Is it really this bad?

So i tested dolibarr and was really happy, especially considering dolibarr wasn’t going to be my first choice. so i reinstalled to start making the instance i was actually going to use and now that i’m actually trying to use the system with real records i’m noticing so many holes that have been reported but never been fixed from what i can tell. is this really how it is?

so i started out with this post Agenda Module - dolibarr v14
then after some deductive reasoning i figured the 1 hour difference was due to DST stuff, but i realized i found way more forum posts if i searched for timezone instead of trying to find posts that people made mentioning the “agenda module”. so i searched instead for “every week” since that was a specific string value used and voila! plenty of reports 2+ years old that the agenda module is supposed to handle event recurrence but fails to. so whats the deal, is it really not solved even though it’s been known for multiple years? why was it not fixed and why are these modules included as “stable” with the “stable” core release of dolibarr. it just worries me that i’m going to invest more time inputting data into the platform to ultimately reach more and more features that actually aren’t available.

tl;dr sorry for wall of text, is there really no fix for recurring events still only showing up as a single event?

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I can understand your frustration, if things don’t work out as expected. On the other hand, Dolibarr ist free open source software, so it’s up to all of us to improve it over time. Best would of course be to create a PR with the improved features, but even sufficiently detailed GitHub issues can be helpful.

This being said, as far as I can see in the Wiki, recurring events are not yet a supported feature by the agenda module:

On this page for the Agenda module, it says:

What this module does not

  • Does not support recurring events.

(Admittedly, the input fields in the agenda form are creating a different impression.)

If this feature is really critical for you, there is a module for recurring events available in the Dolistore which might be useful

https://www.dolistore.com/en/crm/1112-Agenda-Recurring-events.html?search_query=agenda&results=20

However, I did never use it, so I cannot comment on it in detail.

thanks for the reply. the wiki will help a lot. like you said, since the option was included in the stable version, i assumed it was supposed to be working already. now at least with the wiki i know where to look for additional details other than just the module information icon on the modules page.

btw i have my original install that i was testing with in a vm and the agenda module doesn’t even let me try to make recurring events, there’s not a drop-down. so i’m wondering why the option is available on one of my environments and not the other. the only difference is my vm is using ubuntu and the production environment is debian. i configured them the same and are both dolibarr v14

I just checked, and on my installation, the dropdown is indeed not available as a default. But when I set the variable MAIN_FEATURES_LEVEL in extended settings from 0 to 2, the dropdown appears. So you may want to check, if somehow this variable was set to a value different from 0, which enables developmental and experimental features, which should be avoided in a production environment.

Out of curiosity and since I am currently also performing an in depth analysis of various open source ERP systems: Would you mind to tell, which was your first choice and what brought you to Dolibarr instead?

oh thanks! forgot that i changed that setting because i wanted to checkout the “knowledge management” module. so it’s all my fault in the end anyways…oh the irony :stuck_out_tongue:

to answer your question…

these 2 posts i made should help sum it up. atm we use an outdated crm internally but we wanted to update that and also be able to offer a helpdesk style method for our clients to reach us so that we can also reply and update clients uniformly, instead of having whoever resolved something for the client be the one to communicate and no one else being aware, but also the client feels like they are passed around, or even prefer certain help than others…

i was mainly checking out odoo and erpnext. odoo seems to be the largest and most popular but there was quite a bit i didn’t like.
i saw dolibarr while googling lots of software and initially dismissed it. at some point i decided to look for demos of each and realized dolibarr was much more polished than the initial impressions i had before opening the demo to fiddle around.

so i started setting up vm’s cuz the demos limit the online users(to make sure files aren’t manipualted etc). so i set them up in this order
erpnext i couldn’t understand the logic of their UI structure and workflow. though their theming was the best looking.
odoo was pretty good but then i realized if i needed to pay for 1 paid module in their enterprise list of apps, then all the apps that come free in the “selfhosted” version require payment too which seemed absurd and i didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into endless costs.
dolibarr i tried last after not being fully happy with the first 2. dolibarr did have the bonus of being php+mysql which is something we were already extremely comfortable with.

anyways i couldn’t get the tickets module quite how i wanted it. i was able to create external users and configure them so that they couldn’t see other people’s tickets in the list but dolibarr i think didn’t fully separate the internal/external stuff completely because i could manually edit url’s and get a little more context of other external clients. like subject lines of their tickets and stuff.

aside from that, i think dolibarr will do what i want and we’ll just use it internally only which was how we used our previous crm.

then to handle customer-facing articles/knowledgebase and ticketing(help my toilet broke!) i setup zammad. zammad.com/features does a good job showing what the software can do out of the box. zammad.org has the actual files.
i didn’t figure out if zammad will let me do customer-specific articles or not yet though. the platform is REALLY nice. they don’t have too many options for white-labeling built in, but since it’s opensource you can just edit the files. it’s not ideal, especially in terms of retaining the ability to update to newer versions without losing your configuration, but it’s better than not being able to at all.
if you have any suggestions for an alternative to zammad let me know!

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Thanks for your detailed reply. I am coming more from a background of finding solutions to properly bill SaaS offerings to customers. In that sense, the initial requirements are way more simple, i.e. it would suffice to create a subscription or a contract and an invoice via the REST API and provide a link for online credit card payments. Of course, the more additional features are provided, the better.

It’s really difficult to make an educated selection, since the whole field is complex and intransparent. Like you said: One ends up testing a good looking solution with quite some effort before after a while an unforeseen roadblock appears.

One of my criteria is to use free open source software to avoid a lock in and have all options for creating integrations or additions in the future. This leads to some softer/non-technical selection criteria to avoid projects, which seem to be open source today, but are turned into commercial offerings with locked in customers tomorrow (thinking of the transition from OpenERP to the current state of Odoo, or what happened to OpenBravo and others).

Even for true open source solutions of today, this risk seems higher, if they are taken care of by a commercial company instead of a non-profit foundation. Like Frappe, the company behind ERPNext, is giving clear commitments to open source, on the other hand they just got a large investment and sometimes, this can lead to strategic changes (not implying that this is currently the case with Frappe, just highlighting a potential risk).

Finally, to have something relatively future proof, I was looking for solutions with a thriving community. Thriving in a niche field of ERP of course means something different than with other projects, but if the last forum post of a project is from six months ago, this is a red flag for me.

In the end I shortlisted solutions like Tryton, ERPNext, iDempiere, some others and Dolibarr.

To really have a certain degree of control over the solution, for me it’s important that the source code and architecture are accessible, i.e. it’s possible to understand the overall mechanics and be able to dig into details, if required (this is not quite an end user perspective, coming more from an IT background). In that regard, Dolibarr has the advantage of just using one programming language (PHP) for front end and back end and not requiring tons of external dependencies and complex frameworks. ERPNext as an example uses Python in the back end plus the vue.js framework and JavaScript for the front end, which is technically totally fine but adds another level of complexity which I prefer to avoid in this case.

Long story short, I got the impression that Dolibarr has a great potential for a long-term ERP solution, where a company wants to keep control over its core systems and data.

Regarding your help desk requirements, I am afraid I cannot provide any additional recommendations, since this is currently not a core issue I am dealing with. However, if the interface for external users does not meet your needs (or is problematic in terms of disclosing information), keep in mind that there is a good REST interface in place, which allows to create some own web pages with input forms for tickets or ticket lists and integrate them relatively easily with Dolibarr in the backend.

yeah no SaaS here. just mainly looking for a way for clients to report problems to us, then we fix and mark complete. then the crm is just for our own internal organization of info on the clients.

something else i was doing to attempt avoiding dead projects was use these 2 sites…

http://sotagtrends.com/

I enter into a philosophical discussion to do some marketing for my business :slight_smile:
One of the positive aspects in Dolibarr is the possibility of creating additional modules which, generally for a few tens of Euros, can be marketed in the store.
This allows small businesses, like mine, to create a form of business and at the same time Dolibarr to grow its functionalities in many directions.
All in the light of “Open Source”.
Where is my marketing?
The “Recurring Events” function is one of the modules that we have created and that we sell in the store,

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Hi

We are looking to develop a time keeping module for this system (that would create bills based on time entries worked), so thought i would put in what we found as we also went through [ALOT] of frustration about what an ERP can / cant do, how we went about finding one and what appears to be the “pit falls” of being “open source”.

We use Quickbooks desktop and an online timesheet that pushes time entries to Quickbooks (both have yearly costs for them), we tested a few ERP systems that were either free / very lost cost (sub $1500 per year), none did what we require, we then started to look at the “better” ERP systems and were coming out with $10000 - $25000 in costs to even get close to what we do now with Quickbooks and the timesheet as we use it now, we thought this was ludacris but thats whats happened to the market.

Quickbooks (desktop) was good at what it did for many years, then started the phase of no one wanting to pay for anything (post year 2000), after that “open source”, which meant it was developed and able to stand behind no complaints as it was free, but normally meant it didnt do everything you wanted, ut you could also change it to meet you needs, so hire a programmer to bolt in to it, and we are here in that position today, at least one open source we tested will charge HUGE amounts of money to make it do what you want (and stand by the “open source” brand claiming they are free) and then the other paid systems which generally are way more expensive but really did the same thing, just not under the open source banner, and then we have Dolibarr, which from our tests (invoicing) appeared to be good, although we also have not tested it fully), however we liked the PHP structure making it easier to bolt in too.

Since the arrival of WordPress, PHP is a dying profession as no one needs to know how to program in it (in a real sense) so finding others who can program a bolt in is getting real hard to find, the same can be said for other ERP system, same problem for a different set of reasons but results in the same outcome, higher prices to find someone to bolt in to a system.

We embarked on the Time Sheets module almost a year ago, and have gone through about 7 staff members already who just cant do it (PHP / SQL) and they were all trained in PHP, so no idea whats going on in the programming market in Canada… thus leaves me with doing it myself, and getting the time to sit down a polish my PHP skills AND run a company… ive not had time since March to open PHP.

It is very frustrating… and becomes a huge problem… we however did like how Dolibarr was structured (PHP / SQL and private hosted), thereby making it easier to create modules and being secure, so your travels are very likely the same as most others in your position…

We also have plans to do a scheduler which will be in the TimeSheet system to allow scheduling of staff, however as i said we did start this last year, and have ALOT of design work in already, just nothing in the PHP setup, i now have 3 machines (Live, Test and Development) so am almost ready to dive in. My partner works for larger companies and uses Ceridian, so i know what i need to build in to the system to make it work, its just getting the time to sit down and do it.

One of the best things about Dolibarr is that it is very customizable … if you have skills. Module development is very easy, and for a short time, you can extend almost any feature.

What I’ve noticed first is, that the stats are very “grouped”, not so detailed as someone would want them to be. For example, to see how many products you’ve sold, you should go to each product, and click the tab stats. As I wrote in another post, for a client of mine I have made a module that shows how many pieces of each product they have sold for the past six months. It took less than 50 lines of code to do that. And if you have a lot of products, and the loading time in the browser is too long, you can always use Google API to pass the info to Google sheet for example.

So to sum up, it is free and can be easily extended. That’s why I think this is one of the best solutions for almost any field. Also, as mentioned, the community behind Dolibarr is very big. v14 was release like a month ago and is already ~500 commits behind the next version in development. And will remain free. :slight_smile:

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