Quick-change header for eTiny

eTiny (OpenERP’s web server) shows default header images and style that might not really suit your needs.

OpenERP with default style

Being GPL, you can modify that at will, but you have to know how.

Although it’s probably not the best way to do it, you can easily alter the existing images to show something a little different.

This is all done (on a Debian/Ubuntu server) by changing the files in /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/eTiny-1.[0.1.1]-py2.4.egg/tinyerp/static (the part between brackets may vary) to suit your tastes.

The important files are

• css/style.css
• images/developped_by.png
• images/mainmenu_button.png
• images/openerp_big.png
• images/openerp_small.png
• images/sidebar_button_bg.png

So just make a backup, open them, change them and put them back in to get a very light (but refreshing change).

Open ERP using blue style

Caching in eTiny, OpenERP’s web server

I recently learnt that eTiny, OpenERP’s web server, is actually caching pages when in “production” mode (this mode can be changed in the configuration file which is /etc/etiny-server.cfg if you followed the documentation here).

This means that installing some modules may not have a direct visual effect if you have already seen a page before altering it with the module installation.

To avoid caching, you can either change the eTiny server mode in /etc/etiny-server.cfg (to “development” I guess), or simply restart the eTiny server. This will erase the cache.

Of course, none of these methods is actually acceptable once the server is in production, but at least there is a way… (I suppose a way to clean the cache via a script while the server is running would be good).

OpenERP – Studying, contributing and providing services

Following an internal meeting at BeezNest, we decided to officially provide services for OpenERP before the end of the year, through an official partnership with Tiny SPRL, the company behind the product.

We found a lot of little bugs and usability problems, and submitted our first bug report following the little comment by Stéphane Wirtel, one of our acquaintances (through other channels than OpenERP) and an official employee of Tiny SPRL (as a developer of OpenERP).

However, and although we found these bugs and usability problems, we recognise the potential of the product and, in comparison with Dolibarr, find that it is much more applicable in our business model (highly technical complexity more necessary to large companies).

Arnaud has taught me a little bit how ti use the product (to be able to demonstrate it commercially) and we have a strong lead with a Peruvian company through our sister company Dokeos Latinoamérica, so we’re probably going to start soon on this project and a French company that seemed to have needs going above what Dolibarr has to offer.

We found a little… tricky to get into the commercial technique of Tiny (providing the product for free but obviously keeping a series of modules under non-free or non-open license) but it all makes sense in a way.

There are countless things we would like to implement into OpenERP, including some way to get an external widget log time into the timesheet module, but that will all probably have to wait until a few months from now. Let’s hope for the best.

OpenERP – Timesheet module – Hours encoding error

When trying to encode new hours in one’s timesheet in OpenERP, the following error might appear:

ERROR:  null value in column “journal_id” violates not-null constraint

insert into “account_analytic_line” (id,perm_id,”user_id”,”account_id”,”general_account_id”,”product_uom_id”,”journal_id”,”name”,”to_invoice”,”amount”,”unit_amount”,”date”,”product_id”,create_uid,create_date) values (4,NULL,’4′,’6′,’634′,’4′,NULL,’Analysis of AIM development project’,NULL,-40.000000,2.000000,’2008-08-14′,’1′,4,now())

The error code is not clear, but the problem in this case comes from the fact that you don’t have (or you didn’t select) an “Invoicing” item. An invoicing is the type of invoicing (if you use a special discount for a special type of client for example). If you don’t know or you don’t have any “special” kind of invoicing, just enter something like “normal invoicing”.

I had initially started to look for the interface definition in the timesheet module to try and find a missing field (adding a “Journal” field or something to avoid the “NULL” value), but just filling an invoice type is much faster. Anyway, just in case, I think the following lines are of interest in the interface definition…

./hr_timesheet_invoice/hr_timesheet_invoice.py:73:class account_analytic_line(osv.osv):
./hr_timesheet_invoice/hr_timesheet_invoice.py:82:        return super(account_analytic_line,self).unlink(cursor, user, ids,
./hr_timesheet_invoice/hr_timesheet_invoice.py:87:        return super(account_analytic_line,self).write(cr, uid, ids, vals,
./hr_timesheet_invoice/hr_timesheet_invoice.py:105:        return super(account_analytic_line, self).copy(cursor, user, obj_id,
./hr_timesheet_invoice/hr_timesheet_invoice.py:108:account_analytic_line()

Installing modules in OpenERP with PostgreSQL 8.3

When using OpenERP 4.2.2. with PostgreSQL 8.3, a few SQL errors appear when installing new modules, with SUBSTRING appearing with dates.

A solution is suggested here (by cornflake on the OpenERP forum). Basically, it consists in replacing all occurences of “substring(date for 7)” by “to_char(date, ‘YYYY-MM’)” in /usr/share/tinyerp-server/addons/

Installing OpenERP on Ubuntu – Creating databases – Troubleshooting

I have updated the OpenERP wiki again to add documentation about the possible problems happening when trying to create new databases. Basically, it’s due to one of two reasons:

1. the terp user not having a shell to execute the createdb command
2. the terp user not using the ident method to execute the createdb command

If you want to know more, check out the troubleshooting page of the OpenERP wiki

I’ve also added the missing documentation about how to enable the server logging on the same page.