Odoo continues to gain momentum throughout the world in regards to providing the best platform for open source ERP installations. Now with Odoo 8, you have access to a powerful website builder, integrated e-commerce features, and a fast-growing community to help transform and modernize your business. With this practical guide, you will cover the essential modules to get Odoo up and running for your company.
After installing Odoo, you will use its sales management application to enter quotes, create sales orders, and invoice customers. You will then learn how to integrate the CRM application to manage your leads and convert them into lucrative opportunities and sales. Next, you will set up your own purchase management system, assigning products to suppliers and tracking orders with the new warehouse management and routing system. Finally, you will learn how to use analytics to track project expenses and keep your accounts simple and easy to maintain and build an Odoo module to extend its functionality and make it work for you.
Working with Odoo covers all the core installation and usage functionalities of this popular tool, helping you to fully implement a working ERP system through practical, advanced, real-world examples. Odoo is a powerful set of open source business applications built on the OpenObject framework. When you first install Odoo, the only functionality you will have is limited messaging options between users.
From there, Odoo allows you to install the modules you need as you need them. This flexibility makes Odoo much more accessible than many business software solutions. In this chapter, we will get started working with Odoo by covering the installation and the basics of setting up an Odoo database. Not long ago, nearly all companies kept their primary information systems in-house. This approach requires not only a lot of capital expense in purchasing servers and software licenses, but also creates a lot of responsibility and risk in backing up data and ensuring business continuity.
Today, more and more companies are choosing to host their business applications in online networks commonly known as the cloud. Odoo allows you the flexibility of both options—either hosting on your own hardware, or utilizing Odoo's online software services. The best thing about accessing Odoo online is that you can jump in and start using the software right away. You don't have to decide what operating system to use. You don't have to install any software at all.
Just enter the URL into your web browser and you are ready to get started. Another added benefit of taking this approach is that you will verify that your web browser is up to date and compatible with the latest version of Odoo. So, even if you intend to install Odoo on your own hardware, it is still worth taking a minute to test out the online trial version of Odoo.
Expect to put a great deal of time into determining which Odoo applications are right for your company. Taking a few hours to use the Odoo online version is time well spent and you can put off installing Odoo until you are more certain it is the right software for your business. Odoo is designed to run on a variety of modern web browsers.
Supported browsers include:. Macintosh users will need to make sure they are running Mac OS X or above.
Users running older Macintosh systems are currently having difficulties running Odoo version 7. Also, in my experience, Google Chrome tends to offer the best experience in working with Odoo. Firefox is also often recommended by others in the Odoo community. Beginning with Odoo 8, Odoo has native support for mobile phones and tablets. Menus are designed to flow and format properly.
The new website application even includes a preview within the portal administration to emulate how the site would appear on a mobile phone. While you still suffer many of the limitations that come with a small screen size, the applications are functional and make it even easier for developers to create mobile Odoo applications. Odoo's mobile application support covers both the Android and Apple iOS platforms.
Make sure, however, that for any processes you intend to implement for your business, you test all processes thoroughly for both desktop and any mobile solutions. Smaller screen sizes might make some data unreadable or very awkward to work with.
Accessing the online trial version of Odoo online could not be simpler. You will then be prompted to choose one of more than 20 business applications, as shown in the following screenshot:. Clicking on the appropriate button for the application immediately begins installing your own unique Odoo instance. Be patient as it can take thirty seconds or longer for the servers to build the database and bring up the starting page. When the installation is complete, Odoo automatically signs you in so you can begin trying out the software.
The goal of this approach is to get users to directly start using the software right away and avoid having to fill out lengthy forms or create logins and passwords to begin using the software. It really is just one click and you have your own version of Odoo to play with.
In the preceding screenshot, you can see the screen that appears after installing the CRM application. With it, you can manage your customers, leads, and opportunities. Take a few minutes to look around in Odoo to get familiar with the interface. You don't have to worry about breaking anything or doing anything wrong. If you run into problems or get confused, just close your web browser and try again. This is a demonstration and will only last for one four-hour session.
If you close your browser, you will lose your setup and have to start over again. At the very top of the Odoo application, just under the address bar in the browser, you will see a message that informs you about how much longer your trial version of Odoo will run before you need to register.
Also, remember that it is possible to lose this instance of Odoo before the time runs out. Clicking on the message will take you to the typical standard signup form to provide your name, e-mail, and other information to register your trial version of Odoo:. After you have filled out the form and clicked on Start using , the Odoo application will once again reload. Now, you will see in the top-right-hand corner that you are logged in under the name you provided in the signup form.
Also, you will see at the top, a countdown of how many days are remaining in your trial version. For 15 days, you can use Odoo for free without subscribing. Once your 15 days run out, you must subscribe to Odoo in order to keep using their enterprise cloud-hosted version of the software.
The first two users of Odoo are free indefinitely. This means you can sign up and continue using Odoo with just two users without having to pay any monthly fees. Each application that you use also will incur a monthly cost depending upon the specific application. Odoo Online is priced for employees that use the applications. You are not charged for customers or suppliers that access Odoo through the web portal.
Depending on your requirements, an Odoo subscription might be a good decision. Installing and maintaining an Odoo installation takes a degree of expertise and has risks for production systems. You must maintain adequate disaster recovery procedures in case of server crashes or hard drive failures. There are also complexities in applying bug fixes and migrating to newer versions of Odoo.
This book will help you with many of these tasks. Yet, it can be quite convenient to have an Odoo subscription so you can focus on the functional, rather than the technical, aspects of working with Odoo. To subscribe to Odoo online and continue using Odoo past the 15 day trial period, click on the Subscribe to keep it running link at the top of the page:. If you choose not to pay the subscription fee, do not fear! The remainder of this chapter will assist you with installing Odoo on your own hardware.
Setting up and managing an Odoo installation will require a basic understanding of the components that make up Odoo. Every business system has a set of technologies and underlying software platforms that are required for the system to function. Fortunately, unless you plan to customize Odoo, you only need to understand the very basics of the Odoo architecture to complete a successful installation.
In this book, we provide a basic overview of the Odoo architecture. Like most ERP systems, Odoo has specific database requirements. In this case, it is PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL runs on every major operating system. For most Odoo installations, Ubuntu is the operating system of choice. The primary programming language of Odoo is Python. Like the other technologies underlying Odoo, the Python language is open source and runs on all the major contemporary operating systems. It is an extremely popular programming language which makes it very easy to find resources to help you get started.
One of the primary goals of this architecture is to separate the visual display of the information from the business rules and management of the underlying data. For example, if you need to change the way data is organized in the model, it is desirable not to have to make dramatic changes to how you view the data.
This is true for maintaining flexibility in viewing data. Today, it is common to have many different client applications sharing the same underlying data. The model is essentially the data that makes up your Odoo installation, which is stored in the PostgreSQL database. Odoo is unique, in that, database structures are typically defined by the Odoo modules at the time they are installed. The Odoo framework takes the model definitions and automatically creates the necessary table structures inside the PostgreSQL database.
Furthermore, a web interface in Odoo allows administrators to easily extend the Odoo data model in a variety of ways without having to modify the Odoo source code.
Each view in Odoo is defined in XML documents. The Odoo framework is responsible for rendering these view files in a web browser. Alternative views can be built to render Odoo functionality upon other platforms such as mobile devices.
The controller component of the architecture is where the business logic and workflow rules of the Odoo application are applied. The controller components in Odoo are written in Python code and stored as objects in Odoo modules. In this section, we will discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of choosing Ubuntu or Windows for your first Odoo installation.
For the most part, Ubuntu has been the platform of choice for most Odoo installations. However, there are some reasons why you might choose to run Odoo under a Windows installation. Some of you who bought this book might have already jumped ahead and installed Odoo on their Microsoft Windows computer. So, for you go-getters, that working installation of Odoo might function just fine for researching and testing its features.
Often, the Windows all-in-one installer provides a simple method to get Odoo up and running instantly on your hardware. Basically, you do not have to install a new operating system. If you are familiar with Windows and have no Ubuntu experience, you might get going a little faster by sticking with a Windows install for your first setup. Downloading and installing modules and making changes to configuration files will be much easier if you are familiar with the operating system.
While Microsoft Windows does not really need an introduction, it is probably worth giving a brief introduction to Ubuntu. It has enjoyed increasing popularity because it is easy to install and very stable. Ubuntu can be installed either as a server operating system without a graphical interface or as a desktop operating system with a graphical interface that closely resembles Windows.
It is generally accepted that Ubuntu is the recommended operating system for running a production installation of Odoo. There are several reasons why this is true:. Ubuntu is the primary target platform: While Odoo is released for Windows and still well-supported, the Ubuntu installation continues to be favored. The development team of Odoo works primarily with Ubuntu for bug fixes and platform releases. It can be expected that, for the most part, Odoo development will be optimized around Ubuntu, not Windows or Mac.
Ubuntu is open source : Installing Odoo on any Windows operating system is going to require a license from Microsoft. While using Odoo on your Windows PC or Mac is a viable and perhaps desirable solution for testing and development, it is unlikely you will want to run Odoo on a Windows desktop system for any production environment. Well, this requires Windows Server, which has much higher license costs than desktop editions.
With an Ubuntu installation, you get an entirely open source and virtually cost-free solution. Ubuntu has additional scalability options : It is possible to configure a more scalable solution under Ubuntu than what you can currently configure under Microsoft Windows Server.
Ubuntu has strong community support for Odoo : The fact is that a vast majority of the production installations of Odoo are running under Ubuntu. When you run into trouble or management issues with your Odoo installation, you may find it easier to get assistance if you are running an Ubuntu installation.
Although this book will focus on Windows and Ubuntu installations, you do have several other options. In the past, Odoo has been deployed under a variety of Linux distributions and even on the Macintosh OS. There are also many community members actively developing client frontends for mobile platforms such as Google's Android OS. When deploying an Odoo system, it is important to understand the various Odoo versions, as well as the release and upgrade policies.
There is currently one major release for versions 6. The stable versions are the standard support version of Odoo and, typically, the one you should choose to install for most situations.
The master version is the development version and will often contain bugs and unfinished features. This is primarily downloaded by developers or those who wish to get a look at the latest features. The goal of the Odoo development team is to release two stable version upgrades each year. These releases are supported by Odoo for those that have an Odoo Enterprise support contract. The source code can be obtained by downloading a tarball or using git. Using git makes it easier to update, switch between multiple versions including the current development version or contribute.
To simply get a quick idea of Odoo, demo instances are available. They are shared instances which only live for a few hours, and can be used to browse around and try things out with no commitment. Demo instances require no local installation, just a web browser.
Odoo's SaaS provides private instances and starts out free. It can be used to discover and test Odoo and do non-code customizations without having to install it locally. Like demo instances, SaaS instances require no local installation, a web browser is sufficient.
Click More Info then Run anyway. The configuration file can be edited to connect to a remote Postgresql, edit file locations or set a dbfilter. This will automatically install all dependencies, install Odoo itself as a daemon and automatically start it.
The recommended version is 0. For CenOS:. Use the version available on the wkhtmltopdf download page. The source "installation" really is about not installing Odoo, and running it directly from source instead. This can be more convenient for module developers as the Odoo source is more easily accessible than using packaged installation for information or to build this documentation and have it available offline.
It also makes starting and stopping Odoo more flexible and explicit than the services set up by the packaged installations, and allows overriding settings using command-line parameters without needing to edit a configuration file.
Finally it provides greater control over the system's set up, and allows more easily keeping and running multiple versions of Odoo side-by-side. It also simplifies maintaining non-module patches and contributions. The primary drawback of git is that it is significantly larger than a tarball as it contains the entire history of the Odoo project.
Downloading it requires a git client which may be available via your distribution on linux and can be performed using the following command:. After installation you will need to create a postgres user: by default the only user is postgres , and Odoo forbids connecting as postgres.
Because the role login is the same as your unix login unix sockets can be use without a password. The user and password must be passed to Odoo using either the -w and -r options or the configuration file.
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