I'm interested in using ERPAL Platform for some existing D7 sites.
What would be the recommended order of installation of modules to accomplish this?

Comments

Yuri created an issue.

ChoY’s picture

I tried it once - impossible - or better said not worthy because too complicate to adapt all erpal platform interdependencies in an existing d7.

Yuri’s picture

Thanks for sharing your experience with this, hm..I think that its still worthwile to get a simple similar solution working that can be used for existing Drupal sites.
Maybe one of the developers can give recommendations on any of the ERPAL modules that can be used with a reasoble expectation to work without the complete Platform distribution. Probably Erpal Core, although that's also in Alpha stage of development.

ChoY’s picture

Before I started I had a own build for CRM and project management basically build on CRM core, without Commerce. - Shortly after Erpal platform started. - I switched to it for it was better and I felt better with, because their were a team of people and a company were behind.
What I missed from the beginning in was a solution for import/export and some of the default installations think weren't chosen very well (e.g. using field collections which causing now a lot of headache for import/export), or linking the address from commerce to Erpal CRM, instead from CRM Core via ERPAL to Commerce. - This is an other reason why Erpal Ptaform CRM entries arent't usable for import/export with standard solutins (feeds/migrate). - But in the other hand: Erpal Platform is a great tool and building such a huge application all alone isn't possible. The company behind Erpal platform invested quite a lot to start it, now, like in a lot of others open source solutions a critical mass is needed to give this great distribution a permanent input and update.

Francewhoa’s picture

Yuri :) I agree with ChoY that using ERPAL Platform for existing D7 sites seems challenging. By doing so you loose two important benefits of a Drupal distribution: 1. Pre-configuration 2. Easier updates/maintenance.
But that said, if there is a will there is a way. If you're successful in doing that are you interested to share your finding with the Drupal community?

As for using ERPAL Platform with existing D7, here is another option to consider. Which seems easier.

  1. Simply install a fresh ERPAL Platform
  2. Then somehow link it to your already existing D7 sites. For example:
    1. For sharing access use one of the Drupal modules for single sign-on.
    2. For sharing content use Services module or other content sharing modules

At Ubertus we did the above with multiple D7 sites. Worked fine. Much easier to setup and maintain too.

Yuri’s picture

Thank you both for your feedback. I also once built a monolithic Dupal platform that not many wanted to use because it would require me to always give support because of its complexity. I then started to understand that it's not the amount of features that makes a solution popular, but the amount of handles available for developers and sitebuilders to make it even better and adjust ist to the users own need. With other words, the Drupal principle of modularity and usability. What I see is that this ERPAL platform project has now stalled because this principle has not been taken care of during the initial develoment of the distribution. Bright Solutions has built a monolithic thing that nobody can touch or it falls apart, and Bright Solutions must be called to fix it. And at this stage its quite hard to revert it to something thats not purely dependent upon the core ERPAL platform modules. However, I still am thankful for the Bright Solutions team and all other conributors that the platform was created. We all learn from every project.

Anyhow, Francewhoa I am indeed planning to connect sites using the Services module. I think that would be the best solution for now because a useful connected site should be able manipulate the data of the ERPAL platform. I'm currenlty investigating Aegir with the Aegir Services module, which gives also great flexibitily. I'm still learning to use the services module so this will take some time. I will start another support request about using the ERPAL platform with the Services module.