Vtiger Integration (Page 2 of 2)

Coolers, I do not want to discourage you in your approaches, but I think you are wrong in most of your argumentation. Both FA and vtiger has long history which resulted in two different code bases for which the only common point is php/mysql usage. It means that to incarnate your vision you have to completely rewrite either vtiger or FrontAccounting. Or rewrite them both from scratch. If it is (unlikely) successful, you will also have to complete developers team which will continue the progress made currently by the two teams, and ensure potential users they have continous bugfix support. If you prefer this over contributing to any of the two projects, I can only wish you good luck. If you think that FrontAccounting and/or vtiger are simply perfect and they only need merging, it means you do not know FA nor vtiger well. I prefer to spent my time on making FA really bugfree and complete in this narrow ERP range which it support, than make it big, unmaintainable and even more incomplete system.

Bruzergear, I really understand the power of workflows and custom fields implemented in vtiger, and I share your enthusiasm to it. Some day in  a future it surely will be implemented. But for the reasons explained in another thread (about POS features) this have to wait for implementation in unknown future. If you really want speed this process up you can contact me directly via pm/email with any prepositions. Unfortunately I had no luck trying contact you after the mentioned discussion about POS.
Janusz

Janusz, thanks for the great work you do with front accounting.
Sorry it was hard to get a hold of me earlier on the pos stuff. I must have missed your email.
I will organize my thoughts better over the next week on the pos, custom fields and workflows and then get back to you on what I have come up with.

I have some resources, financial and programming, that I would like to put to good use and I would like to get your thoughts on where we could help make these things happen in front accounting.

Coolers, I wish you the best of luck on your search for someone to pay you to program your dream system. I would suggest you look for support in other forums because we are loyal to front accounting and the solid business plan and fantastic team behind it.

Jegas,
sounds like a big project. Good luck with it.

3 questions:

1. How much will it cost us per integration to use your system for vtiger and quickbooks?

2. Can you integrate frontaccounting and quickbooks?  We would be interested in integrating frontaccounting with quickbooks.  we have lots of clients that are already integrated with vtiger and frontaccounting because it wasn't that hard for us to integrate the two using vtiger workflows, but a lot of our clients still prefer using quickbooks because frontaccounting still lacks custom fields and workflow capabilities.
So a good solution for us is to have our clients using our vtiger and frontaccounting setup, but then have the option to integrate frontaccounting with quickbooks if they prefer to still use their quickbooks for some functions.

3. Will it be opensource? We prefer to support great opensource communities like vtiger and frontaccounting rather than be stuck with proprietary solutions that hold us hostage.

Hi All,

   After reading this long argument without any solutions out there. I have come out with the solutions that partially solve the issue between Vtiger FA Integration. These 2 open source project have their pros and cons. The missing part is the bridge between the 2 as Vtiger does not have accounting while FA does not have CRM. It will be nice to create a bridge between the 2 projects with minimum changes.

   Left me clarify some doubts that have been mention in this post.
1) Integrate vtiger and frontaccounting  WITHOUT changing the core code of either vtiger or frontaccounting are INVISIBLE provided that you are using the Database Trigger/custom workflow. I do not suggest to used database trigger due to most of the users running those application under Shared Hosting Environment. In shared hosting package, they DO NOT provide database trigger (my shared hosting do not provide db trigger functions). So, I solve this issue by creating a new FA REST API to perform 2 way synchronization.

2) Multiple Login to different system was troublesome.?
   This can be solve by using LDAP Server. Both system should support Single Sign On via LDAP Server or Open ID. if you don't, you can simple create it. (NOTE: LDAP Server only applicable to Semi or dedicated server/Cloud Computing)

3) It will become really difficult for a new developer to maintain the two different code bases?
   The simple answer is YES. But after investigate the code bases of these 2 open source project. The answer become NOT Necessary. The reason is vtiger CRM already done some degree of integration by providing the REST API but FA does not. So, you have to create your own FA REST API to perform integration and synchronization process between the 2 system.

4) The end-users will have to learn 2 different set of UIs and base functionalities (like roles, etc.)
      AGREED. To solve this issue, I have created a new UI and define the User Roles for these 2 applications. When the user login to the system, it will automatically provision into vtiger or FA. (This process is invisible to the user and it will work as normal login process). The end user will retrieve the functionalities base on the define roles.

5) The multi-currency concept is different in both the FA and vT.
    Yes. But you can solve this issue by converting the multi-currency from FA to vtiger or vice-versa.

6) Combining the 2 database into 1 is meaningless. This is due to the future upgrade issue unless you stick with the current version. 
    This issue can be solve by using the normal installation on 2 separate databases. When it come to the database upgrade, just re-run the additional custom db script for FA and vtiger. For the source code, you need to re-patch the new version of vtiger or FA. You keep the latest version with minimum changes.

The overviews synchronization process as below:

- Vtiger -> 2 ways sync -> Front Accounting

- Front Accounting -> 2 ways sync -> Vtiger

Future Integrations:

   Synchronize Customer, Order, Stock Movement, Products Inventory, Re order level, invoices etc from and to FA to Open Source Shopping Cart below:

  - Open Source Shopping Cart include Magento, Virtualmart, OpenCart, OsCommerce, ZenCart etc will be supported.

Mobile Devices Integrations:

  -The following mobile devices will be supported iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry 6 and above (BB 5 and below DOES NOT supported).

Although my idea was there, but it will take a long time to complete the missions including the resources, time and money. Anyway, I will continue invest into the integration for the above said.

  For those who are interested with this solutions, are can my post "2 ways synchronization between vtiger and front accounting - RELEASED" at https://frontaccounting.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=2096

Hi seahawk,

  Thanks you for your great suggestion. Creating a plugin on vtiger make sense. But our solutions need to cater for others open source software which come from the idea to bundle useful open source software into one dashboard through Single Sign On Process (SSO) via OpenLDAP Server.

  The best is Vtiger provide REST API which can be call remotely. Hence, we can simply call Vtiger API by passing all the requires parameters into their Web Services. The records will be sync in both system. Although not all Webservices are available in Vtiger but you can create your own custom WebServices and deployed into Vtiger easily. This is how our current solutions works on both system.

Cheers,

tclim

Now that the RESTful SimpleAPI has been made for FrontAccounting, and maybe one exists for vTigerCRM as well, it should be a simple matter of JSON exchanges......

Currently vTiger Wiki for the modules list does not show any API.