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Step Back: Everything Is a List View or a Form View

By the end of this lesson you will understand the structure underneath every screen in Odoo.

This week you have used Settings, Website, Inventory, Purchase, Sales and Accounting. Six apps. Dozens of screens. It probably felt like a lot to learn.

The whole system

Every screen you have seen is one of two things.

List view

Many records. Rows and columns. You use it to find something, filter, group, or scan.

Form view

One record. Fields, tabs, buttons, a status bar. You use it to look at or change one thing.

That is the whole system. You find things in a list. You work on one thing in a form.

Check it against your own week

List view — manyForm view — one
ProductsA product
Requests for QuotationA purchase order
ReceiptsA receipt
Sales OrdersA sales order
InvoicesAn invoice
ContactsA customer
UsersA user
Stock report

Every single screen. There was no third kind of thing.

What about kanban, calendar and graphs?

They are list views wearing a different coat.

A kanban board is the same set of records drawn as cards instead of rows. A calendar is the same records placed on dates. A pivot or graph is the same records counted and summed. Change the drawing, not the data. Click a card and you land in the form view, exactly as clicking a row would.

What a form view always has

PartWhat it does
Status barWhere this record is in its life, and what happens next
ButtonsThe actions available right now, and no others
Smart buttonsCounts of related records — doorways to other lists and forms
FieldsThe data itself
TabsMore fields, grouped so the screen is not overwhelming
ChatterThe history, messages, and who changed what

Why this matters more than anything else this week

An app you have never opened is no longer unfamiliar. It is a list of something, and a form for one of them. You will recognise the status bar, the buttons, the smart buttons and the chatter, because they are always in the same places doing the same jobs.

The remaining lessons of this course are no different:

Employees
A kanban of cards — a list view. Click one, get a form.
Time Off
A list of requests. One request is a form.
Payroll
A list of contracts. One contract is a form.

You already know how to use all three. What is left to learn is what the fields mean — not how the screen works.

Test yourself. Open any app you have not touched this week. Before clicking anything, say out loud: what is the list of, and what will one of them look like? Then check whether you were right.

You will be.

The one idea that makes the whole of Odoo make sense — and makes every app you have not seen yet easy.

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