xTupler #5 | April 2009
Dear Community —
Have you seen our new websites?
On March 17 we launched a major update to both xTuple.com and xTuple.org. We'd been working on the new sites for a few months, and thought we'd give them the extra benefit of a St. Patrick's Day launch for good luck. (And yes, we did push back the original date of Friday the 13th - who says software people are all cold-eyed rationalists?)
The main driver behind the redesign was a desire to improve the user experience - particularly search capability on and off the sites. We knew we needed to "unhide" the most requested areas of the site, notably help docs and downloads. We built the new sites using Drupal, an open source CMS that fits many of our core principles - it's got a strong community, it's powerful and easily extended, and it plays well with PostgreSQL, our favorite database.
There's more on the new websites below, as well as upcoming events, and more of the great people that make up our xTuple community.
Best regards,
BC Wilson
Director of Internet Communications
xTuple Web Tools
New modules added for customer support and translation
You might have heard us talking about various Web interfaces to xTuple ERP in the past, or maybe seen our mini-manifesto on Web client planning.
So "outside" users create and track incidents from the web, while xTuple staff have access to the full power of the xTuple CRM Incident Management capabilities in the client software that we use every day. This is, not surprisingly, driving a number of minor improvements to the CRM module :)
Secondly, we've made substantial improvements to our Translation Portal based on feedback from our growing international community of translators. In particular, we've redesigned the interface on the edit language page to closely resemble the interface of Qt Linguist. This should make it easy for those familiar with the offline translation tool from Qt to jump right into our online tool - which allows multiple people to work simultaneously on different sections of the translation.
We'll continue to roll out enhancements to the websites, with a focus on further integration between the web and xTuple ERP on the back end.
Training Class Comes to California
"Intro to xTuple ERP" rolls into Anaheim on April 27
Our most popular training class, Introduction to xTuple ERP, is hitting the road, based on popular demand! The class begins Monday morning and runs through Friday afternoon.
We hope you'll join us for this class or for one in the future (the class will return to our Norfolk, Virginia HQ in June). Please reply for more information or to sign up now.
The intro class, remember, is a prerequisite for all our other classes, including developer training, advanced features, and everyone's favorite - reporting and tools!
Community Corner
What we're hearing from friends in the open source world
U.K.-based developer Pete Bisson installed PostBooks for a client after a thorough review of several other open source ERP packages.
He notes that they were initially leaning toward an all-web solution, but ran into serious performance problems with other systems:
"Eventually my client suggested we look again at xTuple ... Once we had done a series of test configurations, it took us about a week to commit to kicking off FY 2009 with xTuple. ... Keep up the good work - as I have said before, it's always nice to deal with professionals."
Likewise! If you're a regular on our community website, you know Pete has been a prolific contributor of both cheerful help on the discussion forums and high-quality code patches on the issue tracker.
He's also been involved in the major effort to expand international taxation support in the upcoming version 3.3. We look forward to continuing to work with Pete and other open source ERP professionals in the global xTuple community.
Employee Showcase
Readers of the xTuple forums will be familiar with the handle gmoskowitz. Who's this wonderful person that's always got the (detailed) answers? It's Gil, software engineer and key member of the xTuple development team.
Gil is a veteran developer, having worked for Informix and Gemstone in Portland, Oregon. He joined xTuple in 2005, and since then, has been instrumental in developing both new features and architectural improvements. "I drive process," says Gil, in reference to his efforts to continually improve our development practices.
His first project as an xTupler introduced multicurrency support to the application - we gave him an easy one to start with!
Gil's passions, apart from perfecting the xTuple code, are reading, cooking and kayaking. He can be found on weekends with his wife and daughter, paddling the Lafayette River, Owl Creek, and other tributaries in our area.
Partner Profile
John Mertlick, J2M Solutions
"Mert" is a 30-year IT, manufacturing, and distribution management professional. His extensive experience has taken him all over the world, managing ERP implementations throughout North America, South America and Asia.
When Mert isn't out delighting customers, he is off enjoying what his wife refers to as his sickness --- fly fishing. He has fished most of the trout streams in Oregon and southeastern Idaho. Not only can he untangle the most gnarly of ERP challenges, Mert ties his own flies!!
Paris Show!
All this week, xTuple will be exhibiting at the at the Porte de Versailles in Paris. VP Sales Wally Tonra and his charming (and French-speaking) wife Caroline will be demonstrating xTuple ERP's multi-lingual, multi-currency, multi-platform, and all around multi-licious capabilities in booth #E-33.
Help Spread the Word
It's easy! Just click the "Add This" button above to bookmark xTuple.com on delicious, digg, reddit or another site where you have an account. Every bookmark you add helps our search engine rankings.
And for extra credit:
- Add yourself to the PostBooks Project on Sourceforge.net
- Add yourself to the following sites (make sure to join the PostBooks project there):
Attention PostBooks Users!
Now you can purchase bundles of prepaid support directly from xTuple, in increments of as little as five hours. The more you buy, the more you save.
5 hours - $1500
10 hours - $2500
20 hours - $4500
30 hours - $6000
40 hours - $7500
Contact [email protected] or +1-757-461-3022 for more information.