Trigger-like Automated Actions

OpenERP's Automated Actions is a module usually associated with the CRM modules, allowing to automate sales process steps, without the need to write Python code.

Each automated action rule operates on an OpenERP model, any model. It's  behaviour is defined through three tabs:

• Conditions tell when the rule is fired.
• Actions tell what operations should be done, like setting a specific user as Responsible person, or running a Server Action.
• E-mail actions allows to define e-mail messages to be sent .

Conditions can be activated at scheduled moments. This is the sole purpose of the "Conditions on Time" section. The scheduler action evaluates these conditions to decide what rules to trigger. This allows you to configure actions like "send an e-mail reminder two days after last action date".


The remaining conditions are evaluated immediately when a record is saved. This allows you to configure actions like "send an e-mail when state is changed to In Progress".


While you get the feeling of having a lot of potential to easily customize a customer's very specific business rules, actually the module reveals to fall short on the expectations.
For instance, it's not possible to create conditions for:

• When a new Issue is created, sending an e-mail informing the new Issue;
• When the Responsible is changed, sending an e-mail informing the new responsible person.

Also, the e-mail actions definition is very confusing and limited. The e-mail Subject line is not configurable, and the message body can only use a small list of keyword to include data from the document.

The reis_base_action_rule_triggers module overcomes these limitations and unlocks a lot of the power of the standard module. This is done through two simple additions:

• Conditions can be defined by an "Evaluated expression", that can work on record's old and new values.
• Actions can send an e-mail using v6.1 Email templates, a lot more powerful than the "e-mail actions" options, making them obsolete.

In the condition expressions some variables are available (inspiration came from Oracle's database triggers):

• inserting, creating: boolean indicating it's a new record is being created;
• updating, writing: boolean indicating it's an existing record being changed;
• new: a dictionary with all the values after the record is changed;
• old: a dictionary with all the values before the record was changed;
• changed: a dictionary with only the values that actually changed, even if rewritten (empty if not updating);
• obj: browseable record object, allowing dot notation, with the new/changed record.

Here are some real examples used in a production environment for the Project Issue module:


New issue is created, or is reactivated:
inserting or changed.get('state') == 'draft'


Issue is closed or cancelled:
changed.get('state') in ('done', 'cancel')


Issue's Responsible changed:
old.get('user_id') and new.get('user_id')
and old.get('user_id') != new.get('user_id') 
and not new.get('date_open')  #date_open is written only by Open issue

I hope this turn out useful to more people, and would love to hear about your experience with this module.

How to: allow Project Users to record Time on Tasks for anyone

If you have hr_timesheet installed, users also in the Employee group will only be able to record time on tasks for themselves. If you need Project Users or Managers to be able to record time for other persons, just add the following Record Rule:

An OpenERP Apps and dependencies installer

While the apps.openerp.com site provides access to community modules, there is  no way to automatically download a module and all it's dependencies. The problem is even worse if the dependency modules are hosted in different branches.

For this, I created a tool to assist in downloading a module and all it's dependencies, in a way similar to Python's pip or Ubuntu's apt-get.

Here is a quick-start demo:

First, position your command line on your target "addons" directory. For demonstration purposes, let's use a temporary location:

mkdir /tmp/addons
cd /tmp/addons

Now install the "apps" tool and specify the OpenERP version you are working with:

bzr checkout --lightweight lp:~dreis-pt/+junk/apps
apps/init 6.1

Finally, use "apps/get" to download the modules you need. The tool will search in an index for their branch location, download and copy to the current addons directory. Let's try it with two different asterik related modules:

apps/get asterisk_click2dial asterisk360

The apps/get command depends on pre-genererated index files. The program to generate these indexes is also provided, but that's a long running operation, ment to be regularly executed by a server.

I know there are a lot of things to improve, but the current version is perfectly usable. I feel this could be an important tool for the community, so comments would be very welcome.

Connect to SQL Server from Ubuntu

Connecting an Ubuntu box to a MS SQL Server can by achieved through the FreeTDS ODBC driver.

Here goes a small recipe to install it:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install tdsodbc

sudo apt-get install unixodbc unixodbc-dev

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

sudo easy_install pyodbc

sudo echo -e "[FreeTDS]\nDriver=/usr/lib/odbc/libtdsodbc.so" >> /etc/odbcinst.ini

Now you can open a Python interpreter and test the connection using pyodbc.
This may speed you up if you're trying to import SQL Server data to OpenERP.

Importing data from ODBC sources

With the import_odbc OpenERP  you can import data directly from other databases, such as Oracle or SQL Server, and schedule them to run regularly. Usage examples are to automatically update Customer data from a CRM app or Employee data from a HRIS/Payroll app.

The import is done using the standard import_data() ORM method, used when importing data through the user interface. So, it benefits from all its features, including relationship reconnecting (:id or /id columns).

Each import has a SQL statement used to build the equivalent for an import file. The column titles are given by the SQL's column names.

The first column in the SQL should provide a unique identifier for each record, and will be used to build it's xml_id. This id allows subsequent imports to update previously imported rows, instead of duplicating them. The xml_is is built using the form [MODEL_ID]_id_[UQ_ID]. For example: product_product_id_9999. This is important to remember when importing several tables with relationships between them. Columns titled "None" are ignored, so if you don't need to write the unique id to OpenERP, you can name the SQLs first column as "None".

For example, to keep the Products table updated with a product list in another company database, the SQL would look like this:
SELECT ID as "None", PRODUCT_CODE as "ref", PRODUCT_NAME as "name", 'product_category_id_'+CATEGORY_ID as "categ_id/id"
FROM T_PRODUCTS 
WHERE DATE_CHANGED >= ? 

The "?" is replaced by the last successful sync date. This date is updated after each successfull import run.
This way it's possible to import only the rows changed since last execution, so you can schedule frequent low-volume imports.

Recently a  feature was added to be able to tolerate to errors when trying to reconnect relationships. Using the previous example, if the product supplier's xml_id is not found, the product import would fail. But if you activate the "Ignore relationship errors" flag, the import would be retried without the "product_category_id/id" column, importing the product with an empty Category field.

You can find the import_odbc module in Launchpad's branch:
lp:~dreis-pt/addons-tko/reis.