Basic Concepts Getting started with OpenERP
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The History tab gives a quick overview of partner activities – an overview of useful information such as Leads and Opportunities, Meetings, Phone Calls, Emails and Tasks. Events are generated automatically by OpenERP from
changes in other documents that refer to this partner.
It is possible to add events manually which directly relate to the corresponding form, such as a note recording a phone call. To add a new event click New in the Phone Calls section. That opens a new Phone Call pop-up form
enabling a phone-call event to be created and added to the current partner.
Possible Partner Actions
To the right of the partner form is a toolbar containing a list of possible Reports , Actions and quick Links about the partner displayed in the form.
You can generate PDF documents for the selected object or, in list view, about one or more selected objects using certain buttons in the Reports section of the toolbar:
• Labels : print address labels for the selected partners, • Overdue Payments : print a letter to notify the selected partners of overdue payments,
Certain actions can be started by the following buttons in the Actions section of the toolbar: • SMS Send: enables you to send an SMS to selected partners. This system uses the bulk SMS facilities of
the Clickatell® company http:clickatell.com
, • Mass Mailing: enables you to send an email to a selection of partners,
• Create Opportunity: opens a window to create an opportunity for the partner. Tip: Reports, Actions and Links in the GTK client
When you are viewing a form in the GTK client, the buttons to the right of the form are shortcuts to the same Reports, Actions and Links as described in the text. When you are viewing a list such as the partner list those
buttons are not available to you. Instead, you can reach Reports and Actions through two of the buttons in the toolbar at the top of the list – Print and Action.
Partners are used throughout the OpenERP system in other documents. For example, the menu Sales → Sales Orders
brings up all the Sales Orders in list view. Open an order in form view and click the name of a partner, even when the form is read-only. The Partner form will open.
Tip: Right-clicks and shortcuts In the GTK client you do not get hyperlinks to other document types. Instead, you can right-click in a list view to
show the linked fields that is fields having a link to other forms on that line. In the web client you will see hyperlink shortcuts on several of the fields on a form in Read- Only mode, allowing
you to be taken directly to the corresponding form. When the web form is in Edit mode, you can instead right-click the mouse button in the field, to get all of the linked fields in a pop-up menu just as you would with the GTK client.
You can quickly give this a try by going to any one of the sales orders in
Sales → Sales Orders. See where you can go from the
Customer field using either the web client with the form in both read-only and in edit mode, or with the GTK client.
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Figure 7.10: Links for a partner appear in an order form Before moving on to the next topic, take a quick look at the Sales → Configuration → Address Book menu,
particularly Partner Categories and Localisation menus. They contain some of the demonstration data that you installed when you created the database.
Products
In OpenERP, product is used to define a raw material, a stockable product, a consumable or a service. You can work with whole products or with templates that separate the definition of products and variants extra module.
For example if you sell t-shirts in different sizes and colors: • the product template is the “T-shirt” which contains information common to all sizes and all colors,
• the variants are “Size:S” and “Color:Red”, which define the parameters for that size and color, • the final product is thus the combination of the two – t-shirt in size S and color Red.
The value of this approach for some sectors is that you can just define a template in detail and all of its available variants briefly rather than every item as an entire product.
Note: Example Product templates and variants A product can be defined as a whole or as a product template and several variants. The variants can be in one or
several dimensions, depending on the installed modules. For example, if you work in textiles, the variants on the product template for “T-shirt” are:
• Size S, M, L, XL, XXL, • Colour white, grey, black, red,
• Quality of Cloth 125gm2, 150gm2, 160gm2, 180gm2, • Collar V, Round.
This separation of variant types requires the optional module product_variant_multi. Using it means that you can avoid an explosion in the number of products to manage in the database. If you take the example above
it is easier to manage a template with 15 variants in four different types than 160 completely different products. This module is available in extra-addons.
The Sales → Products menu gives you access to the definition of products and their templates and variants. Tip: Consumables
In OpenERP a consumable is a physical product which is treated like a stockable product, with the exception that stock management is not taken into account by the system. You could buy it, deliver it or produce it but OpenERP
will always assume that there is enough of it in stock. It never triggers a procurement exception.
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Open a product form to see the information that describes it. The demeonstration data show several types of products, which gives quite a good overview of the options.
Price lists Sales → Configuration → Pricelists determine the purchase and selling prices and adjustments derived from the use of different currencies. The Default Purchase Pricelist uses the product’s Cost Price field for the
Purchase price to be calculated. The Public Pricelist uses the product’s Sale Price field to calculate the Sales price in quotations.
Price lists are extremely flexible and enable you to put a complete price management policy in place. They are composed of simple rules that enable you to build up a rule set for most complex situations: multiple discounts,
selling prices based on purchase prices, price reductions, promotions on product ranges and so on.
You can find many optional modules to extend product functionality, such as: • membership : for managing the subscriptions of members of a company,
• product_electronic : for managing electronic products, • product_extended : for managing production costs,
• product_expiry : for agro-food products where items must be retired after a certain period, • product_lot_foundry : for managing forged metal products.
All of the above modules are found in extra-addons, except for the membership and the product_expiry
module.