OrangeHRM is a comprehensive HRM system that captures all the essential functionalities required for any enterprise: employee management, HR administration, reporting, performance, career development, training, recruitment, onboarding, payroll and more.
OrangeHRM is open source with optional paid services, and no matter what tier you are on this is an impressive product. The user interface is gorgeous and easy to use while also being feature rich. The best part is this server can be setup in minutes using a pre-made acorn image.
Acorn is a new cloud platform that allows you to easily deploy, develop and manage web services with containerization. A single acorn image can deploy all that you need: from a single container webserver, to a multi service Kubernetes cluster with high availability. Don't worry if you don't understand what all those terms mean; we don't have to know that in order to deploy our server.
Setup an acorn account at acorn.io. This can be a free account for your first deployment, and if you'd like additional storage space you can look into the pro account or enterprise. You will need a Github account to signup as shown in the image below.
First we need to install acorn-cli locally. Choose an install method from the list below:
Linux or Mac
curl https://get.acorn.io | sh
Homebrew (Linux or Mac)
brew install acorn-io/cli/acorn
Windows
Uncompress and move the binary to your PATH
Windows (Scoop)
scoop install acorn
For up to date installation instructions, visit the official docs.
Back in our local command terminal login to acorn.io with:
acorn login acorn.io
The server has several basic settings controlled by a secret object.
- mysql_password - database password
Create secrets for your application using acorn-cli. Change the <> values to your actual credentials.
acorn secret create \
--data mysql_password=<password> \
opensupports
Now that we have our secret file we can deploy our server from a pre-made image with just a click.
On the acorn.io dashboard, click "Deploy Acorn" and select "From Acorn Image".
Fill in the following fields:
- Name:
<any name you like> - Acorn Image:
ghcr.io/randall-coding/acorn/orangehrm
Visit the acorn dashboard and find your recent deployment. Click on the name of your deployment and find the endpoint section in the right panel. Click "copy" on the website endpoint and visit the link.
Visiting the endpoint should show a screen like this:
Select the "Existing Empty Database" radio button.
Fill in the following fields:
- Database Host Name:
mariadb - Database Host Port:
3306 - Database Name:
orangehrm - Use the same Database User for OrangeHRM:
checked - Privileged Database Username:
user - Privileged Database USer Password:
<password from secret file> - Enable Data Encryption:
<your choice>
Fill in organization information, country and timezone.
Fill in the basic admin user information and make sure you remember these credentials so you can login.
You will be given a change to review the information, after which time you can click "Install".
On the final setup page click "Launch OrangeHRM" and redirect to the login page.
On the log in page, log in using your admin username and password
Now that you're logged in you can get started using OrangeHRM! For further reading see the guides in the references section below.