0011046: Make Butler || License >> Modules more efficient for Packs (that have multiple dependent commercial modules)

Description

The Butler module provides a flat (non-hierarchical) structure for commercial modules, which is fine when granting access to a single module. However, multi-module commercial "Packs" contain multiple modules, which makes it very time-consuming and error-prone for the administrator to find and add all of the required modules . For example, the Spanish Professional Localization contains 5 dependent commercial modules, which means a total of 6 records need to be added for each Spanish customer.

Currently, it is not too bad because we don't have many commercial modules to choose from. However, as more commercial modules get added to Butler, it will become a very time-consuming and error-prone process to correctly license packs.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Access Butler
2. Enter the modules for the Spanish Professional Localization Pack for 10 customers (that will be 60 rows)

This works for now, but will break in the future as the number of commercial modules and professional subscription customers increases.

Proposed Solution

One solution is to interface the entire hierarchical module list from the Central Repository server to the Butler server. An option to "Synchronize Module Data from Central Repository" would be provided, which could be executed on demand.

Once the hierarchical module information is present in the Butler database, the Administrator would be able to interact as follows:

1. The Butler Administrator can simply select a Parent module (for example the Spanish Professional Localization Pack), enter any license information (currently Valid From and Valid To dates), i.e. same user experience as now.
2. When the user attempts to save the row, if the selected module contains any dependent (Child) commercial modules that are not already present for the selected License, then:
2.1 The system will automatically present the Parent Module and a list of all dependent commercial modules, so that the Butler administrator can manually verify that all have been paid for
2.2 The Butler administrator can now either cancel the entire transaction, or click a button to add the Parent row and all dependent commercial modules

Note that the Parent Module may not actually even be a commercial, assuming it is possible for a non-commercial module to take a dependency on a commercial module.

A weakness of this approach is that adding a new commercial module to a Pack is not handled automatically - which means that every customer has to be touched in this case. An addition to the above approach would be to add a switch called "Automatically License Dependent Commercial Modules" in Butler only (Openbravo needs to control this, so that people creating Packs can't bundle other authors' modules for free). This would make it unnecessary to explicitly license any dependent modules in the future (very good for "open-ended" packs like professional localizations, which will grow over time). This concept would require a change to Openbravo ERP Module Management - to bypass the license checking on dependent modules when the parent module has "Automatically License Dependent Commercial Modules" checked.

From the Butler perspective, when the Butler Administrator has selected a module with "Automatically License Dependent Commercial Modules" checked (which is maintained on the Butler || Commercial Modules screen), then step 2.1 is bypassed (and the dependent rows are not explicitly added to the table).

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2009-10-20 10:47	johnfandl	New Issue
2009-10-20 10:47	johnfandl	Assigned To	=> psarobe
2009-10-20 11:57	psarobe	Assigned To	psarobe => plujan
2009-10-20 11:57	psarobe	Description Updated
2009-10-20 12:04	plujan	Project	QA => Openbravo ERP
2009-10-20 12:04	plujan	Assigned To	plujan => iciordia
2009-10-20 12:04	plujan	Category	QA - General => A. Platform
2009-10-22 13:50	iciordia	Assigned To	iciordia => alostale
2017-04-10 14:39	alostale	Assigned To	alostale => platform
2022-02-01 08:08	alostale	Assigned To	platform => Triage Platform Base

Relationships [ Relation Graph ] [ Dependency Graph ]

Notes
There are no notes attached to this issue.