New Odoo Apps
New Odoo Apps Platform
On November 18th, Odoo SA announced the release of the new Odoo Apps platform. Some of the features of this new version are: a portal for apps contributors; statistics about modules; a new design with a cover per module; and the ranking of contributors.
This new version of Apps allowed us to discover that not only is the OCA the top provider of Odoo modules with 950 modules, but they are also the provider of the most downloaded ones - with more than 90 000 downloads so far. This is a great recognition of the community's work and effort. Thank you very much for your trust and confidence. Do not hesitate to rate the OCA modules you use to make sure they are properly maintained.
New features will be arriving soon. Odoo SA is currently working on displaying the license of the modules. "For now on, we are working with module authors to clean their own licenses (mostly proprietary ones) as they usually don't have a clear license. We wrote an initial license for proprietary apps last week, and will ask authors to update their code next week. After that, we can make modules licenses more clean and transparent", said Fabien Pinckaers, CEO of Odoo SA.
Tell us what you think
Last week the OCA launched a survey to remove or at least lower the barriers for anyone to contribute to the Odoo community. Whatever your skills and availability, there is something you can do so let's determine together what and how you can contribute.
It only takes a few minutes to fill in and it can contribute a lot. Help make a difference:
Welcoming the next generation
On December 1st, the Free Software House opened its doors in Montreal, Canada. Its mission is to improve University students' software development skills and hiring potential through practical experience with free and open source software projects. More than 100 students have already registered to participate in 23 projects including a few OCA ones, like the module prototyper, the Canadian localization or the Quebec payroll.
Organize your events
Based on the success of the few sprints and events sponsored by the OCA so far, the OCA Board is looking for people to organize local events in your city. If you are interested and don't know how to start, let's talk! Contact us at events@odoo-community.org by mentioning your city.
Feature Highlights
Account Fiscal Rules
Back in 2010-2011 Akretion (Renato Lima, Alexis de Lattre, Raphael Valyi) started extending the OpenERP fiscal position system to support the European "intrastat" tax reports and that paved the way to start supporting the very complex inter-states fiscal mappings in Brazil. In 2012, the work was extracted from the Brazilian localization under the "account-fiscal-rules" generic modules that would soon become an OCA project. People from CampToCamp and others have contributed and today this project is used by French, Canadian and Brazilian Odoo localizations at least. It's also specially used in e-commerce context because we also made sure this framework could replicate the Magento tax mapping engine.
Basically Odoo fiscal position determines what taxes apply in a sale or purchase. The fiscal rules modules is an extensible decision table framework to select the right fiscal position according to sale and purchase parameters such as origin and destination states. Another module, account_product_fiscal_classification helps pre-setting the base product taxes (prior to the fiscal position mapping) by introducing a concept of "fiscal classification".
These modules are finally all ported to v8. The account_product_fiscal_classification module got a great refactor by Sylvain Legal for usage in France. The repository is now complying the OCA standards and achieved a test coverage of 82%. v9 migration just started and reviews are welcome.
https://www.odoo.com/apps/modules/browse?search=fiscal_position_rule
https://www.odoo.com/apps/modules/8.0/account_product_fiscal_classification/
Swiss localization: LSV Direct debit for Swiss localization
Thanks to Compassion CH, a new module to generate a Direct Debit file has landed in the swiss localization.
More info
Contract: Payment mode for contracts
Domatix continues providing modules for improving the contracts. This time, with a module that alllows users to select a specific payment mode for each contract instead of using the one defined on the customer.
More info
Spanish localization: VAT prorrate management
Pedro M. Baeza has developed for Antiun Ingeniería a module that allows Odoo to handle the pro-rated VAT in a legally complient way, integrating with the rest of the system workflows (invoicing, tax declaration...).
More info
Server tools: Data export manager
Antonio Espinosa from Antiun Ingeniería has contributed with a module to easily handle standard data export profiles, giving more usability to this feature.
More info
Spanish localization: Redsys payment carrier updated
Incaser has updated the protocol to communicate with the Redsys payment carrier due to new requirements in their specification.
More info
Portuguese localization: first modules merged
The Portuguese localization is starting to submit modules to the OCA, and an important milestone has been achieved: the first modules, targeting v8, have been merged. Congratulations to Pedro Castro Silva for being the first author of a successful pull request. We can only hope many more PRs and new contributors are to come.
Website: Legal terms in product checkout
The inexhaustible Antiun Ingeniería team contributes another module that displays a disclaimer when purchasing products via E-commerce, and users can't proceed without accepting it.
Website: Contact form snippet
And the last one this month from Antiun Ingeniería isolates the contact form in the website and allows users to put it anywhere on their website.
More info
Commission: Commissions only on paid invoices
Magno Costa from Akretion Brazil has improved the sale_commission module to support the recording of commissions based on issued invoices (the previous behavior) or just on paid invoices.
More info
Manufacturing: Quality control extension
OdooMRP team has continued moving the modules that they have developed for this project to the OCA. In this case, the module that enables users to define a quality control inspection when a manufacturing order is completed is now available.
More info
Server tools: Dead man's switch
Based on the striking term that comes from the switch that engages automatically when a train operator becomes incapacitated, Holger Brunn from Therp has developed a system consisting of a client module and a server module to monitor Odoo installations and notify you if any are down.
More info
RMA: Main module
Staff from Vauxoo have worked hard to update the main module that enables RMA management in Odoo v8 with additional improvements.
More info
Server tools: Datetime formatter
Jairo Llopis has developed a tool for Grupo ESOC that supports formatting methods for date and datetime fields in all parts of Odoo, including reports, which simplifies some of the most common issues users experience when dealing with this type of data.
More info
Product attributes: Product profiling
David Beal and his team from Akretion bring us a module that creates profiles that allows users to, among other things, use them as templates for creating products.
More info
Multi-Company: Product visibility by company
Thanks to Pedro M. Baeza, you can now define each company where users are allowed to see a product.
More info
Contract: Analytic plans for contracts
Pedro M. Baeza has provided another module for contracts management that allows users to set analytic plans on the recurring invoice lines.
More info
Events and Local Communities
Future Events
Dec 8th - DeGama : Integrated events management for non-profit organizations in Montreal, Canada
Jan 20th - Odoo Meetup in Toronto, Canada
OERP Canada and Savoir-faire Linux are proud to announce the launch of the Odoo Meetup in Toronto. Starting from January 2016, we hope the Odoo Community in the Greater Toronto Area will join us on monthly basis to network and discuss Odoo, its features, its framework, its community, its ecosystem and any other related subjects you want to suggest.
Apr 26th - Odoo Sprint in Sorrento, Italy
The Odoo Sorrento Sprint will take place in Sorrento, Italy from April 26th to 29th, 2016 and is aimed at those who are passionate about Odoo. It is the best way to get in touch with the Odoo community and it is free.
Past Events
Nov 18th - Open Source Summit in Paris, France
On November 18th and 19th, the OCA was at the OpenSource Summit in Paris, one of the biggest OpenSource Events in Europe. It was a good opportunity for us to meet other communities and have discussions with other pro-opensource people. We realized during this event that not everyone knows the Odoo ecosystem and its community very well. This is why we encourage each of you to explain, talk and organize events to spread information on Odoo and the OCA. If you know of other suitable OpenSource Events do not hesitate to ask us to participate (do not forget, as a member YOU can represent us).
Odoo Meetup in Sao Paulo, Brazil
After a quiet 2015, the Brazilian Odoo Community met again in Sao Paulo in November. Some 25 professionals and enthusiasts met for an entire day. 3 Odoo partners were present: Kmee, ThinkOpen and Akretion. ThinkOpen provided the location for the meeting.
Luis Mileo (Kmee, localization contributor) presented the v9 Enterprise version features, Renato Lima (the OCA Brazilian localization PSC - Akretion) presented the history of the Brazlian localization project and Raphael Valyi (Akretion), presented the OCA foundation.
Brazil has one of the most complex fiscal bureaucracies in the world. A product can be sold with up to 5 or 6 taxes that are not easy to calculate. These taxes have complex mappings and every invoice is electronically sent to fiscal authorities using Kafkaesque SOAP web-services. For that reason, implementing Odoo (or any other non Brazilian ERP) in Brazil is a real challenge. Today there are still challenges and the Brazilian localization is already the biggest OCA localization by a big margin. We are proud to show we meet OCA standards and a test coverage approaching 70%. Very few Odoo implementation companies have been able to survive for very long in Brazil. Thus not many people are aware of how the ecosystem is working under the hood and what the strengths and weaknesses of Odoo are. Few people in Brazil know why the OCA was created and why it matters, but we are hopeful the community here will end up rallying around the OCA just as it did in countries where Odoo was used successfully for many years. The OCA is a cornerstone of this Brazilian success.
What's going on in the kitchen?
Last month activity
In November, 51 Github contributors (including 9 new ones) made 315 commits while 112 Transifex collaborators translated 30,278 terms and Runbot was used 2014 times.
Migration
In order to ease the migration of modules from 8.0 to 9.0, Pedro M. Baeza devised a way to preserve changes made in v8 without losing authorship after the 9.0 branches were created. The method is available in the corresponding wiki.
More info
Packaging Status
We now have a working solution to distribute Odoo addons using the standard python setup toolchain (setuptools, pip, wheel). Among other benefits, this technique enables easier installation and deployment, including automatic discovery of dependencies. It also facilitates the creation of repeatable installation using package versions. This mechanism will be the foundation of a robust release process for OCA addons.
To get a taste of it, imagine you can simply type "pip install odoo-addon-mis_builder odoo-addon-account_asset_management" to get mis_builder and account_asset_management with all their dependencies, without worrying about which git repository hosts them (and this does not install other modules you don't need). You then start Odoo without worrying about the addons-path using a new command wrapping the standard Odoo startup script: odoo-server-autodiscover.
We are now requesting feedbacks. To help you test the system, a temporary wheelhouse is built nightly for all OCA 8.0 and 9.0 addons at http://wheelhouse.acsone.eu/oca-8.0 and http://wheelhouse.acsone.eu/oca-9.0. A suite of sample commands to test can be found at https://github.com/OCA/maintainer-tools/pull/156#issuecomment-157046354. If you want to go further, checkout the alpha version of the packaging library at https://github.com/acsone/setuptools-odoo.
We welcome your feedback (including confirmation that it works for you) via any channel: as comments in https://github.com/OCA/maintainer-tools/pull/156 or https://github.com/OCA/maintainer-tools/issues/116, or as issues for https://github.com/acsone/setuptools-odoo.
Documentation Status
Odoo SA released an Accounting guide for v9 and finished one for Inventory Management (see it at https://www.odoo.com/documentation/user/9.0/inventory.html.) They have also made good progress writing guides for: POS, Sales, CRM, Projects and Purchasing. You can get all the guides at the following link: (about 480 pages have been written):
Here is an example of a good topic, the PosBOX hardware setup guide:
The Spanish & Dutch communities also made good progress in translating this documentation, reaching more than 30% in just a few days. Thanks guys! If you want to help, join the translation project here:
In a few days, they will release a series of videos to present key Odoo apps (CRM, accounting, sale, time sheet, project, inventory, website builder). Here is the first one: https://youtu.be/6XgKPjgyoec
More info
Add screenshots to your modules
With the release of the new Apps store, new tests have been configured in pylint-odoo and Travis. If your module does not provide screenshots using the images keyword in the __openerp__.py file, a warning will be raised. Make sure to add some screenshots to help visual people get a better idea of what your modules does so they know if they should install it.
PSC Updates
Accounting
- Frédéric Clementi is now the OCA representative.
- The community is still working on building financial statements and reports.
- The Sage and AccountEdge connectors have been merged into this PSC.
Canada
- Agathe Mollé, Fred Blauer and David Dufresne joined as new PSC members.
Ecuador
- Daniel Alejandro Mendieta Pacheco is the OCA representative of this new PSC.
- Subscribe to the mailing list here: https://odoo-community.org/groups/ecuador-33
Knowledge & Document
- Laurent Mignon from Acsone has joined as a PSC member.
- The CMIS connector has been merged into this PSC.
- The knowledge module has been migrated and more are on their way: https://github.com/OCA/knowledge/issues/72
- Subscribe to the mailing list here: https://odoo-community.org/groups/document-management-system-31
Peru
- Nhomar Hernandez is the OCA representative of this new PSC.
- Subscribe to the mailing list here: https://odoo-community.org/groups/peru-34
Project & Services
- A new initiative to create a business requirement management module has been started with a pull request (https://github.com/OCA/project/pull/127), a first discussion on the options and the roadmap on the subject.
- The Redmine connector has been merged into this PSC.
- Subscribe to the mailing list here: https://odoo-community.org/groups/project-and-services-35
Purchase and Procurement
- Subscribe to the mailing list here: https://odoo-community.org/groups/purchase-procurement-37
Website
- Subscribe to the mailing list here: https://odoo-community.org/groups/website-36
Board Announcements
2016 Membership and Sponsorship available!
You can already purchase your membership and sponsorship for 2016.
Support the OCA
For 2015 members, you will receive your renewal invoices in January 2016.
Phasing out the Core Maintainers Team
As a consequence of the PSC organization set up during the last few months, the Core Maintainers team will be phased out. The OCA Board requests all their current members to join their PSC of interests by the end of the year. The Core Maintainers team on Github and on the OCA instance will be deleted on January the 1st, 2016.