For the most part the Odoo 11 upgrade was focused primarily on improving Odoo's underlying architecture. Instead of using Python 2.7, Odoo now uses Python 3.5. The improved design in Odoo 11 allows many operations to run up to 3x faster. This means that there are not all that many differences between Odoo 10 and Odoo 11 from a functional standpoint. Still there are a few welcome improvements that make the user experience more enjoyable.

Odoo 11 now features a new activities system that is integrated with Odoo's applications, VoIP, calendar and notes. Clicking on a small icon on the menu bar will display the current activities. Here is an example of what a Lead/Opportunity activity looks like in Odoo 11.

In Sales Management and CRM, Odoo 11 provides small interface enhancements, improving the user experience.

Setting up an Odoo system is no easy task. Many companies get into trouble believing that they can just install the software and throw in some data. Inevitably, the scope of the project grows and what was supposed to be a simple system ends up a confusing mess. Fortunately, Odoo's modular design allows you to take a systematic approach to implementing Odoo for your business.

The bare-bones installation of Odoo simply provides you with a limited messaging system. To manage your Odoo implementation, you must begin by planning the modules with which you will work first. Odoo allows you to install just what you need now, and then install additional Odoo modules...

If you have installed Odoo on your own server, you will need to first create a database. As you add additional applications to Odoo, the necessary tables and fields will be added to the database you specify.

If you have just installed a fresh copy of Odoo, you will be prompted automatically to create a new Odoo database.

In the preceding screenshot, you can see the Odoo Create Database form.

Odoo provides basic instructions for creating your database. Let us quickly review the fields and how they are used.

After clicking on Create Database, there may be a slight delay, depending on your system, before you are shown a page that lists the available applications.

This screen lets you select from a list of the most common Odoo modules to install.

There is very little you can do with just an Odoo database with no modules installed. Now, we will install the Sales Management application so we can begin setting up our business selling T-shirts.

Click on the Install button to install the Sales Management module.

While modules are being installed and during other long operations, you will often see a Loading... icon at the top center of your screen. Unlike previous versions of Odoo, which that prompted for accounting and other setup information, Odoo now completes the installation unattended.

After the installation of the sales order application, Odoo 11 takes you to the Discuss menu, where your inbox and other communication activities are located. You will also notice that Odoo provides small purple tear drops that provide helpful tips. These will show up in most Odoo applications you install.

As you can see, the application menus are across the top of the interface. Click the Sales menu to bring up the Sales application. This takes you directly to the Sales dashboard. As we have just installed the application, there is very little to see in the dashboard, but we can see the available menu options along the left edge of the interface.

The menus along the top allow you to change between the major applications and settings within Odoo, while the menus down the left side outline your available options in the current application...

Helpful instructions prompt you to begin entering your first customer into Odoo by clicking the Create button.

This is the Odoo Customers form. Clicking Create will generate a customer record.

Silkworm sells T-shirts to both businesses and retail customers. For this example, we will use a fictional customer named Mike Smith who wishes to purchase several T-shirts. Odoo offers flexibility in collecting customer information, and by default most fields are not required. If you see a field that is purple, that is a required field. In Odoo 10, the only required field for the customer is the name.

The rest of the fields are optional. Later, we will learn how you can configure Odoo to make additional fields required.

In this example, we have filled out some of the basic fields for our fictional customer, Mike Smith:

Now that we have a customer, it is time we enter some products to sell to our new customer. For our example, we are going to enter a medium, white-cotton T-shirt. Click on the Products item in the menu on the left:

Create a new product by clicking the Create button.

The following screenshot is of the General Information page of the Products form, which you use to enter a product record into Odoo:

The Product Name is what will display on the sales...

We have entered both a customer and a product. However, before we create a sales order, we still have some work to do in setting up our company. Currently, Odoo does not even know the name of our company and has, by default, used Your Company as the name.

We can locate the company information by choosing Settings from the top menu and then clicking the Set Up button from the dashboard.

After you click the button, you will get taken to the company information form. The following screenshot is a company record filled in with the data for our sample case study:

Here, we have supplied the company name along with the address, email, phone, website, and company slogan. It is also possible to click the photo icon at the top left to assign a logo to the company.

Now for the moment we have all been waiting for. We finally get to sell our products by entering a sales order. To get to the Sales Order screen, click Sales in the top menu, and then choose Orders from the sub-menu on the left.

The following screenshot shows existing sales orders and allows users to create a new sales order:

Click on the Create button to create a new sales order. Every brand-new sales order begins as a quotation and stays in that state until you confirm the sale. Only after confirming the quotation will your sale be referred to as a sales order.

The following screenshot is a new sales order form with the cursor set on the Customer field:

Depending on the workflow of the business, a lot of different things can happen after you have confirmed a sales order. In manufacturing companies, you may need to both purchase products and create a manufacturing order to produce the final product before you invoice the customer. In our example, we are going to go ahead and invoice the customer for the T-shirt they have ordered. Click the Create Invoice button to generate an invoice for the sales order.

An Odoo Invoice Order wizard pops up to walk you through the invoice creation process.

The following screenshot shows the Invoice Order wizard:

Odoo provides a variety of options for invoicing the entire...

In this chapter, we started by creating an Odoo database. We then installed the Sales Order Management module and created our first customer. With our customer created, we turned our attention to setting up a product in Odoo and entering our basic company information. Next, we created a quotation and followed the workflow all the way through to confirming the sales order and generating an invoice.

In the next chapter, we'll look at our sales strategy and what we want to achieve via CRM software.