Specification. CMIS is the The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification and has the possibility o doing what SQL did for databases. Overall a standard created and accepted by all of the major players (Alfresco, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Open Text, SAP, Day Software and Oracle) should only be good for the user community. The CMIS has not been finalised so Alfresco’s implementation is based on the proposed specification.

From the Alfresco blog:

CMIS is the proposed standard for content management interoperability. You can learn more about it on the Alfreso wiki. In short, this standard would allow developers to write applications that run against any CMIS-compliant content management system. It has been likened to SQL but for content management.

The other area of interest is the continued integration to other well known open source products such Joomla (Content Management) OpenOffice.org (Office Suite) and MediaWiki (Wiki software used by many companies including Wikipedia and Alfresco)

Joomla the very popular Content Management system for building websites will be able to access the back end repository of Alfresco for enterprise document management allowing Joomla users to control large amounts of content efficiently while still be able to collaborate on their Joomla website. Details of the Joomla Module for Alfresco can be found here.

From version 2.1 Alfresco has concentrated on Integration to the Microsoft Office suite which is understandable given its current market dominance and Alfresco’s implementation of the Microsoft Sharepoint Protocol meant even tighter integration. This had unfortunately left OpenOffice.org behind for a while. But with the release of the Openoffice.org plugin for Alfresco similar functionality is now available. Functionality as follows:

• Easy Installation
• Browse the Alfresco repositary
• Extensive search
• Access document properties and metadata
• Access to Alfresco workflow
• Access to ‘MyAlfesco’

See example screenshot:

As with a lot of open source software Alfresco has also not been slow to use social media for marketing and communication. As well as the required blog(s) Alfresco has a podcast, a Facebook Group and are on Twitter (OK they were a little slow on Twitter as they are @alfresco1 as someone else bagged @alfresco).

There is now even integration between Alfresco and Facebook. Jeff Potts has put a video showing this integration on youtube:

Other useful links

CMIS Definition on Wikipedia
Alfresco Facebook Group
Alfresco on Twitter
Alfresco Podcast
Alfresco Wiki
Alfresco Download
Joomla Module for Alfresco
Alfresco on FLOSBUS

Notes
Alfresco Labs is open source software under the GPL License v2

One of our favourite subjects at FLOSBUS is accounting software but it can be difficult in short blog post to explain the benefits of Open Source Accounting Software especially in the current market of accounts and ERP solutions. With this In mind Outserve have written a white paper titled ‘Using Open Source Accounting Software in Small & Medium Businesses’ which is available to download here.

It’s a clear and concise white paper looking at the history of open source accounting software through to how it fits into modern business solutions and what some the benefits can be. Definitely worth a read if you at all interested in this area.

October 15th 2008 is Blog Action Day. I have posted a blog entry for Blog Action day here http://philipoakley.org/?p=140

Every day it seams a new version of someones favourite software is released somegreatphotosoftware version 5.5.5 or thebestmusicplayer version 1,1,01. Little excitement is seen around the world except by the group fanboys and girls of that product waiting for the latest and greatest, checking the new features list for whistles and bells like children crossing off their Christmas present list (and equally frustrated when the one special present/feature is not delivered as expected).

But every now and again new versions of software come along that can affect many people and that can take a product mainstream. The best example of this was probably Windows 95 and both Word and Excel both had landmark versions that saw them over the ‘tipping point. (there are many reasons for the Word and Excel success including price and distribution but both products required to be at a level of maturity and usability for popular widespread adoption).

For many followers of software the upcoming release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is possibly just such a release and there is a belief that this could be the tipping point for OpenOffice.org leading to worldwide adoption from schools and colleges to homes users and businesses of all sizes.

At this point it is worth explaining what OpenOffice.org is. Without a large marketing budget Openoffice.org is not the most well known. Openoffice.org (sometimes known as ooo the .org is always shown as someone else owns the trademark to ‘open office’) from Sun Microsystems is an open source equivalent suite of products to Microsoft Office or other office suites (yes there are few others still left). Where Microsoft has Word Openoffice.org has Writer where Microsoft has Excel OpenOffice.org has Calc. For many these two programs cover 95% of their software use but Openoffice.org also has equivalent presentation programs and a database. It does not include an email and calendering application although there are many alternatives to Outlook but does offer programs for drawing and mathematical formulae.

For the ‘iPhone generation’ this is not a release full of the latest whiz bang features and cutting edge innovation (c’mon this is office software) but the final product appears a more complete office suite that could have all the functionality for the majority of users. OpenOffice.org has been the office suite of choice for most Linux distributions for some time and a version for Windows has had a reasonable adoption but up until now there has not be a native Apple Mac version, yes you could install it with some messing around or you could even use a Mac modified version called NeoOffice. Now finally with the release of version 3.0 there is a full Mac version (intel only not power pc) and it should not go unnoticed that the most popular software purchased for Mac’s is Microsft Office. Until the recent release of iWork for the Mac there was no popular complete office suite apart from Microsoft Office. With so many new and young users of Mac’s OpenOffice.org have a real opportunity, after spending a lot their money on the hardware not everybody wants to spend more money on Microsoft Licenses.

The other compelling reason to look at OpenOffice.org is formats. OpenOffice.org 2.x could read and produce .doc, .xls and other proprietary Microsoft formats and this should be improved in in version 3.0 plus the addition of being able to read .docx, .xlsx and .pptx (which is more than Microsoft office 2003 user can do as standard) Openoffice 3 will not be able to produce in these ooxml formats but in my opinion that is a good thing. One of the greatest benefits of using open source software is also adopting open formats the default format forOpenOffice.org is ODF (OpenDocument Format) each program has its own ODF format Writer has .odt. Calc has .ods etc. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Microsoft’s own office suite will support ODF. This means that an OpenOffice.org user will be able to exchange documents, edits and updates with a Microsoft Office user all using an open standard format, this really is a great step forward. Of course there are many other products that support ODF, not just the two mentioned, from web applications such as Google Docs and Zoho to office suites including IBM Lotus Symphony and WordPerfect Office.

With full cross platform support, fully open source, really useful open formats supported by the major players and a Firefox-like extensions-ecosystem has OpenOffice.org’s time come? Only time will tell. I hope so.

Hot on the heels of Compiere’s recent new release the ever popular Openbravo has released version 2.4 promising improvements in the user interface. Openbravo is already a very pretty web based product but any improvements to usability of the web interface can only benefit users and help adoption. Keyboard operations and shortcuts have been introduced so now the product can be used mouseless if preferred.

All of the new features are listed at the Openbravo wiki here and overall it looks a good solid release, as ever increasing functionality with new reports and items such as purchase requests, which to to be fair you should expect in any ERP product.

A couple of new features caught my eye, the first was multi-accounting schemas – the ability to have more that one chart of accounts so you can report on the same data for multiple international requirements, currencies or management purposes will be very useful to many organisations.

The second noteworthy feature is the Heartbeat. This function, which will be on by default, will send a signal back to Openbravo with key information regarding installation and usage. Initially this sounds very un-open source but usage data like this is of great use to the whole Openbravo community and also the Heartbeat can be turned off. It should also be mentioned that nearly all modern software has functions similar to this heartbeat but usually there is no information provided to the user about the communication and no option to turn it off.

Another great aspect of Openbravo and open source software in general is listing all the bug fixes on the wiki.

Compiere the open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software has released its latest version 3.1. Version 3.1 is a major release that, according to Compiere, adds more than 400 functional, technical and business analysis enhancements. For full details of the release see the Compiere website.

Competition from other open source ERP software such as Openbravo and Adempiere appear to have a a positive effect on the development of Compiere. With recent funding of $6 million from venture capitalists hopefully development will continue at this pace benefitting the whole open source ERP community.

The use of the latest web technologies by American Politicians is now reasonably common place with sites such as Facebook and the the use of Twitter in the Presidential campaign http://election.twitter.com/ but probably not so well known was that back in 2004 Howard Dean pioneered political donations on the internet using open source software. The Howard Dean Presidential Nomination campaign used the popular and open source content management system (CMS) Drupal to manage donations over the internet.

Drupal is well known to be very functional and customisable and the development started by the Dean campaign went onto form CivicSpace a customised version of Drupal which included many specialised Drupal modules that can help nonprofits, campaigns, plan and manage events. As is the open source way many of the modules were contributed back to Drupal. CiviCRM took a lot of these modules and has been improving it at a rapid pace ever since.

CiviCRM is constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, open source, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups. CiviCRM gives you the tools to connect, communicate and activate your supporters and constituents.

CiviCRM is now an add on module for both Joomla and Drupal (both popular Content Management Systems) in addition to this from the latest version 2 there is also a stand alone version. CiviCRM is modular and covers many of the areas that important to many non profits whether they are Charities or Associations. The core system covers many of the areas you would expect from CRM systems but with functionality and descriptions which are tailored for organisations that engage in advocacy, community and political organizing, and non-profit work. Information can be stored about individuals, organisations and households and the interactions with them, Currently the modules available are:

CiviContribute – Online Fundraising and Donor Management.

CiviEvent - Online event registration and participant tracking.

CiviMember – Online signup and membership management.

CivilMail – personolised email blasts and newsletters.

There are also other components that are coming out in new releases:

CiviPledge – Component to handle offline and self service pledges.

CiviGrant – Simple control of money given to constituents for expenses etc.

CiviContribute

CiviContribute allows you to create unlimited web pages for collecting online contributions for different campaigns, projects etc. Financial information can be imported and exported from accounting software. CiviContribute can also produce widgets that can be embedded on any web page allowing any site or blog to collect money for a campaign. See the example below.

CiviEvent

CiviEvent allows you to create as many pages as required for online paid for and free events with registration confirmations and receipts automatically generated. Information and be imported and exported to other systems and also users can export events as ical files and subscribe to public events with online applications (e.g. google calendar) via ical feeds.

CiviMember

Civimember provides membership management allowing the creation of customised web pages for self service membership signup and renewal. CiviMember integrates to CiviContribute for payments and CiviMail for group mailings.

CiviMail

CiviMail is a fully functional mass mailing component allowing you to target recipients by group with personalised messages with the ability to track click throughs, manage bounces and control unsubscribe requests.

Sites using CiviCRM

Completed by volunteers/in house staff with no paid consultancy

Drupal Association- http://association.drupal.org/donate

Open Source Matters Foundation (Joomla Association) – http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the-project/make-a-donation.html

Manhattan Country School http://www.manhattancountryschool.org/

Community Partners http://www.compartners.org/

Completed with paid consultants

Amnesty International http://www.amnesty.org/en/donate

Wikimedia foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Democrats Abroad http://www.conservationfund.org/

Conservation Fund http://www.conservationfund.org/

Bioneers http://www.bioneers.org/

More case studies and lots more detail of implementation are available on CiviCRM’s case study page here.

Additional Links
CiviCRM comes out on top in NTEN Survey.

Install requirements for Latest Version CiviCRM 2.1

Drupal 6 or Joomla 1.5 if not installing Standalone

Apache 2.0

PHP 5.2.x

MySQL 5.x with INNODB enabled

Although Linux is often recommended all the components are cross platform and should work for Windows and Mac servers