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1. Select Administration in the Menu Toolbar and click Translations → Load an Official Translation in the main menu window,
2. Select the language to install, French for example, and click Load, 3. The system will intimate you when the selected language has been successfully installed. Click Close to
return to the menu. To see the effects of this installation change the preferences of your user to change the working language you
may first need to ensure that you have explicitly selected English as your language, rather than keep the default, before you are given the French option. You may have to reload the page to see the effects. The main menu is
immediately translated in the selected language. If you are using the GTK client you will first have to close the menu then open a new main menu to start seeing things in the new language.
Note: Navigating the menu From this point in the book navigation from the main menu is written as a series of menu entries connected by
the → character. Instead of seeing “Select Administration in the Menu toolbar then click Translations Load an Official Translation” you will just get “use menu
Administration → Translations → Load an Official Translation”.
Requests as a mechanism for internal communication
Requests are a powerful communication mechanism between users of the system. They are also used by Open ERP itself to send system messages to users.
They have distinct advantages over traditional emails: • requests are linked to other Open ERP documents,
• an event’s history is attached to the request, • you can monitor events effectively from the messages they have sent.
Open ERP uses this mechanism to inform users about certain system events. For example if there is a problem concerning the procurement of a product a request is sent by Open ERP to the production manager.
Send a request to get an understanding of its functionality: 1. Click on the REQUESTS link that should currently be showing number of requests as 0. This opens a
window that lists all of your waiting requests. 2. Click New to create and send a new request.
3. Complete the subject of the request, such as How are things? then give a description of the enquiry in the field.
4. Click the Search button to the right of the To field in the Request tab and select Administrator in the window that opens that is the user that you are already connected as.
5. You can then link this request to other system documents using the References field, which could, for example, be a partner or a quotation or a disputed invoice.
6. Click Send to send the request to the intended recipient – that is yourself in this case. Then click HOME to return to the original screen.
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Figure 7.2: Creating a new request To check your requests:
1. Click on the REQUESTS link which may now show the number of requests as 1 to open a list of your requests. The list of requests then opens and you can see the requests you have been sent there.
2. Click the Edit icon, represented by a pencil, at the left hand end of the request line. That opens the request in edit mode.
3. You can then click the Reply button and make your response in the Description field of the Request tab that appears in place of the original message.
4. Click Send to save your response and send it to the original sender. Note: Requests vs. Email
The advantage of an Open ERP request compared with a set of emails about one thread of discussion is that a request contains all of the conversation in one place. You can easily monitor a whole discussion with the
appropriate documents attached, and quickly review a list of incomplete discussions with the history within each request.
To look at the request history the user needs to set the interface as Extended to use this feature, and close the request:
1. Click on the History tab in the Request form to see the original request and all of the responses. By clicking on each line you could get more information on each element.
2. Return to the first tab, Request and click Close to set it to closed. This then appears greyed out. Tip: Trigger Date
You can send a request with a future date. This request will not appear in the recipient’s waiting list until the indicated date. This mechanism is very useful for setting up alerts before an important event.
7.2.2 Configuring Users
The database you created contains minimal functionality but can be extended to include all of the potential func- tionality available to Open ERP. About the only functions actually available in this minimal database are Cus-
tomers and Currencies – and these only because the definition of your main company required this. And because you chose to include demonstration data, both Customers and Currencies were installed with some samples. Be-
cause you logged in as Administrator, you have all the access you need to configure users. Click Administration
→ Users → Users to display the list of users defined in the system. A second user, Demo User , is also present
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in the system as part of the demonstration data. Click the Demo User name to open a non-editable form on that user.
Click the Groups tab to see that the demo user is a member of only the Employee group, and is subject to no specialized rules.
The user Administrator is different, as you can see if you follow the same sequence to review its definition. It is a member of the Administration Configuration and the
Administration Access Rights groups, which gives it more advanced rights to configure new users.
Tip: Groups and Users Users and groups provide the structure for specifying access rights to different documents. Their setup answers
the question “Who has access to what?”
Click Administration → Users → Groups to open the list of groups defined in the system. If you open the form view of the Administration Configuration group by clicking its name in the list, the first tab Users
gives you the list of all the users who belong to this group.
You can also see in the Menus tab, the list of menus reserved for this group. By convention, the
Administration Configuration in Open ERP has rights of access to the Configuration menu in each
section. So Sales Configuration is found in the list of access rights but Sales is not found there be- cause it is accessible to all users. Click the Access Rights tab and it gives you details of the access rights for that
group. These are detailed later in Configuration Administration
. You can create some new users to integrate them into the system. Assign them to predefined groups to grant them
certain access rights. Then try their access rights when you login as these users. Management defines these access rights as described in
Configuration Administration .
Note: Changes to default access rights New versions of OpenERP differ from earlier versions of OpenERP and Tiny ERP in this area: many groups have
been predefined and access to many of the menus and objects are keyed to these groups by default. This is quite a contrast to the rather liberal approach in 4.2.2 and before, where access rights could be defined but were not
activated by default.
7.2.3 Managing partners
In Open ERP, a partner represents an entity that you do business with. That can be a prospect, a customer, a supplier, or even an employee of your company.
List of Partners
Click Sales → Address Book → Customers in the main menu to open the list of partners who are customers. Then click the name of the first partner to get hold of the details – a form appears with information about the company,
such as its corporate name, its primary language, its reference and whether it is a Customer andor a Supplier . You will also find several other tabs on it:
• the General tab contains information about different contacts at that partner, postal information, communi- cation information and the categories it belongs to.
• the Sales Purchases tab contains information that is slightly less immediate. • the History tab visible if you install other modules like crm contains the history of all the events that
the partner has been involved in. These events are created automatically by different system documents: invoices, orders, support requests and so on, from a list that can be configured in the system. These give
you a rapid view of the partner’s history on a single screen.
• the Notes tab is an area for free text notes. To the right of the form is a list of Reports, Actions, Links and Attachments related to a partner. Click some of
them to get a feel for their use.
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Figure 7.3: Partner form Tip: Partner Categories
Partner Categories enable you to segment different partners according to their relation with you client, prospect, supplier, and so on. A partner can belong to several categories – for example it may be both a customer and
supplier at the same time. But there are also Customer and Supplier checkboxes on the partner form, which are different. These checkboxes
are designed to enable OpenERP to quickly select what should appear on some of the system drop-down selection boxes. They, too, need to be set correctly.
Partner Categories
You can list your partners by category using the menu Sales → Configuration → Address Book → Partners Categories
. Click a category to obtain a list of partners in that category.
