The Keynote, the opportunity to showcase new products

In the blink of an eye

Fabien Pinckaers, founder and CEO of Odoo, presents himself for the opening of the Keynote in front of a giant screen and the cheers of the audience. He says it, he repeats it, Odoo is designed for users and not only for managers. And this year, to serve them better, it needed a fast software, very fast, faster than the blink of an eye! That's the promise. SAP, an outdated interface with limited performance, is compared with Odoo 16, modern and very fast. On click, the information is displayed. No delay: the promise is kept.

The website builder, a cookie-free diet

The front and back, combined, for an ease of use and construction of your web portal. New features, such as the possibility of customizing images in mobile devices, with adjustable angles and colors, or the possibility of scroll animation.
The page can now be built with grids, which allows to adjust images, buttons, text blocks much more precisely. We also saw, in a dedicated talk, a new feature, the website converter. This technology is based on the appearance of a web page to reproduce it as close as possible, in the Odoo CMS format. But the editor has not yet determined the best strategy to release it, for fear that it could be used for phishing.
Without making a complete list of new features, we note that the mobile version is independently customizable, that we can add a menu for attributes and categories, and that the user can rent a product online. A chatbot completes the chat offer.
And finally, why ask the user for his preferences regarding cookie management, when there is no need for a cookie anymore? Analytics can now rely on an open-source tool, Plausible, thanks to which the data stays on your site and is no longer retrieved by a third party, like Google.

"Knowledge", at your fingertips

A tool for yourself, a tool for the team, a tool for the organization. Write what you know and what others need to know. Make a reminder note to sales people: from any app (sales for example) it is possible to access an article written in Knowledge. And since it's Odoo, I'm in my breadcrumb trail, thanks to which I can go back to the previous screen, on my quote for example.
This knowledge base does not only allow to write, it allows to add databases, and to enrich them with properties. This functionality is available on most of the forms, with the right level of rights. A studio without a studio! And of course you can add your tables, graphs and any reporting, as well as any list, to have real time data.

Sales, CRM, a better integration

From a purchase order, it is now even easier to check and anticipate inventory status. 
And the management of promotion and loyalty programs is unified across all sales methods. Personally, I've been waiting for this, so I'm delighted.

Service, planning, documents, to the smallest detail

The emphasis was put on easing the planning of tasks and production. In a few clicks you have optimized your planning. Congratulations! 
On your project, you customize your tasks by adding the properties that interest you, and you add the desired documents.
Oh, and of course, you can now invoice your project milestones!

Production et inventory

As with project tasks, you can now define dependencies between work orders. This enables you to optimize production flows. You can also automate some tasks to avoid logistic errors.

Accounting, advanced analytics

Analytics is improved, with several account plans, and with the possibility to do analytical distribution directly at the level of purchase orders and invoices lines. The OCR is improved, with the possibility to create supplier invoices in mass. Without being exhaustive, we can note the possibility to define an invoicing recurrence, to update the accounting entries in mass, etc.

A redesigned dashboard

Your dashboard will never be empty again. It now comes by default with a whole bunch of indicators for prospecting, sales, finance, logistics etc. In addition to displaying what you have chosen, of course.
And each of these dashboards is dynamic. From there you can consult the data you want, you can filter very easily: by clicking on a value here, you filter there.

Darkmode rises

And finally, a darkmode is available to have the Odoo of the black knight.

A spotlight for those in the shadows

This keynote ends with a strong tribute to the technical teams and developers, by specialty. It's a nice conclusion, especially since this tool and this company are thought and led by a developer.

Talks, details and case studies

After this great meeting, the ant-hill starts to move. Everyone goes to watch their favorite talks, some on accounting, some on performance, some on the web portal. For my part, I navigated between talks presented by Odoo on new features and talks from partners, all very interesting. Without going into the details of the features, which will be the subject of a v16 white paper, what I got out of these moments was the feeling of a geeky, united and enthusiastic community. 

Keynote, vision and strategy

Again, Fabien Pinckaers comes on stage, no longer to talk about tools, but to talk about strategy and not too much vision, because as he likes to remind us, a vision is not made to change every year.
Strategy then. This year, we have been waiting for a long time, it is a radical change of pricing. We go from a price per user combined with a price per module to a price per user only. The difference? The freemium pricing is kept, and on top of it we have a "standard" price for SaaS users and a "customized" price for Paas (odoo.sh) and on-premise users. Again, this is welcomed with enthusiasm. It's true, it's correctly presented: aligned with the pricing segmentation of the market, but at a low price. Odoo is a CRM, a sales and marketing tool, an ERP. And more. Each of these products costs more individually than Odoo alone, which brings them all together. And now organizations have access to the full range of available modules, for not a kopek more.
And as Fabien says, small businesses will benefit the most from this new pricing.

More talks, always more talks

At a cruising pace, it's the effervescence that continues. Always this great energy, and all this interesting information. It was my first Odoo experience in presence. It was an opportunity to meet the Odoo teams, and integrators as well, to exchange on our ways of doing things, our specializations.