Magento has a product configurator for OpenERP? Feedback wanted!

[Raphael Valyi]

Here is a reply to an issue raised by Gunter Kreck here:
http://code.google.com/p/magento-openerp-smile-synchro/wiki/UserManual
about synchronizing configurable products.


I should say we didn't tackled that one yet and it's probably not the
easiest thing, while very doable. You should know that OpenERP has
currently no advanced product configurator (while Axelor might build
one inside eTiny), but only multi-variants and product properties (a
bit like Magento) which is already something great but not like say
when you buy a computer on the Dell web site and you can configure it,
except for removing the Windows OS, oh crap! ;-)

Unfortunately, I don't know myself if Magento has got such an advanced
product configurator. If yes, I think we can imagine to use it and
send back to the ERP the appropriate sale order lines whith and
appropriate price for the package. So Basically we would use Magento
has the product configurator. A product configurator is indeed
something fairly interactive, checking compatibility options, making
proposals, re-computing prices. That would not work if Magento can't
do it.

Also, if I should build a product configurator for OpenERP from
scratch, I would definitely build it using JRuby on Rails, that would
be a snap. But may be Magento is just already good enough.

The very next step, is then to manage the product options and packages
from the ERP. I have no doubt that updating the OpenERP datamodel and
views to offer that management is a piece of cake thanks to the
incredibly good architecture of OpenERP (they gonna harm SAP a lot my
friends). If you need to be convinced, just watch those datamodel and
view customization demos: http://www.openobject.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30&Itemid=72
Finaly those configuration parameters should be exported into Magento
via XML/RPC just like products or stock levels. I'm not sure but I
think that Magento uses it's product attribute "god table" to deal
with product configurable attributes, so that might be where they
should go.

In any case, please if you feel you know what exactly should be done
to synchronize configurable products, please send us our feedback.
That would just be awesome.

Best regards,

Raphaël Valyi.

[Raphael Valyi]

crap! I totally misspelled the thread title, that should actually
be: "Magento as a product configurator for OpenERP? Feedback wanted!
" but no way to change it back...

[gunter...@googlemail.com]

hey raphael,
the base of this problem is the handling of product variants. we are
dealing with textiles and it is an absolute common problem to handle
for example a t-shirt with 5 different colors and 5 sizes. the magento
configurable product feature handles this problem well. the problem
with magento is that you can't keep efficient track on the purchase
side. how many t-shirt variants have to be orderd from supplyer ...,

I thing the best way for our actual case is to synchronize only the
basic products with openerp and do the whole configuration of the
configurable products on the magento side.

A more pressing problem for me at the moment is the synchronization
of existing magento simple products and categories with openerp.

bye, gunter

[Raphael Valyi]

Hi Gunter, inline answers:

On 23 août, 11:22, "gunter.kr...@googlemail.com"

<gunter.kr...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> hey raphael,
> the base of this problem is the handling of product variants. we are
> dealing with textiles and it is an absolute common problem to handle
> for example a t-shirt with 5 different colors and 5 sizes. the magento
> configurable product feature handles this problem well. the problem
> with magento is that you can't keep efficient track on the purchase
> side. how many t-shirt variants have to be orderd from supplyer ...,
>
> I thing the best way for our actual case is to synchronize only the
> basic products with openerp and do the whole configuration of the
> configurable products on the magento side.

Right, we will think about that. I don't see any points against doing
that so far.

>
>  A more pressing problem for me at the moment is the synchronization
> of existing magento simple products and categories with openerp.

As for the categories export, we just released the version 0.9.6 of
our connector that makes the process easier, see our announcement:
http://groups.google.com/group/magento-openerp/browse_thread/thread/af395785cc131a04

[Charles Galpin]

My current feeling is to keep as little info about the products as you
can in OpenERP. This leaves Magento to be the product configurator and
you can use all the powerful features it has to present the products
and not have to worry about getting the analogous into into OpenERP
which doesn't really need it anyway. The Magento APIs are not
completed yet either.

charles