Trial FAQ

FAQs for Free Trial of Openbravo 3 Professional Edition

1. What is the purpose of a “trial license”? I thought all of your software was free.

Openbravo 3 Professional Edition extends the free Community Edition with premium functionality. While based on the same code line and licensed with the same open source Openbravo Public License, premium functionality is locked and it is not accessible with Community Edition.

Additionally, a number of extension modules are available under a commercial license that makes them incompatible with Community Edition.

A trial license lets you access both the premium functionality and a good number of commercial modules at no cost, and it allows you to freely evaluate Openbravo Professional Edition (including the Openbravo for Retail solution), and start your own pilot with the full Openbravo functional footprint.

2. Should I start my evaluation on Community Edition or Professional Edition?

While Community Edition is a great product used by thousand of organizations worldwide to manage their business, we feel that an ERP is a mission critical application that should always be implemented by certified professionals, the Openbravo business partners, based on Professional Edition.

If you are considering Openbravo for your organization and you are not an open source developer interested in a self-implementation, we recommend that you use Professional Edition and that therefore you start your evaluation with a trial license.

If you are just curious to learn more about Openbravo or you are a software enthusiast interested in doing everything by yourself, Community Edition is the right product for you.

Please visit the comparison page to learn more.

3. How do I get the free trial? Does it include the software? (I don't have Openbravo installed yet).

You get the free trial by clicking here and filling out the form. The free trial is a "system key" that gets emailed to you, and which you use to activate your Openbravo instance, converting it from Community Edition to Professional Edition. It does not include any software.

If you do not have an Openbravo 3 ERP instance yet, please visit the Download area to get a copy of the Community Edition product, or for information on how to start an Openbravo server in the Amazon cloud with an Openbravo AMI (Amazon Machine Image). Openbravo official AMIs are available on Amazon's AWS Marketplace, and the 32-bit AMI on a standard small instance type is fine for evaluation purposes.

Note: to participate in a free Openbravo 3 trial, you need to be at Maintenance Pack 5.1 or greater. To determine which maintenance pack you are on, click on the Help / About at the top of the screen, and read the first line. To upgrade your instance to the most recent maintenance pack, follow these instructions.

4. What functionality is exclusively available in Openbravo Professional Edition?

Exclusive functionality in Openbravo 3 Professional Edition is delivered in 3 ways:

• Premium core modules
• Premium core features
• Ability to install commercial solutions and modules

Premium core modules include:

• Production Management & MRP - Control your end-to-end manufacturing processes with production plans, BOM's, MRP, manufacturing orders, job reports, costs of production, work incidences, preventive maintenance types, etc.
• Projects & Service Management - Drive project profitability with fully integrated project functionality to control multiple phases, tasks, and resources. Includes budgets, expenses, expense invoicing, related purchases, etc.

Key premium core features currently include:

• Integrated Audit Trail - flexible admin-definable auditing lets you increase data quality, meet compliance requirements, streamline exception handling, detect fraud, and more.
• Ability to Personalize Windows - Easily support multiple organizations with a single Openbravo instance, by creating different versions of key screens and automatically deploying them to different organizations within your company, or roles within your user community.
• Name / Save Views - Allow your power users to tailor their grid and form views exactly how they want them, including column placement, and data filtering and sequencing. Just give the ‘View” a name and easily retrieve it as needed. Named Views can be deployed to roles or individual users.
• Google Accounts Integration - Option to let users log in to Openbravo 3 using their Google accounts.

Many more premium features and commercial modules are under development for Openbravo 3, and we release an official maintenance pack every month. Our detailed Product Roadmap shows you what is coming in the next 5 quarters.

Openbravo Professional Edition Solutions contain extensive commercial functionality that is conveniently packaged and configured to meet the needs of a particular horizontal functional area, customer segment, or industry vertical. For example Openbravo for Retail is a fully-integrated, multichannel-capable retail management solution that includes a state of the art web point of sale module; here is the information to install and configure this solution, which is available via the free trial.

Note: It is very important to navigate to the Settings tab and change parameter When searching for new modules, accept versions of the following status or higher to QA Approved. If you don't do this, then Openbravo for Retail will not show up on the list and you will not be able to install it!

A number of commercial modules are available free with a subscription to Openbravo 3 Professional Edition, and all of these are also available with your free trial. Some of the most popular ”free with” modules include:

Extensions

• Accounting Tabs for Transactions - adds a new child tab to all transaction screens that displays the accounting entries generated by a given transaction and enables you to edit the accounting entry descriptions, to add clarity and precision to your financial reports.
• Standard OFX - Checking your bank statements for incoming payments manually is tedious and error-prone. This module provides automated relief, taking most of the manual work out of the equation.
• Mass Invoicing - Generate invoices for multiple business partners at the same time, based on an invoice template.
• Accruals and Deferrals - Create a plan to automatically distribute costs & expenses to the periods in which the benefits are realized
• Mass Advanced Payments - Easily create advance payments en masse, for multiple business partners with a single action

Connectors

• Zoho Reports Integration - enables fast and easy integration with Zoho Reports, a cost-effective, user-friendly SaaS reporting tool (which allows you to sign up at zero cost).

Professional Localizations

• U.S. Professional Localization Pack - a rich set of modules that localizes Openbravo Professional Edition for the United States, allowing companies doing business in the US to deploy quickly and operate efficiently.
• Spain Professional Localization Pack - A rich set of modules that localizes Openbravo Professional Edition for Spain, including full Spanish language translation, chart of accounts, support for Spanish taxes, Spanish bank account validation, standard reports such as Modelo 347 & 349, and much more.

Tools

• Initial Data Load - A set of automated data import processes to quickly load core ERP data into Openbravo, from a predefined spreadsheet. Before using this module to automatically import data, you need to do the initial configuration steps listed in the Quick Guide.
• Easy Extensible Attributes - enables non-technical business analysts or consultants to easily add new tabs and fields to Openbravo application windows. Technical knowledge re: how to create database tables and columns is not required.

5. How do I install these commercial modules?

You can install them directly from Openbravo’s Central Repository, by following these instructions.

6. Installing modules is exciting, but first things first! I see pre-loaded demo data, and the first thing I want to do is to get rid of it and add my own data. How do I set up Openbravo with my own data?

That preloaded demo data is provided to verify the installation and allow you to easily test the system on the hardware of your choice. To load your own data, you must first create a new "Client", since Openbravo is a multi-tenant system (and the name we use for each tenant is "client").

The Quick Guide is a step by step guide to configuring Openbravo with your own data, and the section Setup Client and Organization tells you how to create a new Client and a new Organization. To create a fully working "conference room pilot" with your own data using Openbravo, you must first execute the step-by-step instructions in the Business Setup section of the Quick Guide. Only then can you start executing business processes like purchasing and selling products.

At some point you may want to delete the Demo Client (at which point all of the data associated with it will be automatically removed), but while you are learning about the configuration options it is a good idea to keep it around to refer to as an example. Don't worry--when you log into a specific client, Openbravo security ensures that you can only access data for that client!

7. What if I have questions or need help?

Always start by reviewing the Openbravo Wiki, which contains a wealth of information. If you need assistance during your evaluation phase, we invite you to post your question through our community channels, which include the ERP Forums and Public Issue Tracker.

We know that evaluating an ERP system can be a time consuming and frustrating process, so remember that you are not alone--Openbravo certified business partners are available and ready to help. You can request help with your Openbravo project from a business partner by filling out this form.

8. How do I assess a commercial module that is not “free with Openbravo Professional Edition”?

Openbravo Business Partners have access to all commercial modules for testing and evaluation purposes, and are eager to help you with your Openbravo pilot project.

9. Who can request a trial license?

Anyone. The process is fully automated, and we don’t prohibit anyone from participating in this program.

10. How long is the trial license good for?

30 days.

11. What happens once the trial licenses expires?

You can continue to enjoy the benefits of Professional Edition by acquiring a regular subscription from one of Openbravo's partners.

Alternatively, you can deactivate your instance and revert back to using Openbravo Community Edition, without any obligation. De-activating your trial subscription requires disabling (or uninstalling) all commercial modules, effectively rolling your ERP instance back to Community Edition--as if Professional Edition had never been used.

We are confident that once you experience the full power of Professional Edition, you will not want to go back!

12. How many trial licenses can I request?

You can request as many trial licenses as you want. However, in a given system, you can use a trial license only once. This is to prevent users from indefinitely extending the duration of the trial period by requesting additional trial licenses.

Note that use of the Initial Data Load module is recommended for serious self-assessment. Then, if you need more than 30 days for your trial, just install a new system and import your spreadsheets into the new system, to pick up where you left off. The Initial Data Load User Manual is here.

13. Why is Evaluation the only instance purpose allowed with a trial license?

A trial license is intended for evaluation purposes only and we want you to be aware of that.

If you are ready to use Openbravo 3 Professional Edition for production purposes, it is time to commit to a commercial subscription.

14. Why do you require the heartbeat to be enabled with a trial license?

The heartbeat allows us to monitor if the trial license is being used. Follow these instructions to enable the heartbeat.

15. Why you do not allow all fee-based commercial modules to be used with a trial license?

We do not own the intellectual property of many fee-based commercial modules, which are authored by third parties. The distribution agreement that we have with commercial module authors allows us to redistribute them only to customers and partners, and therefore not to trial users.

We intend to introduce a program in the coming months that will allow third party module authors to optionally participate in the trial program. Note that all Openbravo-authored modules and solutions are available for your assessment via the free trial.