How to improve user involvement in development of ERPNext

szufisher · May 23, 2021, 2:26am

I like this idea

dirles · May 25, 2021, 10:22am

Which property management system is it? Would be interesting to develop same for ERPnext

revant_one · May 25, 2021, 11:11am

Whoever want to try the ecommerce refactor PR try this.

Joseph_Marie_Alba1 · May 25, 2021, 11:35am

I rather not say in this forum. I think it is bad taste. But their strategy is not monolothic. They have the base product (like Frappe in our case), then on top of this base product, they have a vertical implementation focused on property management. On top of the same base product, they have another vertical implementation focused on asset management (computers, equipment, etc.) You may install both vertical products in the same installation if you want.

Unlike ERPNext which places all domains (verticals) all in one place so there is no chance for differentiation.

bkm · May 25, 2021, 1:49pm

While this is a step in the right direction, it is not really addressing the true kernel of the problem.

As a developer @revant_one you were wise in pointing out that you may have a difficult time understanding the issues from a business user perspective. This effort of yours still requires the “PR” step that is not within the catalog of skills the average business user has at their disposal. They would still be unable to participate in this exercise except to provide commentary on some developers functional PR.

This process does not enable the business user to get their own PR type additions up for consideration. It only enables them to comment on the work of others.

I can see where this might eventually get us to the true point of origin (business users). So to that end I applaud this project for it’s intent and it’s origins. It will be a great starting point.

Thank you @revant_one for having the courage and commitment to help get this underway.

BKM

Joseph_Marie_Alba1 · May 25, 2021, 9:59pm

Introducing POS Awesome

Seems to have implemented this concept using this thread alone.

revant_one · May 26, 2021, 9:49am

PR/Issue is the point where software is built, Forum or Issues do not influence that much once discussions are on PR. The user comments on PR can influence reviewers immediately.

It is the point where user can even completely block the feature or change the direction.
Once the discussion moves to PR, most of it continues there.

Let’s not call it PR. Let us call it “List of Fixes and Features” or “List of improvements”

Following is my imagination:

Step 1:

User visits (Custom Frappe App). https://review.test-erpnext.org and logs-in.

User sees list of features that are coming up in ERPNext.

Step 2:

User clicks on one of the feature “feat: Employee Grievance”

User sees details about a site where the feature is deployed

Here we can either keep the credentials open or give the responsibility of management to site creator and ask users to contact site creator for access.

What is up for consideration is again based on trust and reputation.
Anyone who wish to contribute (major/minor) code needs to know the process of pull request.

I’ve seen people send valid PR(s) that get merged just through github.com user interface.
The branches they send PR from are generally named patch-1, patch-2, patch-N.

PR is the ONLY way to change the code.

Enabling business users to send their contribution is another important interaction. It may also have some part of training, coaching involved and we need more human interaction than code or ui there.

If it is a PR it might get landed up in my “imagined” UI and there will be more “user” eyes on that PR making it candidate to be considered for merge.

For people who can install development environment, switch branches, try out things locally, it can be done using the any mode of developer interaction and trying out the commits the developer pushes. No need of a UI where there is a button to “Try” feature.

For users who can’t setup development environment to try branches and forks there needs to be some way? Because users are always more in number than developers I think there should be easy way.

My “imagination” targets all users who just “use” the system daily. Not developers.

Joseph_Marie_Alba1 · May 26, 2021, 11:38am

I think I get what you mean. I understand it this way:

bench update for Frappe / ERPNext is limited to the committed pull requests approved by the Frappe team which have been admitted into the official branch (develop).

What you want is to have a Live Demo site updated with the official branch PLUS the unapproved Pull Requests of a selected focus area. This way, the users who do not code but have domain expertise can contribute their inputs by pointing out errors or refinements to the model.

bkm · May 26, 2021, 1:30pm

You know what… That is the perfect answer!

Thank you for the clarification. I really like the direction this is going.

BKM

szufisher · May 27, 2021, 6:47am

looking forward to see it in action.

Tufan · May 29, 2021, 8:23pm

Hi Team,

I believe this platform has massive potential.

I for one would be more than willing to learn how to code and contribute to the team.

I would say I am a beginner/intermediate at coding in JS/Python/Html/CSS.

I have already watched all the frappe and erpnext tutorial on youtube, but I still feel that it isn’t enough for noob developers to start contributing.

I really think that a full on tutorial such as those you get on Udemy for other frameworks such as Angular or Django, will give the Dev community a massive jump start and will start growing at a massive rate.

If I could learn how to develop and build features for ERPNext, I would of already been contributing to this project.

nmami · May 29, 2021, 8:41pm

+1…

Joseph_Marie_Alba1 · May 30, 2021, 12:25pm

This is a very important point. The Docker part is there. But, admittedly, there is much room for improvement to make ERPNext trouble free.

Startdown · May 31, 2021, 8:12pm

Hi all,
New to forum and ERPnext, still deciding if it’s something I want to and trust to use.

I think getting a bullet proof docker installation guide would be a great help to get more people interested.
Have it working for Windows WSL too to keep the barrier as low as possible.

My thoughts
Implement an really simple (and blinding obvious) way to automatically backup localhost env. (I didn’t try very hard but the backup to Gmail didn’t seem to work for non public URL). Also have bullet proof start again form backup guide (also with a kind of big button at initial installation saying "want to restore from backup? ")

Then people could start using more easily it for one person operations and testing.

Have this process as sacrosanct at all upgrade tests so people can trust that they will never lose their data. For business anything less than 100% in this area is useless.

I think people could use some elements like CRM or Project out of the box for immediate benefit just as a personal database. I know that’s not the point of an ERP but the functionality is there so use it go generate interest and trust in product for new users.

I read in another post previously poeple had issues with upgrades, this is the kind of thing that is making me hesitate to use it. I’d use a system that never breaks over one that looks fancy and perhaps even does more but has occasional issues any day of the week.

There are my thoughts as someone considering erpnext.
Ps if I do start using it I’ll be delighted to contribute what I can as seems a fantastic initiative.

Cheers.

revant_one · June 2, 2021, 2:20am

We have a proof of concept for developers interested to contribute and speed up the development.

RohanB did all the github sync part over the weekend. I was able write and call few functions that built docker images, install the helm release and deleted the helm release.

Screenshots

Readme/Repo: GitHub - revant/erpnext_feature_board: Feature board for ERPNext
Try functions from console Home · revant/erpnext_feature_board Wiki · GitHub

Joseph_Marie_Alba1 · June 2, 2021, 2:56am

Initialize Site

Add Github Repository , add the url and github personal access token
Sync Github Repository

Does Github Repository refer to our personal github repository?

CA_B.C_Chechani · June 2, 2021, 3:39am

v. good , I am also interested to contribute in terms of testing as well as betterment/addition to already added feature. However, I still need to learn the proposed mechanism, so little extensive documentation will help to people like me who are not coming from a purely technical background.

revant_one · June 2, 2021, 5:22am

Add ERPNext repo. The one which has PR.
Being open repo any PAT will do. It is just needed to pull
open PR data

Edit:

No need of PAT for public PR data. We’ll remove it to reduce confusion for developers.

revant_one · June 2, 2021, 5:34am

For user testing I’ll come up with something that is easy enough for clicks. For your case, wait for it to be live somewhere some time.

For developer, try out things from wiki to get some understanding.

We’re giving only our spare time to it. We’ll need developers who really can speed up the developement, understand things, even add extensive documentation. I’m not best person to write documentation. More weekend developers, faster the thing may go live.

RohanB had no experience with docker/K8s, he managed to setup using readme and then run the commands from wiki on bench console and that created a site on locally setup cluster

revant_one · June 5, 2021, 2:27pm

Agenda for the weekend. 2021-06-05

board.castlecraft.co.in will be the feature board.
gh-imp-2021-00082.castlecraft.co.in will be the site of PR that is generated
Used Castlecraft’s Digitalocean credits to setup a Kubernetes cluster for the above setup. (2Nodes, 1LB, 1Bucket, 50DB+50NFS=100GB storage) Approx under 60USD/Month.
Used spare domain castlecraft.co.in to setup things.
If this thing picks up, I’ll transfer everything to erpnext.org. (Code is already FOSS)
If things don’t pick up, community can refer frappe framework code to interact with Kubernetes.