Interface Overload and Avoiding Extra Costs<\/span><\/h4>\nAll these applications have a pricing system that grows more or less linearly with the size of the team, which could lead to considerable extra costs if we continued to grow, so we thought we could solve this within our ERP Odoo, avoiding third parties. First, because it was our internal management tool, where we already had the team’s information (personnel directory, access rights, photos, etc) so we would avoid what we call interface overload.<\/span><\/p>\nSecond, because of the long-term cost of a new software that we would also have to integrate with the rest of the tools; It would force us to maintain two lists of users and it would involve an annual license cost depending on the size of the team, while developing a new Odoo Module meant \u201conly\u201d an internal cost in hours.<\/span><\/p>\nThe task was clear, we needed a system that would allow each team member to autonomously and easily book a desk, for a limited number of days -beware of hogs!- and\u00a0 taking into account that we use Odoo Online, so the scope of development within the application had to be limited.<\/span><\/p>\nWe knew the limits, but we were convinced of the advantages of using an online\/cloud system.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n- All in one place; the desk booking\u00a0 application would be accessible from the same interface as the other core applications we use.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Hosted in the cloud, allowing access from any location or device, which was important to ensure that the team reserves their desk in time.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Integrated information, when adding or removing a colleague in Odoo, their access would be automatically managed.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Scalability, in Odoo we wouldn’t pay extra for each person who had to use the application.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Implementation<\/span><\/h4>\nWe had to find a way to display a map of our office in Odoo. Without major developments, and thanks to the configuration of our desks, we though we could use Odoo’s Kanban View, a view that allows us to view cards organized by columns. This view allows us to schematically represent the distribution of our work posts.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.modelical.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Deskbooking_post1-e1661158913515-480x321.png\")
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Workflows and rules<\/b><\/h5>\n
The next step was to define the series of rules and requirements that the application had to respect:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- Some employees come to the office regularly and have a pre-assigned desk.<\/span><\/li>\n
- The pre-assignment can be for every day or depending on the day of the week.<\/span><\/li>\n
- An employee cannot book a pre-assigned desk if there is another free one.<\/span><\/li>\n
- An employee cannot book 2 desks for himself.<\/span><\/li>\n
- An employee who is pre-assigned to one desk, cannot book another.<\/span><\/li>\n
- There are blocked desks (special ones with workstations available to everyone, or reserved for guests)<\/span><\/li>\n
- The availability of desks are released week by week to create the habit of booking what is really going to be used.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.modelical.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Deskbooking_post2-480x278.png\")
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For those of you who know how Odoo is structured, we create two new models: \u201cDesks\u201d and \u201cBookings\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIn the Desks Model, we configure the records corresponding to each desk (in our case 30-50 records\/desks), indicating the location, if it is blocked or available by default\u00a0 and if it has a pre-assigned user.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the Bookings Model, we created new records for each day, taking information from the Desk Model, and establishing if for that specific day, the desk is blocked or available, or if it has a pre-assigned user.<\/span><\/p>\nTo automate the creation of the Bookings Model records, we created a scheduled automatic action, which creates the \u201cbookings\u201d taking information from the Desks model, for the following 7 days as long as they were not already created.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn the same way, we created a scheduled action that creates the necessary filters to be able to display in the Kanban view only the records of each day (today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, etc).<\/span><\/p>\n
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