In this article by Greg Moss, author of the book Working with Odoo 9 – Second Edition, we will learn about the various applications that Odoo has to offer and how you can install Odoo on your own system. Before the release of Odoo 8, most users were focused on ERP and financial-related applications. Now, Odoo has added several important applications that allow companies to use Odoo in much greater scope than ever before. For example, the website builder can be installed to quickly launch a simple website for your business. A task that typically would have been accomplished with a content management system such as WordPress.
Despite all the increasing options available in Odoo, the overall process is the same. We begin by looking at the overall business requirements and decide on the first set of applications that we wish to implement. After understanding our basic objectives, we will create an Odoo database and configure the required company information.
Next, we begin exploring the Odoo interface for creating and viewing information. We will see just how easy Odoo is to use by completing an entire sales order workflow.
In this article we will cover following topics:
(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)
Setting up an Odoo system is no easy task. Many companies get into trouble believing that they can just install the software and throw in some data. Inevitably, the scope of the project grows and what was supposed to be a simple system ends up a confusing mess. Fortunately, Odoo’s modular design will allow you to take a systematic approach to implementing Odoo for your business.
The bare bones installation of Odoo simply provides you a limited messaging system. To manage your Odoo implementation, you must begin with the planning of the modules with which you will work first. Odoo allows you to install just what you need now and then install additional Odoo modules as you better define your requirements. It can be valuable to take this approach when you are considering how you will implement Odoo for your own business.
Don’t try and install all the modules and get everything running all at once. Instead, break down the implementation into smaller phases.
To best understand how to work with Odoo, we will build our exercises around a real-world case study. Silkworm is a mid-sized screen printer that manufactures and sells t-shirts as well as a variety of printing projects. Using Odoo’s modular design, we will begin by implementing the Sales Order module to set up the selling of basic products. In this specific case, we will be selling t-shirts. As we proceed through this book, we will continue to expand the system by installing additional modules.
When implementing Odoo for your organization, you will also want to create a basic requirements document. This information is important for configuration of the company settings in Odoo, and should be considered essential documentation when implementing an ERP system.
If you have installed Odoo on your own server you will need to first create a database. As you add additional applications to Odoo, the necessary tables and fields will be added to the database you specify.
Odoo Online: If you are using Odoo Online, you will not have access to create a new database and instead will use Odoo’s one click application installer to manage your Odoo installation. Skip to XXX if you are using an online Odoo installation.
If you have just installed a fresh copy of Odoo, you will be prompted automatically to create a new Odoo database.
In the preceding screenshot, you can see the Odoo form to Create Database.
Odoo provides basic instructions for creating your database. Let us quickly review the fields and how they are used.
When selecting a database name, choose a name that describes the system and that will make clear the purpose of the database. There are a few rules for creating an Odoo database:
It can also be a good idea to specify in the name if the database is for development, testing, or production purposes.
For the purposes of our real-world case study, we will use the database name:
SILKWORM-DEVWe have chosen the -DEV suffix as we will consider this a development database that will not be used for production or even for testing.
Take the time to consider what you will name your databases. It can be useful to have standard prefixes or suffixes depending on the purpose of your database. For example, you may use -PROD for your production database or -TEST for the database that you are using for testing.
Notice the box reading Check this box to evaluate Odoo. If you mark this checkbox when you create a database, Odoo will preload your tables with a host of sample data for each module that is installed. This may include fake customers, suppliers, sales orders, invoices, inbox messages, stock moves, and products. The purpose of the demonstration data is to allow you to run modules through their paces without having to key in a ton of test data.
For the purposes of our real-world case study in this book, do not load demonstration data.
Odoo offers a variety of language translation features with support for more than twenty languages. All of the examples in this book will use the English (US) language option. Be aware that depending on the language you select in Odoo, you may need to have that language also installed in your base operating system.
Each Odoo database is created with an administrator account named admin. This is also known as the superuser account. The password you choose during the creation of the database will be the password for the admin account.
Choose any password you wish and click on Create Database to create the SILKWORM-DEV database.
The database management interface allows you to perform basic database management tasks such as backing up or restoring a database. Often with Odoo, it is possible to manage your databases without ever having to go directly into the Postgre database server. It is also possible to set up multiple databases under the same installation of Odoo. For instance, you may want in the future to install another database that does load demonstration data and may be used to install modules simply for testing purposes.
If you have trouble getting to the interface to manage databases you can access the database management interface directly by going to the /web/database/manager path.
After clicking on Create Database, it can take a little time depending on your system before you are shown a page that lists the available applications.
This screen lets you select from a list of the most common Odoo modules to install.
There is very little you can do with just an Odoo database with no modules installed. Now we will install the Sales Management module so we can begin setting up our business selling t-shirts.
Click on the Install button to install the Sales Management module.
During installation of modules and other long operations, you will often see a Loading icon at the top center of your screen. Unlike previous versions of Odoo that prompted for accounting and other setup information, Odoo now completes the installation unattended.
After the installation of the sales order application, Odoo takes you directly to the Sales dashboard. As we have just installed the application, there is very little to see in the dashboard, but we can see the available menu options along the left edge of the interface. The menus along the top allow you to change between the major applications and settings within Odoo, while the menus down the left side outline all your available choices. In the following screenshot, we are in the main Sales menu.
Let’s look at one of the main master files that we will be using in many Odoo applications, the Customers. Click the Customers menu on the left.
Let’s take a moment to look at the screen elements that will appear consistently throughout Odoo. In the top left of the main form, you can clearly see that we are in the Customers section.
In the top right corner of our form we have a search box:
The search box allows you to quickly search for records in the Odoo application. If you are in the Customers section, naturally the search will be looking for customer records. Likewise, if you are looking at the product view, the search box will allow you to search the product records that you have entered into the system.
Odoo also offers a standard interface to switch between a list view, form view, or other views such as Kanban or graph views. You can see the icon selections under the search box in the right corner of the form:
The currently selected view is highlighted in dark. If you move the mouse over the icon you will get a tool-tip that shows you the description of the view. As we have no records in our system currently, let us add a record so we can further explore the Odoo interface.
In this article, we have started by creating an Odoo database. We then installed the Sales Order Management module and learned our basic Odoo interface.
Further resources on this subject:
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