General Features What’s new in OpenERP

58 • On installation of a predefined Chart of Accounts, the wizard also proposes default bank and cash accounts, and default Sales and Purchase taxes, • On a journal you can set whether OpenERP should perform a check whether the invoice date is in the current period. This used to be a separate module, • Different journal types for Refunds and Invoices, • When creating a new journal, parameters are preset according to the journal type. The Entry Sequence for the journal is automatically created on Save, • Cash Box, possible to keep a real cash register. Project Management • Improved Gantt chart in the Web version, • Long Term Planning that can be calculated according to the working time of each employee involved in the project with the new Scheduler feature, • On creation of a new project, OpenERP automatically creates the corresponding Analytic Account in the Projects chart of accounts. You no longer have access to the analytic account from the Project. Manufacturing Management • Scrap consumed or finished goods and have the related stock moves automatically, • Consume products partially or completely. Human Resources Management • Manage your evaluation process, • Keep track of your recruitments and receive applicant mails directly in OpenERP, including attachments.

7.5 Getting started with OpenERP

You will now explore the database openerp_ch02 with these profile modules installed to give you an insight into the coverage of the core Open ERP software. Tip: Translating new modules When you have installed a new module and are using additional languages to English you have to reload the translation file. New terms introduced in these modules are not translated by default. To do this use Administration → Translations → Load an Official Translation. Depending on the user you are connected as the page appears differently. Using the installation sequence above, certain dashboards may be assigned as various users’ home pages. They show a summary of the information required to start the day effectively. A project dashboard might contain: • a list of the tasks to carry out, • a list of the tasks which is assigned to current user, • a list of sprints, • a list of issues assigned to current user, • a graph of Planned vs Total hours, • a graph of Remaining hours by Project, • a graph of Open Issues by Creation Date. Each of the lists can be reordered simply by clicking the heading of a column – first in ascending then in descending order as you click repeatedly. To get more information about any particular entry click on the name in the first column, or if you want to show a particular panel click Zoom above it. 59 Figure 7.8: Project Dashboard A user’s home page is automatically reassigned during the creation or upgrading of a database. It is custom to as- sign a dashboard to someone’s home page but any OpenERP screen can be assigned to the home page of any user. Tip: Creating shortcuts Each user has access to many menu items from the menu. But in general an employee uses only a small part of the system’s functions. So you can define shortcuts for the most-used menus. These shortcuts are personal for each user. To create a new shortcut just click the ‘’ of the header of the view in web client. To remove a shortcut just click the link and again click ‘’ of the header of the view. The following sections present an overview of the main functions of OpenERP. Some areas are covered in more detail in the following chapters of this book and you will find many other functions available in the optional modules. Functions are presented in the order that they appear on the main menu.

7.5.1 Basic Concepts

Partners Contacts To get familiar with the OpenERP user interface, you will start working with information about partners. Clicking Sales → Address Book → Customers brings up a list of partners that were automatically loaded when you created the database with Load Demonstration Data checked. Search for a partner Above the partner list you will see a search form that enables you to quickly filter the partners. The Customers filter is enabled by default showing partners who are customers. If you have applied no filter, the list shows every partner in the system. For space reasons this list shows only the first few partners. If you want to display other records you can search for them or navigate through the whole list using the First, Previous, Next , Last arrows.