Duration: 25:40
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context — who’s speaking, what’s being announced, why it matters 💼
Miguel Anel, a software engineer at Brainch (an experienced, multi-country Odoo partner), shares a practical approach and working toolset to migrate documentation from Confluence to Odoo Knowledge “in one click.” The talk covers real-world challenges, architectural choices, and a live-style demo, plus a brief look at AI options now available in Odoo 19. This matters to organizations consolidating systems, reducing tool sprawl, and centralizing knowledge within the Odoo suite to improve usability, governance, and discoverability.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
The central idea is a controlled, faithful migration that preserves structure, permissions, content fidelity, and collaboration context. On permissions, the solution maps Confluence users/groups/guest access to Odoo Knowledge’s model (Workspace, Shared, and Private sections), commonly using email to match identities and reproduce access rights to avoid leaks. Collaboration signals are retained: inline comments (anchored to specific text in Confluence) are converted into typed comments with a special marker and a citation snippet, while footer comments are imported into the chatter so no feedback is lost.
Formatting and usability parity are addressed via macro handling. Since exporting from Confluence returns plain text plus metadata (e.g., data-warning-panel), the team reproduces styling in Odoo Knowledge by shipping custom styles in an Odoo module—bringing back info/warning panels, tables of contents, and comparable layout conventions. For Confluence’s Q&A add-on, they migrate to Odoo Forum, keeping questions, replies, votes, and views. They also extend discovery with a unified search pattern: keyboard shortcuts and operators (e.g., + and &) query across both Knowledge and Forum, and a “Unified Search” menu inside Knowledge leverages Odoo’s filters and grouping to refine results.
The solution is engineered for resilience and scale. Attachments (images, GIFs, videos) are imported and linked; internal links are rewritten once target pages exist, ensuring navigation works post-migration. Comprehensive logging surfaces to business users (not only developers), showing what was imported, which permissions and attachments were applied, and any errors. For performance, long-running imports run as background queue jobs or scheduled cron tasks so users aren’t blocked, while still able to monitor logs. Architecturally, the team favors an Odoo module that consumes the Confluence API to extract, transform, and load into Odoo—keeping control, enabling customization, and supporting repeatability. Where Confluence apps lack API endpoints (e.g., the Q&A app), the team resorts to targeted scraping to recover content.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️💬
The end result is a largely “pixel-faithful” knowledge base in Odoo Knowledge with correct permissions, preserved comments, working macros, and working links—achieved with “one-click” actions for single pages or entire spaces. The import can run synchronously for small jobs or asynchronously for large spaces, with robust logging and post-checks for authorization parity. The approach is adaptable: it scales with the number of users and documents, and it’s designed to be extended to other systems with available APIs (e.g., potentially Jira).
Looking forward, Odoo 19’s AI capabilities unlock pragmatic workflows: for instance, an agent that summarizes project meetings or recent knowledge articles to bring a returning colleague up to speed. The takeaway is clear: by consolidating knowledge into Odoo, organizations can reduce context-switching, strengthen governance, and unlock integrated search and automation across apps—while maintaining the nuance and collaboration artifacts created in Confluence.
Notable practical notes: - Works from Odoo 18 (tested), expected to work on Odoo 19 and likely 17/16/15 with caveats (e.g., older versions may lack inline comments). - Macro fidelity depends on styling work in the Odoo module, but is straightforward once patterns are defined. - Unified search and forum mapping bring a richer discovery experience than Confluence alone in many setups. - For Confluence apps without API support, scraping can bridge the gap when done responsibly.
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
When teams can bring their documentation into Odoo with a single action, they recover something priceless: focus. Our goal with Odoo Knowledge has always been simplicity and integration. If search can traverse Knowledge, Forum, and tasks, and if permissions “just work,” users stop worrying about where information lives and start using it.
I’m particularly excited by how AI in Odoo 19 complements this. Agents that summarize meetings or stitch together know-how across apps show what open integration can do. The community keeps pushing us—this migration work is a great example of meeting users where they are, and then making their daily workflow lighter.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
The migration narrative is compelling: consolidating into Odoo lowers TCO and strengthens cross-app workflows. However, large enterprises will scrutinize areas like granular access controls, SSO/SCIM provisioning, audit trails, and data residency. Permissions mapping from Confluence’s spaces, groups, and guests to Odoo’s model must be airtight at scale—especially under regulated frameworks.
Macro fidelity, page history, approvals, and archival policies are also non-trivial. Organizations with heavy Confluence customization will need governance guardrails and change management to ensure user trust post-migration. Still, Odoo’s UX cohesion, forum integration, and unified search are strong differentiators; the challenge is less the “one-click” and more the predictable, compliant rollout across thousands of users and millions of documents.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.