Duration: 22:37
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This talk, delivered by an ERP consultant from Munich-based consultancy much. consulting, explores how to coordinate multi-company sales teams in Odoo without compromising data privacy or flooding users with irrelevant records. The catalyst: a global client wanted sales admins in one company (e.g., China) to selectively view specific Contacts/Leads from sister companies (e.g., Germany/US) to avoid duplicate outreach and leverage prior learnings—without removing company restrictions for everyone. The session frames the limitations of Odoo’s standard access model, evaluates marketplace modules, and presents a custom solution that enables selective, user-level visibility across companies—what the speaker calls a “supercharged share button.”
Core ideas and innovations 🧠
Out of the box, Odoo provides robust multi-company isolation: most records carry a Company field, and Access Groups plus Record Rules (domain rules) govern what users can read, write, create, or delete. However, the standard model is binary at the record level (assigned to one company or all) and role-based (group-level), not designed for sharing specific records with specific people across companies.
The proposed innovation adds a dedicated field on target records (placed just under the Company field) to list individual users from other companies who should gain access. Behind the scenes, precise domain rule extensions recognize this field and include those users in the read domain, so shared records appear naturally in existing Kanban, list, and form views—without changing the user’s company context or switching databases. Optional UI cues (e.g., a read-only warning banner) help avoid unintended edits when users are merely observers.
Because sustainable change requires more than code, the workflow includes data remediation (cleaning existing records) and governance for new data. For existing records, teams can act manually for edge cases or use export/import. For incoming records, default values and Automation Rules can add the “shared-with” users based on conditions (e.g., Country = Germany and Tag = B2B). When rules depend on external systems, an API can apply sharing programmatically. The solution scales beyond CRM: examples include Manufacturing (letting a sister company’s production manager view MOs tied to internal customers and relevant quality checks) and Services/Projects (auto-sharing tasks with a cleanup crew lead when a stage is reached, then removing access as the task exits that stage).
Impact and takeaways ⚙️
Practically, sales teams gain a 15-minute head start on new opportunities by seeing prior interactions, preferences, and known constraints, reducing duplicated outreach and unnecessary cycles. This fine-grained, record-level access improves collaboration while respecting data privacy, NDAs, and regional regulations. Importantly, the approach avoids broad role downgrades or cross-company “open doors” that can cause overexposure.
The team emphasizes a thoughtful decision path: prefer Odoo standard where possible; consider marketplace modules for cost-effective coverage; and only then invest in customizations with a clear cost-of-ownership view. They caution that expanding beyond read-only (to edit/delete) raises complexity because many visible fields come from related models. The hardest technical challenge was crafting precise record rules that “pierce” existing layers without breaking group security—achieved with pinpoint domain logic. Availability-wise, this is not an off-the-shelf module; it’s a repeatable pattern implemented as a custom module tailored per client. Sharing by groups (instead of individual users) is also possible depending on requirements.
The net result: better multi-company alignment, less manual effort, and a scalable path to automated, compliant visibility—embedded within the native Odoo UX. 💬
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo’s vision.
When teams share context at the right moment, they work faster and with fewer mistakes. I like that this solution stays inside Odoo—no spreadsheets, no side channels—just the same UI people already use. The principle is simple: keep isolation by default, then open a window where collaboration makes everyone smarter.
My constant advice remains the same: start standard, keep it simple, and automate where the rules are clear. The community’s strength is precisely in these pragmatic patterns—small, elegant extensions that respect the framework and make companies more integrated without adding complexity they can’t maintain.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo’s approach shows real agility: deliver selective visibility with minimal friction and strong UX continuity. For midmarket teams, that’s compelling. The challenge is governance at scale—ensuring traceable approvals, revocation workflows, and airtight audit trails for cross-company access, particularly under GDPR, medical, or defense-grade compliance.
In larger enterprises, we typically lean on group- or attribute-based access control models, policy catalogs, and centralized monitoring across apps. Odoo’s pattern can align with that direction, but customers should validate scalability, upgrade safety, and segregation-of-duties rigor. Credit where it’s due: integrating context sharing directly into day-to-day screens is exactly the kind of UX that drives adoption.
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.