Welcome

Welcome to the Odoo community documentation project. For more information why this was set up, see the Motivation page.

How to use this guide

I won't repeat things that are clearly explained in the Official Docs. So treat this resource more as an accompaniment to the Official Docs rather than a replacement for it. There are some things the Official Docs explain well and clearly, so there is no point in just copying that information over here.

I think ultimately you will be able to piece together a solid understanding of Odoo by reading both the Official Docs and the Community Docs. I would recommend starting with the Community Docs, just because they are written more from the perspective of someone learning Odoo rather than a seasoned Odoo developer. I tend to find the Official Docs assume a lot of existing knowledge that probably only the core team actually has.

In addition, a lot of the worked examples are written more like a school text book, where they set you exercises and expect you to try and complete those. Answers to those exercises are available, but not in the Documentation. Personally I found that a bit irritating, as I'd rather just be provided with the relevant information and be trusted that I will bother to read and understand the Docs and not just copy and paste code samples.

These docs are written primarily for someone like myself. Someone who is familiar with traditional web application frameworks, like Ruby on Rails, Django, React, Vue, Laravel and so on. How to translate that knowledge into a framework like Odoo can be difficult if the information you need to do that is missing, which in the Official Docs, it is.

Background reading

If you are new to Odoo, I would definitely recommend reading the following background information, to orient you into the world of Odoo development:

• Odoo Architecture

Creating a new app

This is a very interesting area, as it gives you the possibility to quickly and cheaply build business, data-driven applications. You won't get a super polished UI, but for internal business applications you don't need that.

This is also an area of the Official Documentation that is not well documented, so I feel a lot of value can be added here.

For a more detailed guide on how to scaffold up a basic application, read it on this page: Create a Basic App