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Rothamsted-Ecoinformatics / farm_rothamsted

Custom farmOS features for Rothamsted Research.
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Farm Management: Integrate Inventory System #365

Open aislinnpearson opened 1 year ago

aislinnpearson commented 1 year ago

There are several issues which could be resolved by integrating the FarmOS inventory system. These include:

Marked as must do so we can assess this as an option, following which I may create some additional options.

aislinnpearson commented 1 month ago

Hi @mstenta, @paul121,

I had a quick look at the Inventory system as part of milestone 2.23.0 (https://pr-16-qp74jfa-2mu45anerqtvq.uk-1.platformsh.site/). I can see it has a lot of the initial features we want, but I don't think it is developed enough for us to be able to integrate it. Here were my observations:

  1. Product types are not material terms: I was a bit confused about the difference between products and materials. I am not sure we can seamlessly transfer to a product type because we heavily depend on material terms for standardising the quantities we use. I would also need to check with Had what impact this has on the export to the Farm Platform database.
  2. The user interface needs some development. Ideally a menu item on the right hand side and a dashboard of some kind? One which makes it easy to add products/ materials, seed, etc and also track the inventory. I realise that is a big job.
  3. Integration with quick forms: This would need to be reviewed quite carefully - especially if we want to release the quick forms as standalone modules which you can chose to integrate with the inventory. For example, we'd need to specify the product and seed volumes not just the rate. This would also require some thinking in terms of units, because the units on the quick form would have to match the units on the product. We'd also have to identify where we need the material type and where we'd need the product type.
  4. I loved the seed assets I think we could integrate these earlier, solving the problem of seed labels. I've created a separate issue for that here #734.
  5. The reference to logs is confusing. similar to issue #348 and #467 it's a bit confusing that logs that reference a product term don't appear. More confusing still, if you click on the inventory tab the logs are referenced. Again, a user centred design issue that I'd be happy to think through with you if we get to do more with the inventories.
  6. Tags need improving I was trying to use these for supplier batch numbers, and I think the main issue is that this wasn't listed under tag 'type'.
  7. You can't link products to suppliers as in we can't specify which supplier we purchased an item from.
  8. You can't add unit costs (incl or excl. VAT and currency) This is huge for us. If we could resolve this issue, we could offer financial data for economic studies and analyses. To make this worthwhile, we'd also need purchase dates, the option to say wether the cost includes VAT or not and what currency the purchase was made in.

So some initial functionality in the seed assets, but in general a much larger issue which I personally think it would be worth our while looking into in more detail if we can find the funding.

aislinnpearson commented 1 month ago

Following on from our meeting yesterday, the following feedback from @mstenta and @paul121:

Products are not products we purchase but rather products we produce to sell (e.g. wheat grain, hay, straw bales). Materials are inputs we use or purchase (pesticides, fertilisers, etc).

Following this conversation I think I will take another look at the inventory and ledger modules, specifically with the aim of trying to implement a basic version.