The Odoo Project app is for organising and running work that is structured as projects and tasks. This piece is about setting it up well.
What the Project app is for
The Odoo Project app organises work into projects and tasks: a project is a body of work, and within it the work is broken into tasks, each with an owner and a state, moving through the stages of getting done. The Project app is what a business uses to plan, run, and track work that is structured this way, from a client engagement to an internal initiative. Setting up the Project app means configuring it so it organises work in a way that genuinely matches how the team works.
The core: projects and tasks
The core of the Project app is the project and the task, and the structure is deliberately straightforward, because it has to fit a wide range of work. Setting up the Project app does not mean a heavy configuration; it means setting up the projects the business runs and establishing how tasks within them will be organised. The core structure is simple; the setup is mostly about fitting that simple structure to the business's genuine work.
The key setup decision: task stages
The most important part of setting up the Project app is the task stages: the steps a task moves through, from new to done. The stages are the workflow of the work, and they should reflect how the team genuinely works, the real steps the team's work passes through. This is the key setup decision, and it is important enough that it is worth its own consideration; designing task stages that genuinely match the team's workflow is what makes the Project app fit the team. Setting up the Project app well rests substantially on getting the task stages right.
Using the connections
Part of setting up the Project app well, for businesses where it applies, is making use of its connections. The Project app connects to Timesheets, so time spent on tasks can be recorded against the work, and to Sales, so selling a service can create the project to deliver it. Together, these connections enable project profitability, seeing whether a project genuinely made money. For a service business, setting up the Project app to use these connections is much of where its value comes from. A business should set up Project as part of the connected whole where those connections genuinely matter to it.
Set it up to match how the team works
The recurring principle, as with any Odoo application, is to set up the Project app to match how the team genuinely works. The projects should reflect the genuine bodies of work; the task stages should reflect the genuine workflow; the connections should be used where they genuinely matter. Set up to match the team's reality, the Project app organises work in a way the team can genuinely use. Set up to a generic or imposed structure, it fits the team poorly and is worked around.
The takeaway
Setting up the Odoo Project app means configuring it to organise the team's work into projects and tasks in a way that genuinely matches how the team works. The core structure, projects and tasks, is simple; the key setup decision is the task stages, which should reflect the team's genuine workflow. For businesses where it matters, setting up Project to use its connections to Timesheets and Sales is where much of its value comes from. The principle is to set it up to match how the team genuinely works. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.