Odoo - distributed business apps
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@LoudLemur looks like no one is working on this
It seems @nj and @samir managed to package it, but I have no idea how to test a custom app
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This App request was made over 4 year ago. It is still a brilliant suggestion.
Odoo 16 has just been released. You can see the new features in the following videos:
Meet Odoo 16 - All the New Features:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=RVFZL3D9plgWhat is new in Odoo 16 - Keynote:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=UhEqLlbeLzMOdoo 16 Release Notes:
https://www.odoo.com/odoo-16-release-notes -
@LoudLemur Odoo is not an easy app to selfhost. And to add to that, it's non-trivial to make keep this app updated and help people migrate across versions (like they expect Cloudron apps to) with our current pricing model and target group. Odoo itself is a framework to run apps and each app has it's own updates. It's all very complex.
Not to say we won't package this, but it's not a priority.
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@LoudLemur do you possibly have a business case here?
I mean that if you have Odoo working, it would allow you to do X, which will give you an opportunity do Y, so it will generate you Z amount of money and hence you are ready to pay W for that?
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@girish said in Odoo - distributed business apps:
Odoo is not an easy app to selfhost.
And I kinda wonder if it is suitable for a VPS running Cloudron which is running probably quite a few other apps.
Maybe totally fine if you have a beefy VPS.
But I wonder how many do have spare resources to that extent.Any ERP package tends to have its own ecosystem, and my guess would be best installed on a standalone VPS.
Doesn't a key business resource deserve its own home?
That's how I would tackle it anyway. If I ever have to something ERP-like.
Hope not. Wasted too many years on them. -
@girish said in Odoo - distributed business apps:
@LoudLemur Odoo is not an easy app to selfhost. And to add to that, it's non-trivial to make keep this app updated and help people migrate across versions (like they expect Cloudron apps to) with our current pricing model and target group. Odoo itself is a framework to run apps and each app has it's own updates. It's all very complex.
Not to say we won't package this, but it's not a priority.
I think Odoo becomes complex when it is customized, which usually happens through use of Odoo Studio, a proprietary component which is not available in the Community Edition.
I see Odoo as being quite like NextCloud, which Cloudron already supports. Odoo refers to its various components as modules. Odoo modules are more like extensions that can be added, rather than additional applications. Some Cloudron applications like NodeBB have a Calendar extension, for example.
All the official Odoo modules work out of the box with the unmodified Odoo. Once a year, there is a big, new, Odoo release. That release is designed so that upgrades from the earlier version ought to work smoothly, with just a click.
Many experienced users of Odoo say the secret to a happy life with it is to stick to unmodified versions. I think that sort of support, an annual update, might be something Cloudron could achieve without too much difficulty, once the initial packaging was completed.
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@timconsidine said in Odoo - distributed business apps:
That's how I would tackle it anyway. If I ever have to something ERP-like.
Hope not. Wasted too many years on them.Hi, I wonder what it was that eventually led you away from using ERPs.
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It is just that I like the way Odoo integrates several different functionalities into one structure and pushes information between the various modules. If Odoo were more easily deployable, more people could use it to, for example, manage their own lives and take care of their families efficiently.
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@LoudLemur thank you.
The reason I'm asking, it's that I'm looking if there is some product next to Cloudron or on top of that, addressing some of the limitations of Cloudron.
But so far, I can't find a business model for all of the things that cloudron doesn't do.
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@potemkin_ai said in Odoo - distributed business apps:
@LoudLemur thank you.
The reason I'm asking, it's that I'm looking if there is some product next to Cloudron or on top of that, addressing some of the limitations of Cloudron.
But so far, I can't find a business model for all of the things that cloudron doesn't do.
Odoo is an Enterprise Management tool (ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning Tool). With it, people can manage practically all aspects of a small or even large business. I don't know how Cloudron would help manage to do that at the moment.
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@LoudLemur let me oppose you - not for the sake of the arguing, but as my way to find what I could be missing here.
I don't have an ERP experience that girish had, so no negative strings attached here - my experience is either a small company, that I custom developed, quite a trivial app, or behemoths like SAP in large companies.
With this said, I can hardly imagine at least 200 users on earth doing home / family management in a commercial system, so we left with small, medium and big business here.
My guess is that small business would rather start with something Excel based, as they don't have process yet and the main goal of that business is to do the business - there is probably no much budget for anything else, including migration.
Large business won't suit cloudron model - as per the platform requirements / limitations, you should not expect it to serve more than 100 users. Nor, I believe, Odoo can compete with SAP, but I might be very much wrong here.
So that leaves us with medium business, probably small to medium as well.
From my ERP and IT management experience, it's either business embrace IT platform way of doing business or vice verca.
Let's say it's 50/50 and from what I understood, cloudron can only serve the businesses that are happy to consume odoo as is, leaving the other half out of the board.I would guess having at least 100 businesses of that kind, that are ready to chip in for the custom development of odoo would make it real, otherwise, I guess it's a risky investment, that no one is willing to make.
Do you believe you know someone who is that much interested?
Or is there something you believe I'm missing?
Any feedback is much appreciated! -
@LoudLemur have you actually ever used Odoo? Given you are so enthusiastic about it, I'm guessing perhaps not?!?
I've no doubt that an Odoo expert can make it do all sorts of things that provide all sorts of needs for some companies.
But in my limited experience of playing around with it I found it severely lacking, and with a terribly confusing UX.
Pretty much all the things it does are done MUCH better by other tools that focuses on doing that task rather than hacking together an Odoo module that kinda sorta does it.
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@jdaviescoates said in Odoo - distributed business apps:
@LoudLemur have you actually ever used Odoo? Given you are so enthusiastic about it, I'm guessing perhaps not?!?
I've no doubt that an Odoo expert can make it do all sorts of things that provide all sorts of needs for some companies.
But in my limited experience of playing around with it I found it severely lacking, and with a terribly confusing UX.
Pretty much all the things it does are done MUCH better by other tools that focuses on doing that task rather than hacking together an Odoo module that kinda sorta does it.
Yes, I have used it. I think it is easier if you are able to begin with a philosophy that you are going to grow into Odoo, rather grow Odoo into the way you are. There is a request now for Axelor, which you might like.
https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/1404/axelor-a-flexible-erp-in-java/6
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Looks like someone solved the missing Odoo Studio for the community edition. Does look nifty:
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@marcusquinn said in Odoo - distributed business apps:
Looks like someone solved the missing Odoo Studio for the community edition. Does look nifty:
This is great news, as quite a few people would say that Odoo Studio was a must-have, if you were to run Odoo, but the Studio module is non-Free.
If anybody is in London next week, Odoo are having a live event there in the evening of Tuesday, January the 17th:
https://www.odoo.com/event/odoo-roadshow-london-3628/register
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Odoo is an odd framework, because what you see on their SaaS version isn't all open-source, their SaaS version doesn't accept community add-ons, and the community open-source is missing many of the apps the SaaS has, so there's a marketplace for clones of them.
Basically, if you never want to do anything the SaaS doesn't offer, nor get involved with any development, SaaS makes sense for business.
If you find SaaS limitations that you can't build with the SaaS Studio, you need to go community-edition and buy a load of add-ons to reproduce the same, with the then responsibility of maintaining the codebase, but advantage of not being taxed with per-user costs on growth in the number of users.
I like Odoo a lot, it's just a bit quirky, and you are very much either SaaS OR CE, and support is either direct for SaaS or community for CE, neither wants to support the other, and you can't mix — if you choose the SaaS, you can't use any community add-ons or custom code, if you choose CE, you can't use any of the SaaS apps that haven't been open-sourced or cloned by the community.
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@LoudLemur No I don't like Axelor. I like Odoo.