Yes, it's that important announcement! OpenERP is excited to announce the release of its 6.1. final version. After more than a year of joint effort with our community and partners, we are proud to present the final version of OpenERP 6.1. With the new version we have developed many new features like touchscreen POS, electronic invoicing, kanban views, assets managements, etc. The performance has also been significantly enhanced through the new web client and a new architecture that can now support multi servers and multi processing. Worth mentioning is that the latest technologies, like those used by gmail and facebook have been incorporated in this version. Read more about the new features

Even easier to use and learn

OpenERP has been already recognized for its ease of use compared to other leading ERP softwares. We are going one step further, once you have installed it, you can immediately start using it! No need for configuration, with the exception of the accounting module.

With a much more straight forward welcome page, it's easy to dive right into the applications you need most. As you start using the application and want to use some of its most advanced features, progress bars with menus will help you set the application just the way you want. Users can also enjoy kanban views to manage the flow of applicants, the tasks in a project or even their sales pipeline. Not bad for an ERP!

A brand new web client

The new web client has been entirely redeveloped. We have used the latest web technologies and have redesigned its architecture. As a result, the new OpenERP web interface is more intuitive and the performance is astonishing. The navigation speed through the screens is incredible providing an unmatched level of comfort for the user. But this is not all. The new web client is also extremely modular and allows integrating OpenERP with a web site or a portal in only a few clicks.

Touchscreen Point of Sales 

OpenERP 6.1 provides a new module for outlets. This module is 100% web, works offline and automatically synchronizes with the OpenERP server when the connection is restored. The POS module is compatible with all PC tablets and iPad, offering multiple payment methods. Product selection can be done in several ways: using a barcode reader, browsing through categories of products or via a text search.

A social and flexible ERP

Companies still exchange many documents in paper format. An expensive and inefficient way of working. OpenERP 6.1 is offering several options to help companies boost their poductivity. First, integrated portals will allow companies to provide access to OpenERP in a completely secure way to its external partners. At the other end, customers can, for example, refer to the inventory, place orders and track shipments, as well as manage their bills. OpenERP 6.1. goes further than that, as you can send an invoice and/or a sales order and your customer will have an option to access it in OpenERP and even integrate it automatically in his own ERP instance. 

New additional modules 

Other additional features introduced with OpenERP 6.1 are: new payroll engine, an asset management module, new financial reports, a new event management module and many more. OpenERP is continuing to expand its functionalities through both internal modules and now over 1800 apps available at http://apps.openerp.com

How to discover the latest version 6.1.?

• Demo: http://demo.openerp.com
• Online: http://openerp.com/online
• Download: http://openerp.com/downloads

Feridis, Luxembourg based IT company, has published in November last year a book analysing the leader (SAP) and the challenger (OpenERP) of the enterprise management software. This book has generated a lot of reactions in the SAP and OpenERP communities, so they have decided to release their book for free, or the price of one tweet.

This book, "OpenERP evaluation with SAP as reference", exposes the SAP experts’ eye on an emerging solution i.e. OpenERP.  It puts into perspective the advantages of their implementation  methodologies, the differences in the features, customization approaches, and business models.

This new book which gives you an idea on everything you ever needed to know about what an ERP can do. Through detailed analysis, it evaluates and compares SAP, the leader, and OpenERP, the challenger, so you can judge for yourself.

SAP  users will discover in this book how OpenERP solves the same problems  as SAP but with a totally different approach and point of view in terms of marketing, product development and distribution model. At the other end, OpenERP users will discover what makes SAP the world leader  in the enterprise management software market.

Through this book, you will learn how to assess differently OpenERP and SAP based on your specific needs, avoid hidden costs of an OpenERP or SAP implementation and the advantages of different implementation methodologies. Moreover, you will discover what makes SAP such a good and popular product and how OpenERP SA succeed to build a software comparable to SAP in only 5 years.

Do you want to get your hands on a copy of this book before anyone else?  Hot of the press, this book is available on Amazon (http://amzn.to/zs28CN), but you can have your free copy by paying with a tweet.

To download the free ebook: http://bit.ly/wVTxjo

Make sure click "View fullscreen" on the buttom of the slides to visualize the agenda better!

OpenERP OpenDays 2012 Agenda

Write it down your agenda and book your tickets. This year's OpenERP Community, Customers and Partners Summit will take place from April 11th to April 13th in Brussels. Last year was a success and we are confident that this year more people will join and more ideas and knowledge will be shared.

What are these days all about?

The event is dedicated to all our community and partners and, for the first time, also for clients. It's a time when we all come together and we present the new features, future version, achievements and a place where you can showcase your case studies, methodology or developments.Be there and see directly from the source the features of the 6.2 release!

What's new for this edition?

• opened to end user customers (for the 11th and 12th). Partners are encouraged to invite their customers
• new format with plenary session in the morning and workshops in the afternoon. You can choose among over 23 tutorial/ training sessions
• afternoon sessions will be split in 5 tracks: developers track, 2 functional tracks, business track and meet with OpenERP track.

See agenda below:

Practical info:

• we will organize OpenERP Awards, a fun way to thank our community and partners for their contributions!
• email Nicoleta, at ngh(at)openerp.com if you want to present a topic! (limited seats).  
• email our Event Manager for any questions regarding the organization of this event: events(at)openerp.com.

Get you free ticket for the event here!

We have launched a new service called Runbot available now for partners to help them test their own developments. Launchpad allows us to easily collaborate with the community and host all the branches online. Consequently, 'runbot' is a platform where you can test the branches pushed on Launchpad.

With this new service, partners can test very easily, by connecting to any of the available branches. If there are older branches, they can be rebuilt so that they can be tested. If you have branches on Launchpad, even if they are older, you can test them on the runbot. 

Why was runbot developed?

The OpenERP Runbot (or simply runbot) is a program monitoring and running branches on Launchpad belonging to the different OpenERP projects, namely "openobject-server", "openobject-addons", "openobject-client-web", and "openerp-web". Doing so it generates a number of useful HTML reports. 

Initially, the goal was simply to have constantly an up-to-date (i.e. using the latest commits) running OpenERP server (with its associated addons and web client) for testing and demo purposes, for both the trunk and the stable (v6) branches.

After a while, since installing some modules in demo mode already performs some automatic tests, we changed a bit the runbot to also show on a web page if those tests passed or failed. Since then a few other changes were made (e.g. allow multiple Launchpad teams) but the overall goal is still the same.

The runbot is currently running on http://runbot.openerp.com/ where it monitors thousands of branches and keeps 100 of them alive. It is also available from launchpad.net (http://launchpad.net/openerp-tools) so you can run it on your own infrastructure.

How does it work & how can you use it?

The runbot is regularly fetching branches statuses from Launchpad. Every time a branch is modified the runbot fires a new job. The job is responsible for running the tests and reporting whether the tests did pass or fail; it also runs the server and the web client so that anybody with a browser can actually use the freshly started OpenERP instance.

Browsing is public, but the service is dedicated to partners, so they are welcome to register a few specific branches or a complete team (in this case all the team branches will be monitored) via their Partner Portal: http://openerp.my.openerp.com)

Get in touch with us or register your own branches on your Partner Portal!

Public access here: http://runbot.openerp.com/