Welcome to today’s Java Break in which we
take you all on a walk through AddonSoftware
by Barista. My name is Paul Yeomans with BASIS
International and today I'll be joined by Nico
Spence our Chairman and CEO. Let’s take a look at today’s agenda. We will start off with just a brief look at what the
AddonSoftware product looks like. Then we will
go into answering some questions “Why Barista?” and “Why AddonSoftware should
be your ERP of choice?” Then we will address
the question about “What is commercial open source?” which is the model for the
AddonSoftware partner program. Then we’ll get back to the product and we will
talk about AddonSoftware’s advanced features, some of the new features we recently added and
then some of the handy features both within the
product itself and those that are inherited from Barista. When I say inherited from Barista,
that means when you write your application in
Barista you will receive these benefits as well. We will wrap it up with answering your
questions... Before we starting answering all
those Why’s let’s take a look at AddonSoftware. After logging into the solution you are presented
with the AddonSoftware MDI frame and the
menu options on the upper left portion of the screen. The upper panel displays
the modules and we have selected the Accounts
Payable module. The tasks associated with the selected module,
in this case AP, are displayed in the lower panel.
Commonly used tasks are displayed open for easy launching while other less used
tasks, are neatly organized into folders. Let’s select the Accounts Receivable module
from the upper panel and you will notice that the
associated tasks with AR have been adjusted down below. We are going to select
Maintenance and then we are going to select
the Customers task to launch the Customer Master Record.
In the Customer ID field, we are going to enter
100. And this is our demo data - customer 100 is
Everest Industries. Notice the comfortable
modern screen layout with tabs across the top each of which will
display additional information. The buttons at the
bottom of the window are almost self-explanatory but lets go through them. The
first one will clear the form in anticipation of
creating a new customer record. This one will delete the record if this was
activated and typically this would be an
administrative function. These navigation keys will walk forward through
the demo data of different customer records we
have created here. The binoculars are used to query files. And we
also have additional options here that display in
a drop down and we can launch them directly from here.
Let’s go back up into the main body and we’ll
select the Profile tab and this is going to display information for
Everest Industries typically associated with
Order Entry. Next to each of the Profile fields notice the
magnifying glass look-up to quickly access all
records for that particular type of field. We will go down here to Freight Terms and we
will launch it and you can see that we’ve got
three different terms that have been created in the demo data. Double click on that
and it populates that field and the field is
described. Let’s go the the next tab, Aging and Sales
Summary and this will provide a snapshot for all
the financial activity for this customer. Many of the fields throughout the software have
drill-downs to reveal details for that particular
field. Here, the Balance field, is enabled with a drill-down button to provide
quick access to the table of invoices whose
totals equal $18,024. Let’s select that and it launches that table. So why do we say AddonSoftware by Barista
and just what is Barista? The Barista application
framework is a data dictionary-based GUI development platform. It is the workbench
for developing data-centric applications. It also
provides the application run time environment for end users when running those Barista
managed applications. Barista is a framework,
not a code generator. Barista has the unique ability to preserve your
customizations through the upgrade cycle
thereby preventing your customized applications from becoming “frozen in time.” By that I mean
that you can continue to provide your customers
with new features and functions without having to re-write all of those
customizations. It delivers a consistently
modern look and feel to all of your applications. As a rapid application development tool, Barista
allows you to quickly and easily make changes
to your application making you much more productive with your
time. These efficiencies thereby lower the cost
of ownership to both the end user and to you, the developer. Additionally, your
efficiencies will allow you to serve more
customers without increasing your workforce. Barista was the development tool we used to
modernize AddonSoftware and it is included with
the product. As we go through today’s session, we will point
out the benefits to AddonSoftware of having used
the Barista framework. Here is why you should be considering
AddonSoftware as your ERP product of choice.
AddonSoftware is a product that is low risk with a long time in the market and thousands of
users. BASIS International just celebrated its
25th anniversary and Addon actually pre-dates BASIS. BASIS
itself uses AddonSoftware as its core ERP
solution with significant customizations. It is a reliable, robust solution and much like the
BASIS technology upon which it is built, we can
scale it from 1 or 2 users all the way up to hundreds of users. It is
competitively priced. We’ve priced the product
competitively at the low end and scaled it right up to the many hundred user
site systems. Our user-based model is flexible
and meets the competitive pricing requirement. We recognize that in order for our product to be
successful, you need to be successful, so
we’ve designed a supportive partner program. Within that program we have a unique co-op
community that gives you the ability to partner
with us in the whole process of delivering the solution
including participation in developing the solution. We provide you with access to the source code,
so you are able to customize the solution to
meet your customer’s requirements. And remember, we give you the ability to
preserve those customizations through an
upgrade. We have a building block architecture that lets
you focus on your vertical market instead of the
rather mundane, standard accounting and distribution building
blocks. It empowers you with tight integration by
allowing you to bring your custom screens written in raw BBj and integrate them into the
Barista look and feel that is found in
AddonSoftware. You will often hear us referring to the
AddonSoftware development project as well as
the partnership program as being a commercial open source project and
partnership program. But what does that really
mean? Let’s talk about the uniqueness of this
partnership program. There is an optional
component to it whereby you can produce or deliver some of your work product to the
project as a whole. So it is a co-operative development component
and we refer to it as the co-op program. There are many ways of receiving a benefit from
your co-operation. Firstly, you can participate
and reduce your monthly fee, the traditional fee that is paid for participation
and access to discounts in the partnership
program. Secondly, you can receive product credits from your contributions. That means that
your contributions towards the project allow you
to increase your margins when you resell the product. And finally you
have a say in the direction of the development of
the ERP solution as a whole. A very powerful enabler which is very common to
the open source development projects in the
community. Let’s have a look at some comparisons of why
one would consider using this commercial open
source approach. Let’s look at the elements of a traditional ERP-
type partner program. They often have a strong
company in a traditional VAR environment that is certainly present. Open source is
perhaps more of a loosely coupled cooperative
effort from various partners with vested interests in the solution. And then in commercial open
source, you still have that ownership element by
a strong company. The source code in a traditional VAR
environment is generally available or sometimes
available after a significant payment made to the owners of the product. In open
source, obviously that source code is available
to everyone and similarly in our commercial open source
approach. In terms of the revenue streams that
one has - service revenue is certainly available in the traditional VAR
program environment. In open source it is the
key component of the revenue stream available to those that contribute towards the
project and in commercial open source, the
same applies. Sales revenue - this a very strong differentiating
factor. In the traditional VAR channel that is
certainly where you derive the majority of your revenue is from the sale of the product to
the end user. Open source of course, there is no
selling price the product is open source by its very nature there is no price to sell the product.
Commercial open source, as its name
suggests, still has a commercial value. There is a street value that is associated with it
and in addition to that, there is an opportunity to
increase one’s margin. So depending upon your contribution to the
project, instead of having margins that may
range from 20% to perhaps at the high end, of 50% margin in a traditional
VAR channel, here you have the opportunity
from your contributions to earn up to 100% margin on the sale of the
product. Product management by supplier-
certainly that is necessary in the traditional VAR way. In the open source arena, well of
course there is no supplier so there can’t be any
product management by the supplier. Commercial open source, that is certainly the
case. BASIS provides that management
component for the product. In terms of development tools - the traditional
VAR channel often provide you with development
tools. Open source, one gleans those from the community. In the commercial
open source environment, in the case where
BASIS is both the provider of the development tools, the language, as well as the building
blocks - we provide a plethora of tools to make
sure that that development runs smoothly. Let’s have a look at some of the other
components. Co-operative development tools,
the traditional VAR world are generally not available unless you are part of
that fee paid open source or access to source
code component and generally those tools are few and far
between. Open source, naturally enough there is
the need to have the ability for diverse entities to be able to cooperatively work on the
same product. And similarly in our world, we
have leveraged those open source tools like svn to provide remote access and remote
contributions towards that common product. Top to bottom support - traditional VAR channel,
not so much. Perhaps in the Microsoft world you
have a top to bottom approach but there seem to be silo’d efforts on that front.
Open source, not really. You are going to need
to weave in the various components of open source projects to make a fully sustainable
solution. In our world, we provide that top to
bottom approach. Both access to third-party Java libraries, we
integrate those into our solution in the form of
utility building blocks from BASIS, as well as the BASIS development tools right
down to the language. So leveraging that access
to the development team that makes the core product, makes the top to
bottom support a lot more sustainable and
powerful than alternative sources. Revenue from upgrades or rentals and
maintenance - traditional VAR channel
naturally enough as a component of the product sale. Future upgrades and access to software
asset management is a component of that. Open source naturally not. Everything by its very
nature is open source and doesn’t have a cost
to it. One relies on service revenue, training and
perhaps documentation. On the commercial
open source world again revenue from upgrades rental and maintenance is readily available. One
has the partnership discounts through the
channel as well as the opportunity to increase those
margins through contributions to the project. Revenue from installation, training and
customization across the board very much the
same. So very distinct differences between those three
approaches. We believe we’ve blended the best
of both worlds, from the traditional VAR channel into the open
source into what we are terming the
"commercial open source partnership program" and development effort that everybody benefits
from - the end users, the developers, and the
suppliers. Thanks Nico. Let’s get back to the product and
let’s take a look at some of the advanced
features of AddonSoftware by Barista. First of all we’ll touch on the document output
system and we’ll talk about plumbing your
existing or newly created hand written code into the Barista framework which will deliver a
seamless look and feel. We’ll look at an
example of iReports and JasperReports. And finally we’ll look at AddonSoftware’s
powerful yet easily managed role-based security
and audit logging systems. We offer a robust document output feature that
allows you to create, e-mail, fax, PDF, archive,
interface with cloud document storage through Google Docs, and convert your report to ASCII
text. You can also preview and adjust your
report formatting prior to producing your report. Let’s take a look at what the Google Doc
interface looks like. Here we are inside AddonSoftware and we’re
going to create a report within the GL module.
Balance Sheet, hit process ... when the preview comes up we are going to
select the DocOut button in the top right corner
there. We will select under the Google section, that it
is going to Google in PDF, and that is my
Google account information and I’ve specified the folder I want it to go to, and then I select
Create. I am going to bring up my Google Doc folder that
I sent it to to see that it is empty. I hit Refresh
and there is my report. We are going to open the report...and there we
are and within Google Docs we have the
functionality to share this with other users and to e-mail it to them or whatever I need. The next topic we’d like to talk about is
plumbing Barista into your app. I’m often asked
the question, “Can Barista deliver 100% of my project’s requirements? Is it the tool for
everything that I want to write in a GUI
environment?” And the answer of course is “No.” Maybe 98%, maybe 95% of your code can be
delivered straight from the Barista tool. But often
times there are going to be little bits of the application where you are going to need
more granular control of your GUI environment.
Perhaps add controls that aren’t supported in Barista, some other methodologies that don’t
lend themselves to the data dictionary-based
environment. So let’s consider a couple of those ways we can
accommodate that. We accommodate it by
plumbing the Barista framework, the MDI framework, the navigation controls into
your custom written GUI app. Of course we can
always run, if we are in a transitionary mode, we can run character-based code from within the
MDI and you can run any GUI code but of
course we want it to look and feel the same. So the accommodation that we have available to
you is in three ways. First, we can take pre-
existing forms, GUI forms and controls that have been generated outside of Barista and
we can plumb in the Barista components.
Secondly, we can add BBj controls to a pre-existing Barista form. So in other words,
if the standard Barista form doesn’t give you
what you want, you can extend it with your own controls and utilize callpoint code
to manage those controls. And lastly, we’ve
added the ability for you to create new code within AppBuilder and use that within the Barista
framework. So let’s have a look at a quick
screen shot of those three. Pre-existing forms and controls - we can go from
this environment where we have buttons on the
screen to control Update, Delete, and Clear for example, into a form that looks like it belongs in
the Barista environment. So we’ve added the
Barista menus across the top and we’ve added navigation across the bottom. The second alternative that we discussed is
extending Barista forms by adding native BBj
controls. So here we have within the Addon product in our
Cash Receipts Entry - it didn’t lend itself to
using a standard Barista form layout. We’ve used a Barista form that has controls
across the top, but the controls within the red
box here, the new grid has some check boxes in it and
some different functionality that we generated in
our callpoint code, but we added it within the Barista form. And then lastly we may want to write some
completely new code utilizing the AppBuilder
and we’ve made some accommodations within AppBuilder to make it possible for us to pass
program arguments and actually debug and test
that within the BASIS IDE environment. So again, leveraging those plumbing pieces so
that application looks like it’s part of the Barista
framework - as if it was written utilizing Barista when in fact it is written in hand-coded BBj. If
you want to learn more about this have a look at
our previous Java Break presentation that talks about plumbing Barista into custom BBj and
have a look at this Advantage magazine article “Plumbing the Barista Framework into BBj
Forms.” Let’s look at some of the other aspects that
AddonSoftware has inherited and taken
advantage of from the Barista environment. We’ve also leveraged the BBj utility set. We’ve
utilized the ability for us to integrate iReports
and JasperReport formats into our AddonSoftware framework. So utilizing
the BBJasper utility you’ll see here the Vendor
Detail Listing is one that doesn’t lend itself to the columnar
type presentation format and so we’ve utilized
an iReport to generate this. More recently some of the enhancements was
to ship a more pleasing font so this report is
certainly a vast improvement over the original report that we shipped with the product.
Have a look at some of the other environments
within AddonSoftware some of which we have enhanced with iReports
to generate a more pleasing, graphically
acceptable report format. And you can do your custom reporting then
either using iReports or DocOut type generated
reports. We’ve included a role-based security system
that is both easy to setup and easy to maintain.
Create an employee profile, assign that new employee to a security role or
to multiple roles and you are on your way. Security roles are set to allow or block views,
additions, modifications or deletions at the field
level. Additionally, there is a configurable audit trail
that tracks record creation, deletion, and
modification. No code needs to be written for these functions. Here are a few of the new features recently
added to AddonSoftware. Enterprise Manager
API integration means that your BBj user records are shared.
The document inquiry is something I will be
demonstrating and we have a new Copy and Paste function added to our inquiry
screens. Let’s take a look at those. So let’s log in to the BASIS Enterprise Manager
and get started. We are going to select Users
and Authentication, we are going to create a new user and this one
is going to be called Marketing, assign a
password, confirm that password, select OK. Now we are going to move over to Barista. Here
is the Barista application framework, under
Users... we are going to use the drop down and we right
click on Import Users and we put a check mark
next to Marketing and select OK. And now we are going to look at those User
Records and there is Marketing. It has been
added without having to rebuild. So now we are over in AddonSoftware under
Users and it has inherited that attribute from
Barista straight into AddonSoftware. Now I’m back in AddonSoftware and we want to
take a look at that new document inquiry
feature. We are going to create a report here in 13
Period Report Printing...Run Process...we’ve
created our report... and we are going to go up to the Save icon on
that report, click Save As. We have the opportunity to navigate and
determine where it goes and we can name it and
we are going to Save it. Close that out and now are going to into Barista
Administration under Document Inquiry and here
are our saved documents. Here is the one we’ve just created and we right
click on it to open that document and from here
we can Print it again. Close that out, right click and let’s look at
another option, we can fax and e-mail it and this
sets it up in the queue ready to go out the door. The last new feature I want to show you within
AddonSoftware is the Copy Paste function we’ve
added to the inquiry screens. Here we are in the Customer Master file, vendor
100 is Everest Industries, we’ll go over to Aging
and Sales Summary to the drill down and it brings up a list of all
those invoices. We select them, we right click,
Copy and it brings up the Copy Options screen. We make our selections, bring up Microsoft
Excel, we drop that data into Excel, and now we
are ready to do our analysis. Quick and easy. Now let’’s take a look at some more
AddonSoftware functionality that it inherits from
the Barista tool. Your application developed with Barista will
automatically inherit these handy features. The Favorites feature allows you to create your
own drop down list with a simple right click of
the mouse. Then launch that task from the drop down list
across modules to quickly move around the
solution to your commonly run tasks quickly and efficiently. To quickly return to a
task that we had worked on earlier in that
session, select the History drop down. From that list select the task we need to return
to and re-launch it from that area. This is a quick
alternative to working through the navigation panels. AddonSoftware
accommodates multiple workforce languages by
leveraging Barista’s underlying technologies. Using a single code source you can add
languages to adapt to different parts of the
United States where English might be a second language or internationalize the
solution. We currently have Barista available in
seven languages. You are able to launch multiple task windows
and minimize them to easily move between
tasks. Additionally, you may launch your windows in
SDI mode with the click of a button, thereby
freeing the new window from the MDI framework and control. This provides flexibility for multi-
screen work spaces. The Saved Reports feature allows you to save
the settings you set for a report structure, save
them for your own use or you can share them across the organization for
standardization. Those were features that the AddonSoftware
solution inherited thanks to Barista. Here are
some other powerful features we preserved from earlier versions of
AddonSoftware. From the Order Entry window,
we can quickly check the credit status of a customer with the click of a button which
brings up a recap of the customer’s credit limit,
their open invoices and orders and the amount of credit remaining. The Line Code field within Order Entry is an
important feature in Addon. It allows each line in
the order to be dealt with differently in terms of function and in terms of revenue
account number. The typical Item Line Type is
the standard inventory item. Entering an item displays all the available
warehouse quantities in the lower section of the
form. For the next Line Code we select a Non-Stock code to create a special order item.
Then we added a Memo line code which allows
us to enter free-form text straight into the order. The last item we entered, the P code, is a
promotional item. All this flexibility has been a
great hit with our end users. Much of AddonSoftware’s reporting is free from
the traditional constraints of period end or year
end processes. Here we show an AR Aging report run from a
period several years ago. Within the General
Ledger module, financials can be run for prior, current and future year. Inventory transaction
reports can be run for any historical range. This flexibility reduces the crunch often
associated with month or year end closings and
data reports. Alternate and superseded inventory items can
be established within the system as substitute
items so that as stock is depleted on one item, the user can easily move over to select its
replacement. Addon is also fully capable of
tracking both lotted and serialized inventory. A synonym is just another way to find an item. If
you have an item number 123Q, and the
description is a chain for a 26” bike, you can make a synonym for the item
containing the word chain so that it is easier to
find than trying to remember 123Q. If you go into Order Entry at the Item Number
field and type ‘ch’, ‘ch’ is not a valid item
number but it will launch an item look-up form and this becomes the default way to look for an
item through its synonym. Well thank you Paul. Let’s summarize what
we’ve covered in our session today talking about
AddonSoftware the exciting building block for our BASIS
community. Firstly, we had a quick look at the
look and feel of AddonSoftware and how it is structured. We then considered
why Barista was chosen as the tool, the data
dictionary-based rapid application development tool with its ability to preserve customizations
through the upgrade cycle. We’ve spoke about
“Why AddonSoftware?” this product that pre-dates BASIS with some 25 years of great
value that has been generated in the product
over time. We’ve spoken about the approach of delivering a
commercial open source project, how that
blends into the partnership channel and how we’ve leveraged the best of both worlds,
of the open source world as well as the VAR
channel type development environment. We believe we’ve truly delivered something
unique to the marketplace with benefits for all
stakeholders - from the end users through to the VARs that do customizations in
support of the solution. We’ve spoken about some of the advanced
features of AddonSoftware and we’ve looked at
some new features we added since the last major release of AddonSoftware.
And we’ve discussed user features that are both
inherited from Barista as well as those inherited from the rich heritage
of AddonSoftware itself...its functionality in the
ERP world. What makes it a competitive and viable solution. So we hope that you will go
away and give some thought to either
participating in our VAR channel, in our co-operative development partnership
program or consider utilizing AddonSoftware as
your building blocks for your next vertical market solution.