Integrations for Sales and FC - odoo-ps/pshk-process GitHub Wiki

Integrations are a big part of today’s software industries as companies tend to have various softwares doing different things on their side. Odoo’s main selling point is the out-of-the-box integration between all the company’s workflows thus it’s not our goal to integrate Odoo with different softwares.

Also, integrating Odoo with other softwares can be tricky and very time consuming for the customer considering the time taken for developing the integration and the amount of Lines of Code related to any integration.

The first questions that need to be answered during the qualification are:

  • What is the purpose of this integration?
  • Could it be covered in Odoo Standard with import of data or workarounds?
  • Isn’t it better to adapt the current way of working and integrate this need in Odoo directly if possible?
  • What kind of integration does the customer need? Sending info from Odoo to another software? From another software to Odoo? Should the integration go both ways?
  • Does the service we want to integrate with have an API?
  • Do we provide the customer’s needs in Odoo already (accounting, inventory, e-commerce, etc.)
  • Define the complete scope of the integration
    • How would this integration impact the current workflow?
    • Do we currently have all the information in Odoo? If not, what should be added (fields, different logic, etc.)
    • How often should we transfer information between both systems?
    • Is the integration only there to transfer some information or should it also trigger something in Odoo? e.g. If this is a loan management integration, should it trigger the creation of assets in the database or just display the info in Odoo? If it's an integration with Inventory, should the stock levels be transferred to both software once a product leaves the stock

What are we doing once the qualification is done :

  • If Odoo provides the feature required by the customer: We’ll not do the integration
  • If Odoo doesn’t provide the feature: we can consider doing the integration. Need a presales to make sure the integration can cover the need and if yes, we'll do a ROI analysis
  • We’ll not integrate an external website as it represents too many LoC
  • We can integrate an app developed in-house by the customer but we’ll need to do a GAP Analysis first
  • Accounting: we’ll not do it but we can consider it if the integration is really simple (import/export journal entries for example). We’ll need the context of this integration, a valid business reason and a complete scope to do so, and we’ll keep the decision to say no to this at any time
  • Bank Synchronization : we’ll not do it
  • Payment acquirer: we can consider it but this will require a big GAP Analysis, a complete understanding of what they want to do and in what context. Payment acquirers are very hard to maintain and require a lot of LoCs, so it will be VERY costly for the customer and this could break anytime the payment acquirer changes its API
  • Logistic Carrier: similar to Payment Acquirer
  • EDI: case by case scenario

**General recommendations: **

  • Integrations are done in the last resort, when all the other options have been already explored
  • Odoo needs to be the center of the workflow
  • This may occur downtime: if the API changes on the other software’s side, customers can experience downtime for their Odoo DB
  • Odoo SH will be mandatory
  • We’re not developing on softwares that are not Odoo
  • ROI Analysis will be mandatory before doing any kind of integration (3rd party app too, see that section HERE)