SSL Setup Think Different Materi ERP openerp book v6

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27.1 Creating a Configuration Module

It is very helpful to be able to backup your specific configuration settings in an Open ERP module dedicated just to that. That enables you to: • automatically duplicate the configuration settings by installing the module in another database, • reinstall a clean database with your own configuration in case you have problems with the initial configuration, • simplify migrations, if you have modified some elements of the basic configuration, there is a risk in returning them to their original state after the migration, unless you have saved the modifications in a module. Start by installing the module base_module_record in the usual way. Manually make all your configuration changes through the user interface as you would normally do such as menu management, dashboard assignments, screen configuration, new reports, and access rights management – details of some of these possibilities are described later in this chapter. Then start recording your data using the menu Administration → Customization → Module Creation → Export Customizations As a Module. This opens a wizard through which you may select the date to record from, choose records that have been Created , Modified or both Created Modified . You have to select the objects for recording and then start recording by clicking Record. After the recording operation is complete, a dialog box appears giving you the opportunity to save the recorded module at a desired location. Open ERP then creates a ZIP file for you containing all of the modifications you made while you were carrying out your configuration work. You could reinstall this module on other databases. This could turn out to be useful if you want to install a test server for your company’s users and give them the same configuration as the production server. To install a new module saved in ZIP file form, use the menu Administration → Modules → Import Module.

27.2 Configuring the menu

Open ERP’s menu organization is not subject to any restriction, so you can modify the whole structure, the terminology and all access rights to it to meet your specific needs in the best possible way. However, before you do all that and just as you would for any other customizable software, you should balance both the benefits you see in such changes and the costs, such as the need to train users, to maintain new documentation and to continue the alterations through subsequent versions of the software. This section describes how to proceed to change the structure of the menu and the welcome page, to configure the terminology of the menus and forms in the user interface and for managing users’ access rights to the menus and the various underlying business objects.

27.2.1 Changing the menu

You can change the way menu items appear and the actions they trigger by using the menu Administration → Customization → User Interface → Menu Items. This opens a search view where you may locate the menu item to be edited by entering its entire name specified as menu hierarchy in the Menu field or specifying its immediate parent menu name in Parent Menu. As an example, locate the menu item AdministrationTranslationsImport ExportExport Translation and click on this entry to open its corresponding form. You could now edit this form but do not do that, read the next paragraph first – change its Parent Menu, which moves the entry to a different part of the menu system; edit its Menu name to change how it appears in the menu tree, or give it a new Icon. Or you could give it a new Action entirely but this would lose the point of this particular exercise. Instead of editing this form, which is the original menu entry, duplicate it. With the web client you must first make the form read-only by clicking the Cancel button, then you click the Duplicate button that appears in the 397 GTK client, click Form → Duplicate from the top menu. The form that remains is now the duplicate entry, not the original. To move this duplicate entry, change the Parent Menu field by deleting what is there and replacing it with another menu that everyone can see, such as Tools or Human Resources, and make sure that the entry moves to the end of the menu list by replacing the Sequence with 99 . You can experiment with icons if you like. Save the form and then reload the page to see the results. Tip: Duplicating the menu If you are planning to modify a menu you should duplicate it first. In this way you will always keep a link to the original menu that works if you need it to.

27.2.2 Personalizing the welcome page for each user

The administrator can change both the welcome page and the main menu page individually for each user of the system, and can adapt Open ERP to each role in the company to best fit the needs of everyone. To make modifications for a particular user, edit the user configuration again in Administration → Users → Users . Open the form for a particular user, and select different menu entries for the two fields Home Action and Menu Action . Figure 27.1: Selecting a new welcome page The Home Action is the menu item that is automatically opened when you first sign on, and is also reached when you click the Home link in the top right toolbar of the web client. There you can choose any page that you would reach through any menu – one of the dashboards could be most useful. The Menu Action is the one you reach through the menu Form → Menu in the GTK client. You can choose the main menu and the dashboards there. Tip: Actions on the administrator’s menu It is very easy to change the welcome page and the menu of the different users. However, you should not change the main administrator’s menu because you could make certain menus completely inaccessible by mistake.

27.2.3 Assigning default values to fields

You can quite easily configure the system to put default values in various fields as you open new forms. This enables you to pre-complete the fields with default data to simplify your users’ work in entering new documents. Let us use the Customer form to demonstrate this feature. Create a new customer with Country set as New Zealand • If you are using the web client, click the small button at the right of the Country field.