Recently I’ve been swimming in an ocean of OSS (Open Source Software) searching for the perfect app(s) to solve a few problems and the results of those I felt I had to note down here.
The first is a work-related system and kicks some serious ass when I realised it’s full potential. Since I started my career with my current employer I’ve been in the midst of a supply-chain system that’s been, well, chaotic at best. As Systems Co-ordinator for this company i’d been looking for a long time for some sort of OSS system that I could implement that would increase the efficiency and transparency of the supply chain and (hopefully) make everyone’s working life a little bit easier. Idealy I was looking for a php / mySQL implementation of a work-flow management app. I couldn’t find anything for approx 6 months.

Then one day I was just having a general mooch on sourceforge and noticed a project called CRM-CTT in the recent news block on the front page. Now, the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) part of the title threw me a bit, but I was intrigued and went further. Turned out they (actually, it seems like a one-man dev project, the main guy is a guy called Hidde Fennema) had just released a mile-stone version release and they had a VMware (<3 btw) Virtual Appliance for download. Since I already have VMware installed on just about every server we have I pulled the image down to our backup server and started it up. Despite being based on slackware (bare-bones distro by nature) it seemed pretty solid, and usable. Then I got really stuck in and realised to my sheer GLEE that it was EXACTLY what we needed.

Within an afternoon I had drafted a work-flow for our supply chain – with trigger-based automation and status / assignee ability and custom form design. It was heavenly. So, if you’re looking for a work-flow app that truely has not only the end-user in mind, but also real-world implementation ability and more importantly, flexibility then I strongly suggest trying it out. For an example of it’s flexibility, this last week I’ve just been asked to roll out an implementation of the same system but this time to control and regulate the business non-stock purchase ordering. So, from managing a supply chain (from order placing, through data entry to processing by goods-in) to managing purchase orders and the admin attached (from quote gathering to invoicing) it quite literally blew my mind.

Next I’ll try to cover the hunt for the best priced economical web-hosting control panel (upon which this server runs).

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Now playing: Groove Armada – Get Down on Amarok