Odoo was formerly known as Open ERP and TinyERP and served as a complete enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solution in a powerful, open-source package. Odoo includes all the features you need for ERP/CRM, such as:
- Easy to use user interface.
- Flexible workflows.
- Customizable reports.
- Inventory management.
- Sales and purchasing management.
- Automation of tasks.
- Marketing campaigns.
- Help desk.
- Point of sale.
Odoo can be used for retail, services, operations, finance, marketing, development, etc. It is scalable and extendable (with thousands of installable apps).
I want to walk you through installing Odoo on my server of choice, Ubuntu Server 20.04.
SEE: 40+ open source and Linux terms you need to know (TechRepublic Premium)
What you will need
The only things you will need for this to work are a running instance of Ubuntu Server 20.04 and a user with sudo privileges. That’s it, let’s get to work.
How to install dependencies
The first thing we are going to do is install the necessary dependencies. Connect to your server and install these packages with:
sudo apt-get install git python3-pip build-essential wget python3-dev python3-venv python3-wheel libxslt-dev libzip-dev libldap2-dev libsasl2-dev python3-setuptools node-less postgresql -y
How to create required users
We need to create a Linux user and a PostgreSQL user. Start by creating the Linux user with the command:
sudo useradd -m -d /opt/odoo -U -r -s /bin/bash odoo
Next, create the PostgreSQL user with:
sudo su - postgres -c "createuser -s odoo"
How to install Odoo
We are now ready to install the system itself. Switch to the odoo user with the command:
sudo su - odoo
Next, use git to clone the latest branch of Odoo (as of this writing, it’s 15):
git clone https://www.github.com/odoo/odoo --depth 1 --branch 15.0 /opt/odoo/odoo15
Switch to the newly created directory with:
cd /opt/odoo
Create a new virtual Python environment with:
python3 -m venv odoo15-venv
Activate the new environment with the command:
source odoo15-venv/bin/activate
Install the required Python modules with the following commands:
pip3 install wheel
pip3 install -r odoo15/requirements.txt
The second command above will take 5-10 minutes, so watch the output scroll by or go take care of another admin task. Once the commands complete, deactivate the environment and exit the odoo user with:
deactivate
exit
To activate the Odoo add-on system, we need to create a directory to host the downloaded files. Create the directory and give it the necessary permissions with:
sudo mkdir /opt/odoo/odoo15-custom-addons
sudo chown odoo: /opt/odoo/odoo15-custom-addons
Copy the default configuration file to /etc with the command:
sudo cp /opt/odoo/odoo15/debian/odoo.conf /etc/odoo15.conf
Open the configuration file for editing with:
sudo nano /etc/odoo15.conf
Edit this file to look like this:
[options]
; This is the password that allows database operations:
admin_passwd = PASSWORD
db_host = False
db_port = False
db_user = odoo
db_password = False
addons_path = /opt/odoo/odoo15/addons
Where PASSWORD is a strong/unique password.
Save and close the file.
Now we need to create a systemd service file with:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/odoo15.service
[Unit]
Description=Odoo15
Requires=postgresql.service
After=network.target postgresql.service
[Service]
Type=simple
SyslogIdentifier=odoo15
PermissionsStartOnly=true
User=odoo
Group=odoo
ExecStart=/opt/odoo/odoo15-venv/bin/python3 /opt/odoo/odoo15/odoo-bin -c /etc/odoo15.conf
StandardOutput=journal+console
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Save and close the file. Reload the systemd daemon with:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Start and activate the Odoo service with:
sudo systemctl enable --now odoo15
How to access Odoo
Odoo is now installed and running on your server. Open a web browser and point it to http://SERVER:8069 (where SERVER is either the IP address or domain of the hosting server). You will be prompted to fill in information for creating a new database (Figure A).
Figure A
Be sure to copy the generated random password for the database (or choose to use your own password). You can also check the box for demo data (especially if it’s your first time using Odoo).
Click Create Database and the installation will complete. Once done, you will end up on the Odoo Apps page (Figure B), where you can start selecting the applications you want to install to complement your new CRM/ERP solution.
Figure B
How to change the default admin user in Odoo
One of the first things you’ll want to do is change the default admin user, which is listed as Mitchel Admin and includes a random photo. To do this, click on the four squares icon at the top left and click on Settings. In the resulting window (Figure C), click Manage users.
Figure C
Click the Mitchel Admin listing, then click Edit. You can now edit the admin user name, add a photo, and manage access rights, preferences, and account security (Figure D).
Figure D
Congratulations, you have a running CRM/ERP tool that can be extended to fill many roles for your business.
Subscribe to TechRepublic’s How To Make Tech Work on YouTube for all the latest tech tips for professionals from Jack Wallen.