The Odoo Experience 2021 event took place over 6th-7th October this year and was conducted online. Odoo was well prepared this time around and with 2020's experience behind, has really pulled out all the stops to achieve a very highly polished set of presentations. There was even some role-play and comedy thrown in for good measure!
With over 100 talks, it was hard to make a choice between them but I have selected below those that I believe have the most impact for SMEs and also those that are of particular interest for engineering or manufacturing companies.
As with most Odoo releases there are some areas that are mostly unchanged and others that have been the focal point of this release. The areas receiving the most drastic improvements have been generally Projects, Website Builder, Discuss and Inventory.
For more detail on all the changes, see the Odoo V15 Official Release Notes
To see all the talks from the event see Odoo Experience 2021: List of Sessions
Day 1 talks
Opening Keynote - Unveiling Odoo 15
Odoo's Implementation Methodology: Introduction
What's New in Project?
What's New in Website?
How to Use Odoo Survey to Create Entertaining Presentations
Discover How Odoo Studio Helps with Mockups
Discover the Beauty & Simplicity of Automated Actions
Day 2 talks
What's New in Discuss?
What's New in Inventory?
Work Center 3D View
Manage flexible locations utilization and advanced inventory flows with smart putaway rules
Deploying & Scaling your Odoo Server
Shipping Can Be Easier - Save Time and Lower Costs by Integrating Sendcloud With Odoo
Odoo Tools for Tracking Manufacturing - An Engineering to Order Case Study
Implementing Project-based Manufacturing for Engineer-to-Order Industries
Our favourite new features
General
Collaborative notes on pretty much everything. Previously only available on project tasks, note fields can be edited in parallel
New HTML editor for inline editing (using / command)
Group by Many2Many fields - A feature many people asked for. e.g group by tags!
Mass mailing blocks improved to match web builder
Spreadsheets can be exported to XLSX and are fully collaborative
Multi-sales teams membership for CRM opportunities/leads
New import screen for simpler data import
Out-of-office capabilities in Time Off
Outlook Connector enhanced (log tickets, opportunities, tasks and attachments)
Email template language moved from Jinja to Qweb
New CTRL+K global keyboard shortcut for quick access to common commands
Discuss + Calendars
Video and audio calling system built-in - No reliance on Zoom or Teams, ability to make video calls internally and externally directly in Odoo
Sharing Calendar availability externally with easy for availability
Calendar events have meeting URL for online locations
Better recurring events for Google/Outlook integration
Contacts
Download Vcard from contacts (and companies) - Enterprise only
Project
Kanban view now able to be shared via the portal for external users with readonly and edit permission controls
Project stages (similar to task stages)
Critical path dependency with blocking
Milestones
Burndown chart
Website
New website configurator wizard when creating a new website - Using AI it creates a design to get you started quicker
Gradients for text, background and buttons for modern styling
Web search available site-wide and now searches all Odoo models
Embed Block and Donate Block
Custom visibility control per block
Google Analytics improved to latest mechanism
Inventory
GS1-128 barcode support (including QR codes) which contain both lots/serial no, product ID and more
Batch scanning improved
Storage Categories added (with storage locations and package type integration)
Improved batch, wave and cluster picking via mobile barcode scanner
Scan several receipts per supplier/customer easily when grouped
Package type option when scanning barcodes
Locate product by scanning barcode
Closest Location - new removal strategy
Better forecast reporting
Reservation Method for stock: Choose between reservation on confirmation of sale order, manually or before scheduled date
Quality
Quality checks based on Product (by lot/serial) or whole Operation as in previous versions
Accounting
Chart of accounts view revamped
Aged reports improved
Follow-up system improved
VAT reports improved
Better closing methods
Disallowed expenses
Improved reconciliation
POS
Credits, Coupons and Discounts
No longer requires IOT box to connect to network printers and other POS devices. e.g Epson TM-M30 receipt printer
Sales and CRM
Sales Dashboard view in reports
CRM rule based assigned by sales teams
Attendance + Timesheets
Overtime calculated with extra hours, both above and below required attendance for flexible remote working
Convert extra hours into Time Off
Overtime calculation on Timesheets
Manufacturing
Analytic accounts now added to MRP MO which joins to accounting journals for better segmented costing per job. Previously only work centre analytics possible
New BOMs can copy existing operations
Planning
Ability to plan by resources - Both human and material with Gantt view