ERP for SIS, connectivity, operation optimization

GIAI GIAI Internal
1

As sugguested, let’s continue our discussion for the best use of new ERP solution in this thread.

For now, what is essential is to migrate all SIS support to the new system. Students have been waiting for it for a long time. We should soon announce the new system, in addition to expected EOL of MS Teams. @KeithLee, plz pull design resources for this.

Workspace optimization mainly requires to create and test Kanban dashboards, which can be led by @catherinemaguire.

I will handle Rocket.Chat webhook for the time being, and also will test any possibility to change Frappe Raven’s chat log DB from default database to Rocket.Chat’s MongoDB. This can be a major break for our tool dependency. Once done, I think we become more heavily dependant on ERP.

The same can be done on Moodle, but for Moodle, if to send push noti for chat, we gotta have paid version upgrade.

For EUR-CHF-KRW book keeping, @ethanmcgowan can you please set up multi company custom cases in this new ERP?

1 Like
2

Hey, I uploaded my accessment to chat applications for the past a few days. I am not going to say I have turned every stone, but it seems like chat solutions generally are weak on supporting Math equations, unlike web applications. Most rely on KaTeX, the Mathjax variant claiming better performance, but mostly limited to web and lacking support to app environment.

I actually want to suggest continue using Discourse including its chatting function. Or might be better off to find a way to expand the function to meet our needs.

\alpha being turned to greek alpha must be a tough dev work.

3

What I suggest is following

  • Integrate GIAI/SIAI ERP into a single database with an alias - SIAI students come to the website only for student portal - we can significantly remove potential integration overhead, assuming further integrability with applications
  • Split chat support to two parts - GIAI staff/writer chats to Frappe Raven supported by Frappe Drive’s file sharing and BBB for video conferencing (if needed)
  • Integrating Discourse and Moodle for forum discussion - For each course, by LTI, we should be able to connect course forum to Discourse (sub)category or topic - Let students rely on Discourse for main communication, which has built in chat function w/ PWA push noti

Alternatively, we can keep company / student ERP separated and use the tool as a complete replacement of Teams. It has built in dashboard, Wiki, Drive, LMS, and chat.

Little more work for LMS would be enough to integrate it with Moodle, although without LTI, there might be more dev work needed.

It is certain that we have to work on two ERPs and one forum/LMS, so a lot on the table, but we can centralize communication channel to ERP only. And this ERP is capable of central controlling contents in Discourse forum as well as Moodle courses. Once the system is mature, we hardly have to login to other services but ERP.

For accounting sync, we just use webhooks for student invoices. I agree that it is better to keep a single source of truth, but a standalone ERP to students does have significant benefits. When it comes to data storage, I agree that ERPNext’s MariaDB is the worst option, but we can save a large chunk of dev requirement. After all, it is still better than preliminary solutions like Rocket.Chat, Matrix/Element, and any other tools that we have tested.

In the end, in addition to all the extra benefits that we can acquire, even for functions overlapping with Teams, students likely would feel upgrade in every sense.

  • Dashboard - It will be complete custom dashboard
  • Wiki - Far better than OneNote, at least it supports LaTeX
  • Drive - Similar functionality with Sharepoint / Onedrive but way enhanced performance - we just need to pay $200 for NVMe 2TB RAID 1 storage upgrade, which can be 50GB shared storage for 80 people
  • LMS - Moodle already is a huge upgrade from Teams for Education, and we just provide a bridge on ERP
  • Chat - Raven design/function looks highly similar to Slack, which is undoubtedly an upgrade from Teams chat.

In addition, we also provide BBB, a replacement for Teams video conference.

What else have we used in Teams? PWA push may not perform as native app push, which probably is going to be the only downside.

This custom solution can give us more control for longer term.

1 Like
4

Essentially, @KeithLee your proposal is to replace chat integration to standalone and fully integrated ERP for both company and school.

I am not a big fan of chat, so I actually prefer to remove chat support in Discourse as well. Since Moodle is going to remove chat from newer version, we really give no chat option to students but ERP. I am :ok_hand: for this approach.

Just want to remind you that we initially decided to leave Teams because we wanted LaTeX support, full control, and web exposure. GIAI Sqaure is our face that we want to concentrate all our promotion here. Your proposal might not meet our 3rd needs.

But, since the data will be in our DB, there must be a way to display students communication to elsewhere. I suggest we integrate Discourse sub-category for that.

5

@ethanmcgowan It’s just DB table copy from Frappe chat’s MariaDB to Moodle/Discourse forum/(sub-)categories.

The promotional benefit is why we run GIAI Square.

6

@KeithLee that was an extensive review. I should’ve checked chat services beforehand. They all look like based on basic Python coding, given the similarities in tech stack, I will say most of them are just copy cats of one another.

Considering user experience, I agree that we should consolidate as many features into a single service as possible. In a sense Discourse forum can be an alternative as it supports forum and chat, but beyond that, it doesn’t fit much. It’s not an officeware.

Frappe Chat can surely function as a forum, but gotta do quite a lot of customization on other functions to completely replace Teams and meet our needs. This will be my new task.

Change the student portal’s favicon, then the PWA will have SIAI logo. The same can be done on ours for GIAI logo.

If our chat / posts are synced, guess soon we dont have to come to GIAI Square any more and stick to that ERP.

7

Not that I disagree with proposed consolidation, but I just have some reservation with MariaDB being the main DB of our core service, although given the ERP’s reliance to MySQL, there isn’t much room for us.

We gotta think of back up strategy as well. Considering MySQL’s bad performance in JOIN queries, I doubt we can keep old chat logs. I agree that other solutions are too basic, but we still need to find a longer term robust control on this.

8

I will then pull design resources for ERP solutions. Once we are done revamping Drupal websites, ERP will be our next target.

For the chat log database, I agree with you @davidoneill in every sense, but the easiest solution for us is to wait for the ERP to add support for PostgreSQL. My other alternative plan was to run that in Discourse, which again is based on Postgres. In the end, we need to convert all data to JSON to feed ElasticSearch, the best storage of which is PostgreSQL, based on my experience.

MongoDB doesnt seem a robust solution for us and Discourse code base is million times more reliable than peebles like cheap open source chat solutions.

While testing with ElasticSearch later next year, we might find better consolidation for chat log, so for now, let’s just focus on this new ERP.

9

The design gotta do a bit more work on Discourse and Moodle pages, but I think we should focus all design and dev resources to customize two ERPs from now on.

I think we can also handle job/school applications with guest mode, like we do to GIAI LMS.

Seems that system organisations are settled, after months of long discussions, unless we have other issues.

Hadn’t it be the ERP, we must have settled on Discourse. This is really well built system. Just lacking extensions for other functions.

1 Like
10

Minor details still need to be adjusted, but shouldn’t take long. What’s more important now is how to fit the system to our needs