Re: OFBiz as Marketplace

[Michael Brohl]

Hi Taher,






Am I right or is it a misunderstanding on my side?

Best regards,

Michael


Am 20.11.18 um 13:50 schrieb Taher Alkhateeb:

I only read the thread briefly but I have the feeling that there is a fundamental misunderstanding with the term "marketplace". I guess that Rishi is talking about a marketplace for selling goods by several independent merchants (like Amazon) while you are talking about a plugin marketplace.

Hi Rishi,

The plugin APIs would dominate and drive how we can use and publish
plugins, and therefore, dominate how you design the plugin market
place. So I think it might be a bit difficult to write something
without knowing how it works. Take these as an example:

- Can I push to a remote maven repository? Can I pull from a remote
maven repository? Is it only one official repository (apache) or can I
pass a command in the command line to change the repo.
- Can I protect some plugins from downloads with a username and
password (I want to sell plugins and after that you get access to my
repo)
- Should I make plugins depend on other plugins? How should that work,
manually or automatically?
- Who / how can plugins be published? What versioning scheme do we
use? How can we _upgrade_ plugins?
- What are the coding conventions for plugins? What kind of usual
install / uninstall steps are necessary

These questions and some others are affected by the technology itself.
The technology could hinder your stories if does not have the capacity
to do this or that. That's why I suggested thinking about this process
through the APIs.

I wrote the below tasks for plugins management a while ago. But they
are still not complete and require reviews and improvements to satisfy
all the stories. But this is where our starting point is:

createPlugin - create a new plugin component based on specified templates
installPlugin - executes plugin install task if it exists
pullAllPluginsSource - Download and install all plugins from source
control. Warning! deletes existing plugins
pullPlugin - Download and install a plugin with all dependencies
pullPluginSource - Download and install a plugin from source control
pushPlugin - push an existing plugin to local maven repository
removePlugin - Uninstall a plugin and delete its files
uninstallPlugin - executes plugin uninstall task if it exists

The pull and push are currently hardcoded, so we need to parameterize
the maven repository to accommodate different repos both public and
private.

I hope this is all useful and helpful, otherwise you can just ignore
everything I wrote :)

On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 7:37 AM Rishi Solanki <rishisolan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Jacopo for your suggestion, so we will go with new plugin for
marketplace and will name it marketplace. I hope all are agree with name.

Taher, we would require at least one month (may be more) to spend on user
stories for marketplace, before writing single line of code for it. I would
be happy if I could help to complete the plugins api and deploying on maven
nexus repository. Please let me know how to proceed further and how I can
be useful. In the mean time we will proceed with user stories for
marketplace. I'm considering both as independent work can go parallel.

Please raise flag in case I misunderstood something and requires hold on
marketplace work. Thanks!

--
Rishi Solanki
Sr Manager, Enterprise Software Development
HotWax Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Direct: +91-9893287847
http://www.hotwaxsystems.com
www.hotwax.co


On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 3:05 PM Taher Alkhateeb <slidingfilame...@gmail.com>
wrote:

It's been a while since we worked on this, but the most important
thing to do in my opinion is the following:
1- complete the plugin API (currently written as gradle tasks) to
pull, push, and handle plugins
2- complete the work around deploying our official plugins on maven
nexus repository belonging to apache.

If anyone is willing to help, I'd love to give you an update on
everything I've done so far. But I think without having a solid plugin
API for managing plugins then adoption and a market place would be a
more challenging.
On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 1:50 PM Jacopo Cappellato
<jacopo.cappell...@hotwaxsystems.com> wrote:

+1 to the plugin option!

Jacopo

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 3:51 PM Rishi Solanki <rishisolan...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Thank you Jacopo for detailed reply. It is like roadmap for

implementation

with questions may come during implementation.
Thanks Pritam, Devanshu for help offer.

I have similar line of items in my mind before proceeding with the idea
with some additional concerns on how to proceed below;

- We have two options to go with, add marketplace operator features to
ordermgr, seller profiles to partymgr and customer facing to ecommerce.
Alternatively, I preferred to add separate plugin which extends these
applications and have its own functionality. Which also take care of

any

impact on base applications.
- By adding separate plugin we will have free hand to incorporate the
marketplace specific features. Like you said that, drop ship flow is

near

to what marketplace requires. But in my experience I see marketplace
optionally owns the shipment from sellers to customers using third

party

support.

On the whole I would like to propose separate plugin and once we are

okay

with separate plugin or inject features in existing ordermgr, partymgr

and

ecommerce application then we can start writing user stories to take
community feedback. I completely agree on the fact we have gaps but we

have

most building blocks in place to achieve this.

Please let me know your opinion on having separate plugin. Also looking
forward to see opinion from community, so that we can move with better

plan

to execute.

Best Regards,
--
Rishi Solanki
Sr Manager, Enterprise Software Development
HotWax Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Direct: +91-9893287847
http://www.hotwaxsystems.com
www.hotwax.co


On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 5:52 PM Jacopo Cappellato <
jacopo.cappell...@hotwaxsystems.com> wrote:

Hi Rishi,

this is an interesting initiative, thank you.
There are various types of online marketplaces, each with unique and
significant requirements, but if we focus on the ones like Amazon

(since

you have mentioned it) then we the following notes may apply pretty

well.

Main actors:
* the marketplace operator: it owns the site (e.g. Amazon)
* consumers: browse the content of the site and place (sales) orders

to

the

marketplace operator
* retailers/wholesalers/sellers: define price (and cost to the

marketplace

operator), shipping options and shipping cost

Main transactions (drop shipment scenario):
0) seller publishes product price with shipping costs (for the

consumer)

and product cost (for the
1) consumers orders product (from the retailer) to the marketplace

operator

2) marketplace operator orders product to the retailer
3) retailer fulfills the order (#2) that is shipped to the consumer
4) marketplace operator invoices the order (#1) to the consumer
5) consumer pays the invoice (#4)
6) retailer invoices the order (#2) to the marketplace operator
7) marketplace operator pays the invoice (#6)

These online marketplaces often have one global product catalog and

global

products, to which the retailers' specific prices and shipping

options

are

attached.

In OFBiz the "drop shipment" workflow is probably the one that most

closely

covers the scenario described above.

As regards the data model:
* Product, ProductContent, ProductCategory etc..: global products

and the

global catalog
* ProductPrice, SupplierProduct: the price for the consumer and the

cost

for the marketplace operator
* PartyRole: "end user customer" (for the consumer), "supplier" (for

the

retailer), "internal organization" (for the marketplace operator)

There are gaps that needs to be implemented (both in the data model

and

in

the business logic) and there are many more requirements and nuances

to

be

discovered but we have most of the building blocks in place.
Some of the outstanding gaps are for example: how to apply the right

sales

price when the consumer selects a product from one of its many

retailers;

how to specify the retailer in the sales order; how to reserve the
inventory of the retailer.

Kind regards,

Jacopo

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 6:06 PM Rishi Solanki <

rishisolan...@gmail.com>

wrote:

Devs,
While shopping with different marketplaces like amazon the idea

came

into

my mind that, what are the things required to have an marketplace

plugin

within the OFBiz same as we have ecommerce.

Which behaves same as ecommerce but also offers sellers to sale

their

products on marketplace. I could think of following workflow;

1) Sellers can upload their product, images, prices with all the

required

details.
2) The same product can be sale by other sellers as well.
3) An customer can purchase the product from any listed sellers at
ecommerce side.
4) Manage the product inventory by sellers.
5) Shipment tracking.
6) Manage/Create seller profile.
7) Commission Engine marketplace run and payment made to sellers.
8) Manage product details as per seller preferences.
9) Seller specific reports and other tasks.
10) Manage Orders, Returns and related reports etc.
11) Marketing Campaign setup.

Here I'm sharing the idea what comes in my mind, and it would be

great

to

have this as plugin in OFBiz which support the marketplace business

problem

and increase the OFBiz acceptance in market.

Any suggestion and help in designing, structuring, modeling,

coding,

architecture is greatly appreciated. I wonder if anyone already

implemented

one using OFBiz.

If all are agree to have this, then I'll start documentation

around it

and

move from there.

Thanks!

Best Regards,
--
Rishi Solanki
Sr Manager, Enterprise Software Development
HotWax Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Direct: +91-9893287847
http://www.hotwaxsystems.com
www.hotwax.co

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