Openbravo POS 2.20 Roadmap published

We have just published our development plans for Openbravo POS 2.20. It follows the spirit of the previous releases: frequent releases, improvements in functionality, localization and stability of the application to make Openbravo POS a top Point of Sale solution in the global market, growing in the number of supported countries and translations in every release. Openbravo POS 2.2 follows the principles of all the versions of Openbravo POS: simplicity, easy to use, visually attractive, robust and scalable.

We request the collaboration of the community to help us to define and identify the most important features that need to be included in the product and things that need to be fixed. Your collaboration is important because you are the best people that are able to identify what is missing in Openbravo POS for each country and for different market segments. You are invited to the Open Discussion forum of Openbravo POS to discuss what do you want to have in the next releases of Openbravo POS.

The objectives of this roadmap is to continue to add value to partners and users of Openbravo POS to help them to develop a business around Openbravo POS, attract interest of current partners and potential partners of Openbravo. In Openbravo 2.10 we did a lot of efforts in this area with the new reports model and the improvements in scripting support and we want to continue in this area.

We have already published a draft of the roadmap for the release 2.20 in the wiki of Openbravo POS with the features what we think are the most important for the next released of Openbravo based on the time schedule and the resources that we have. This roadmap is not closed and we were are willing to align it with the needs and priorities of the Openbravo community.

Openbravo POS is and open source product and developed in a collaborative maner. During the last three months, we have started successful collaborations with individuals and companies that are working on extending the Openbravo POS functionality. For Openbravo POS 2.2, we plan to add in the core product new functionaries developed by third parties. You can guarantee that a particular feature is developed sooner rather than later by leading the development. We are willing to coordinate with people that is planing to invest on Openbravo POS product development to make sure that the results are going to be shared by all the community.

Openbravo POS 2.10 released

Openbravo has just announced the release the latest version of Openbravo POS. This has been a hard work that continues with the plan of Openbravo to make frequent releases. As usual you can download the binaries and sources of Openbravo POS from the Sourceforge project files page.

There is a large list of new features and improvements. This is a summary of the changes included in the version 2.10:

• New customers module. With this module Openbravo POS users will be able to assign customers to receipts using the customer's loyalty card, create invoices, track the customer account, make customers payments, execute customers reports, and more.

• New localization features. To achieve the support of the taxes laws of different countries and cultures Openbravo POS now includes a new event system that allows to execute developer scripting code and adapt the receipts generation to the rules required. In this point there also has been included a new dialog that allows to split a receipt between two or more customers and a useful cash change calculator based on the country coins and banknotes. More information: Openbravo POS Scripting Tutorial.

• New reports structure. With the new reports structure developers of Openbravo POS will be able to add and modify easily new reports and charts without having deal with the source code. Reports are now defined using plain text files that developers can edit using his preferred text editor or a graphical designer. To install newly created reports is as simple as copy the report definition files to the reports folder and create a menu option for the report. All reports and charts of Openbravo POS has been ported to the new structure and new reports has been created. More information: Openbravo POS Reports and Charts Tutorial.

• Improved integration with Openbravo ERP. There has been included in the previous integration more data like customers synchronization and warehouse information synchronization. More information: Openbravo POS Integration.

• Sample database. A sample restaurant database has been created for evaluation purposes with a list of products, images, users, and operational data. Available only from the SVN repository.

• Included support for the IBM SurePOS 500 Series.

• Many other other minor features and bugs fixes. For example:
  • Users can log on using his employee card with his / her token stored in the magnetic band or printer in the bar code.
  • Customer information can be assigned to the current receipt reading his / her loyalty card.
  • Split a receipt payment between customers.
  • The size of the selector and product buttons is configurable by the administrator.

We feel proud of this release but there is a long road ahead. The community around Openbravo POS is growing every day, is willing to collaborate and is very active proposing new functionalities and customizations for different countries, industries, ... Now we are working on the project plan for the next release 2.20. With the help of the community we trust that Openbravo POS will succeed.