From 12th to 14th October, Odoo Experience 2022 took place!
Jakub and I visited it, and indeed, it was a great one :) We had a chance to network with Odoo, ask Fabien Pinckaers (the Odoo founder) a couple of questions and discuss the flows/cases directly with the Odoo product owners.
For this reason, we decided to prepare this article - to share the most important news and information about Odoo 16.
NEW PRICING
Since Odoo was introduced in 2014 (and when Enterprise was born), Odoo did not change its prices or the pricing structure.
Smaller clients (only with few users, and a lot of apps) paid a lot on licenses (e.g. 1 user + 10 apps cost approx. 100€, while 100 users + 10 apps paid about 11
€
per user).
A new pricing structure and plans were introduced at Odoo Experience 2022, which compute the final price only based on the number of internal users and all the apps are included in the price per user.
FAQs
If I am supposed to pay more for my license now, will I need to pay the higher price now?
The current customers will be switched to the new pricing, but they will get a discount to match the current price. And if the new price will be cheaper, they will get the lower price.
What is the difference between the Standard & Custom pricing plans?
The standard pricing plan does not support ANY customizations, not even Studio or multi-company (although small adjustments through technical settings will probably be ok). If you want to host on Odoo.sh or on your own hosting, manage multiple companies, have Odoo store modules, Odoo Studio, or your own custom modules, you will need the Custom pricing plan.
Can I still have one app for free? (only one app)
Yes :).
For a full introduction from Odoo, feel free to visit Odoo blog.
BETTER PERFORMANCE
As every year, Odoo is again faster & more stable - according to Fabien, it is 2-20x faster, depending on the specific model and function.
What specifically is new?
- The majority of the functionalities (except Studio) were reprogrammed to JS framework OWL (Odoo's own JS framework, based on blockdom)
- Calculating the number of records, Odoo by default now loads max. 10 000 records (so it does not show you how many records there are if there are more than 10 000). So if you have 5 million records, Odoo limits to 10 000, and the Odoo view is loaded 4 seconds faster (but you can still click the maximum to compute and see the total amount of records).
- Odoo upgraded to Bootstrap 5.1.3. (fromm older version 4). Using the new version, Odoo was able to refactor its CSS code and reduce it by 68% of its lines.
NEW/IMPROVED FUNCTIONALITIES
KNOWLEDGE BASE
Odoo 16 introduced a brand-new app called knowledge base. It is a pretty smart one, and for sure Odoo was lacking this functionality. It is not yet as advanced as Confluence or Gitbook, but it can nicely manage the basics.
What it can do:
- Create nice-looking articles, to-do lists and documentation
- Integrate specific datasets (e.g. insert a dynamic list of products or email/message templates into the KB article)
- Share the articles internally (in a company structure) or externally with clients and suppliers
What it unfortunately cannot do:
- Importing MD files or integrating with Gitlab/Github → unfortunately, you must migrate from the previous KB manually :/
- While users can simultaneously edit an article, you cannot see who wrote/edited which part (you cannot see the edit history as in e.g. Google Docs)
This app is available only in Odoo Enterprise.
ONLINE APPOINTMENTS & BOOKING
We have been waiting for this functionality for years, and since we did not have it, we used alternatives such as Calendly & Youcanbookme.
Finally, we have a working integration with a calendar, that allows external parties to book meetings with you not only based on manually set time slots but also based on your real availability. No more double-booking :)
Another useful thing is proposing specific time slots. You can propose specific dates & times and send a form to the customers, where they choose their preference. You will then see their choice directly in your calendar.
WEBSITE BUILDER & ECOMMERCE
I will split the improvements into 3 parts:
- Unified website menu - the website does not have different menus in the backend & frontend. Now you can click directly from the frontend to see website-related records (e.g. products, promotions, ...)
- Improved design, more possibilities to customize the website design, amazing grid editor & beautiful animations
- Features, that we customized before, are now part of base Odoo!
- Hiding prices for not-logged-in visitors (public users)
- Integration of promotion & loyal programs across sales, eCommerce & POS
- Possibility to customize the layout of the product pages
- "Order again" - easily repeat the same order
- Additional, configurable step in the checkout
- Possibility to show prices in 2 units of measure (e.g. price per package & price per kg)
- If a product is out of stock, it is possible to forbid the customer from buying it and allow input of the contact details
- Auto filling of address based on Google Maps
- Possibility of personal pick up of goods and selection of the picking place/store (this is also included e.g in improved FedEx integration)
I must admit that I am really excited about these features, as I needed to customize every single one of them in the past :).
HURRAY, BETTER ANALYTICAL ACCOUNTING!
Analytical accounting moved one step forward as well. The new version replaced the old analytical tags and now Odoo allows to flexibly distribute the costs and revenues to specific analytical accounts/cost centers on each transaction. It is also possible to automate the distribution based on specific conditions (customer, product, account, ...).
CHATBOT
Again, a step forward in the right direction, but this feature is still in the beginning of its lifecycle. It works as a scripted dialogue - you set all the possible questions and answers. There is no AI, Odoo does not learn from the chats.
What we were the most disappointed about is, that Odoo does not create any structured record from the chat - no lead, no applicant, no ticket.
Unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to be done to make this app competitive, and we recommend discussing any feedback with Ray Carnes, who became the "Odoo Chatbot Guy" :)
DASHBOARDS
A huge and beautiful refactoring was done on the dashboard app. Now it is not just a place where we can see more views from Odoo in one place, but Odoo brought 2 big improvements:
- They prepared pre-defined dashboards for specific business metrics & apps
- They improved the spreadsheets in Odoo, and now they allow the preparation of your own dashboards, pulling the data from any place in Odoo.
It became a really strong platform, that will allow replacing the external BI tools completely! (At least for most use cases).
Or are you hungry for more? Feel free to visit the official Odoo 16 release notes for the full list of improvements.
UPGRADE
I believe that you are as excited about Odoo 16 as we are, so maybe you are asking when will you be able to upgrade from your current versions? Fabien estimated that the upgrade script could be ready within 2 months when also, based on our experience, the v16 should also be pretty much stable and without major blockers.
THE BEST TALKS
- WHAT IS NEW IN ODOO?
Opening keynote from Odoo founder Fabien Pinckaers, summarizing the main news in Odoo 16. - ODOO BIG DATA
Amazing talk from Denis Guillot, the CTO of Port Cities. Odoo has its limits performance-wise, but with the right frameworks, it can be used even by companies with huge datasets. - ASK ME ANYTHING WITH FABIEN PINCKAERS
A very nice and honest session, where Fabien answers all types of questions, funny ones & difficult ones. - WHAT IS NEW IN SPREADSHEETS?
Odoo 15 is the last version that provides integration with Google spreadsheets. On the other hand, do you still really need it, when spreadsheets in Odoo are so cool? - WHAT IS NEW IN HR?
OCR on CVs, adding hiring manager/interviewer role on position, accesses to documents for ex-employees. A lot of new things, that were requested for years :).