Taking HR to the Next Level - Roadmap Odoo 17

Geoffrey: 0:01

The core of every company is the people. You can sell the product, you can do a website, you can manage a stock. But behind that there is always people to manage. HR application are quite mature, but we are struggling against some cultural issue. Every country work differently. We know that what you expect to be the base, what is natural will be totally different in another country. So there is not a golden key for every situation. So we need to find a solution. Payroll will be the future of Odoo like Accounting was like some years ago and I want that people come to Odoo for the Payroll application.

Olivier: 0:38

Hey there, Odooers. Olivia speaking. As we journey through the world of Odoo, today's episode holds a special place. Human Resources isn't just about Recruitment or Payroll. It's about the heart and soul of every organization, its people. With Odoo 17 on the horizon, we are eager to unveil how we are revolutionizing HR to empower teams and drive growth. Joining us today is Geoffrey Margraff, our dedicated HR Product Owner, is here to offer a sneak peek into the innovations and enhancements crafted into the app in Odoo 17. Whether you are an HR professional or someone passionate about optimizing team dynamics, today's episode is packed with insights. So buckle up and let's get started. Hello, Geoffrey.

Geoffrey: 1:18

Hello, Olivier.

Olivier: 1:19

How are you?

Geoffrey: 1:20

Fine.

Olivier: 1:20

Ready to give us a glimpse about the future?

Geoffrey: 1:23

A little bit stressed, but we will try to give the best.

Olivier: 1:26

Come on, come on, come on. It'll go fine. So today we're going to talk about HR apps in Odoo. So what is that? So HR, Human Resources. I guess this is pretty clear, but what does it cover exactly?

Geoffrey: 1:35

Well, it covers a lot of applications. So we have Recruitment, Employee indeed, all the Skills Management. We've got the Appraisal application, we've got the Time-off Management. We can go further with the Fleet if you have company cars or even just vehicles. You can go with a Lunch application to order your meal. We manage the Approvals application if you want to have various flows. We can have we have the Referral application, which is more a niche application, but it can be really useful.

Olivier: 2:07

For employees.

Geoffrey: 2:08

Yeah, indeed. When you are a large company, you want your employee to do the So it's always helpful. And to finish one of the biggest and I think in the future, one of the most important is the Payroll application with all the Contract Management.

Olivier: 2:22

And you managed with your team, not you alone I mean, to have new features for

Geoffrey: 2:29

Yeah. In fact our HR application are quite mature, but we are struggling against differently. We know that what you expect to be the base, what is natural will be totally different in another country. So we need... There is not a golden key for every situation, So we need to find a solution. And that's it's already a big topic to for the version 17 and for the future.

Olivier: 2:58

Okay. Okay. So could you maybe start explaining us, maybe take a first feature and explain us what what you did for this new version?

Geoffrey: 3:08

Yeah. So human the, the HR application are really well used and it's something But in fact every company, the core of every company is the people. You can sell the product, you can do a website, you can manage your stock. But behind that there is always people to manage. And answering their needs, we provide some stuff that are really cool on the market and that we are lacking, or we just think that it will be for the best of them. First of all, in the Employee application we have finally giving the Home Working module.

Olivier: 3:42

Okay. And how does it work exactly? It's just something to to say you're not working from the office.

Geoffrey: 3:47

Yeah. So it's a management of the people. You can set it on your employee profile. So with your own data to say, okay, today I'm at the office, but on Tuesday I will be at home. On Wednesday, maybe I will be at some other place because I'm visiting some customers and I want that everybody knows that. So when you got on the employee portal, you will see the location of everybody and it's also linked into the calendar application where you can see the situation of the other people when you want to plan a meeting.

Olivier: 4:17

So it's more than just home working. It's really the place where you're working today.

Geoffrey: 4:20

Yeah, we are calling that Home Working because the main topic is to say, okay, If you have various offices, you can say at the first of the second. So it's really precise.

Olivier: 4:33

I guess it's something some need that we saw was well present because we had the

Geoffrey: 4:40

Yeah, yeah indeed. The, the, how many times I am at the Odoo and I'm saying to I'm at the farm. But as you know, we have many farms. Okay. Which one, two, three. So every time you have to check and ask the same question again and again, no, you will have an overview.

Olivier: 4:57

Just to be clear for everyone, when you say the farm. It's the office because most of Odoo offices are in old farms in Belgium and so that's why. So, okay, I guess it's also possible to make exceptions then and say, okay, for example, today I'm in Louvain La Neuve, I'm not in Grand-Rosière and I'm supposed to be in Grand-Rosière normally. So I suppose there is something to say and just...

Geoffrey: 5:18

Because things are changing, things are moving. So if you are one day like us, we are in Louvain-La-Neuve, you can go to the calendar application like you will plan any meeting and say, okay, today I'm at another office and the system is smart enough to say, okay, is it just today or is it all the all the Thursday until now? Yeah. Okay. It's all the Thursday. Or if just today it will change the record on the database.

Olivier: 5:42

Okay, cool. Cool. I guess it's super useful actually, because indeed with people in multiple locations if you don't know where they are.

Geoffrey: 5:49

Yeah. Yeah. I think that as long as you are working...

Olivier: 5:52

You have to message them all the time, are you there?

Geoffrey: 5:53

And as long as you're working on many location it will be useful.

Olivier: 5:57

Okay. I suggest we move on to the next cool new feature. What would it be?

Geoffrey: 6:03

Uh, like I say, we have an Approval application, so Approval is mainly on the You want to not to challenge, but you want to assess that your employee is well, in his in his job. You want to have some feedbacks and we have a dedicated application for that and we are giving more...

Olivier: 6:19

So Appraisal, right?

Geoffrey: 6:21

Yeah.

Olivier: 6:21

Okay. Because you said Approval. So I'm just making it clear now.

Geoffrey: 6:23

So, so sorry. My bad Appraisal.

Olivier: 6:25

All right. So appraisals.

Geoffrey: 6:27

You want to have, uh, some interview, some meetings, and now we are giving more vertical level so he can make an appraisal for his on, his the people he manage, but also the people manage by his own underlings. So it's a system in pyramid.

Olivier: 6:47

Yeah, it's like. Like recursive stuff if I want to say it with a developer But indeed.

Geoffrey: 6:52

Indeed. That's how they manage that in the team at the development level.

Olivier: 6:55

And why do we do that? It's like a flexibility problem or...

Geoffrey: 6:58

Yeah, in fact, in human resource you, you try to have a perfect flow, but you So you've got a manager, which we broke his leg and he's not at the office for three months or you have an holiday because a birth maternity, something like that. So sometimes you have to cover. It depends of every company. Some company will say, okay, it's another manager. And we also manage that, that you can pick another manager than yours and have some some private appraisal. Maybe it will be some other business case. You have to you want to have an appraisal with a human resource manager to explain some issue with maybe your own manager and you don't want that to be seen by your by your manager.

Olivier: 7:42

So there is a confidentiality. Yeah.

Geoffrey: 7:44

No, there is more more flexibility and more confidentiality on your own

Olivier: 7:49

Okay, cool. Because indeed, I guess you need this kind of of multi-level aware that you're having an appraisal with another manager.

Geoffrey: 8:01

In appraisals, You will talk about money, you will talk about the feelings about

Olivier: 8:09

All right. All the things you would want to mention about appraisals.

Geoffrey: 8:13

We we made a planification tool. So for the people already using Odoo, they know that there is an appraisal plan which is making at a given date a new appraisal. So we made that stronger. So now you will have a date on the employee profile, the next appraisal date that will be managed by the by your HR or your own manager. And so it gives again, more flexibility to say, okay, maybe in this case my new appraisal should be in six months instead of ten, because the the situation is quite complex and we we want some closure.

Olivier: 8:47

Yeah. If there's some problem whatever with the employee and you want to, to did it evolve since last time and this kind of things.

Geoffrey: 8:59

And, and it gives it gives visibility for the manager as long as it's a field on clear overview of what is coming in the next month and so on.

Olivier: 9:11

So more control. Yeah. And I guess it's also important if you have a bigger volume of employees for this kind of features.

Geoffrey: 9:17

Yes, yes. It's a it's a request that we got internally because we are starting appraisals.

Olivier: 9:26

Totally makes sense. All right. Next feature.

Geoffrey: 9:29

Well, we were talking about control and indeed control and information is the So we are reworking the attendance application. So attendance application is mainly when you are doing check-in, check-out to go into a facility.

Olivier: 9:45

Okay.

Geoffrey: 9:45

But it's much more than that. And we don't have to forget you can also manage those check-in, check-out from your home and we bring back the home working issue and we want to rework the attendance to have more more information. So a new view, a new graph, new reports. We are trying to add, for example, the GPS localization when you are doing the check-in or check-out. So all those stuff, it's a total revamp of the attendance application.

Olivier: 10:12

So more control, more statistics about what happened and why do we want to add What was the need behind this exactly?

Geoffrey: 10:20

Well, there is some feedbacks, but the main one is that we are targeting new And for example, on Germany and I think in other countries. But Germany is the starting point because they need to have really a clear view of what is happening, when it's happening, and who is doing extra time. And in addition, if the employee is making extra time, why does it make it? Did we talk together? Is it a justification? So all those requirements we were not able to, to be on top of the market with the previous version of attendance. So we say, okay, start from a white sheet again and try to answer everything.

Olivier: 11:02

All right. All right. Are there things you didn't mention yet about attendance and that you'd like to talk about?

Geoffrey: 11:08

We will, we will try to solve some, uh, stress point that we, uh, we, uh, that For example, the, the attendance is working like a kiosk. So it's something that you will start on the tablet or on some dedicated tool to generate the check-in, check-out.

Olivier: 11:26

Okay. So you have just to be clear, you have some dedicated machine with that. And so an instance of Odoo or an instance of a session of Odoo running on it in this kiosk mode so that people can check in with this.

Geoffrey: 11:37

And that was the issue. The issue was that you need a user to be able to start useless. And if you take an existing user with some manipulation, you can go back to the full Odoo.

Olivier: 11:51

Then you have big security issues.

Geoffrey: 11:53

And you have a big security.

Olivier: 11:54

Because if you take, I don't know the worst situation, you take the profile of know..

Geoffrey: 12:00

And it's really easy to go back into the data. So, um, we try to solve that. And now the kiosk for example, in that new attendance system will open with a dedicated URL and you don't need a user anymore.

Olivier: 12:13

Okay? So that's a big progress because indeed it will prevent errors and it will So it's always good. All right. Next point.

Geoffrey: 12:22

Yep. Uh, let's talk a little bit about Recruitment. Recruitment. We've got big news, but we are more from the research and development on the research part, we are finally trying to get access to the job boards. So it's something that people ask a lot when you publish a job, a job position on your Recruitment application is automatically published on your job career page. But if you want to go on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed or so on, you need to manually publish them on those websites. We are not trying to, to, to take the job, but we want to do that automatically. And so when you publish the job internally, it will go automatically on those websites. At the moment, I cannot give you a name. I cannot give you a version which is working, but we are trying to get contact with all those providers and to explain them our needs and that we want to work with them. So I've got great hopes that maybe, maybe not for the 17. I get, I hope at least one, but it's the road that we are taking.

Olivier: 13:26

Because indeed we are recording, breaking news, we are recording the podcast and indeed not everything is ready now. Make sense

Geoffrey: 13:37

Uh, until the last day, we will have some more news, some more stuff. But uh.

Olivier: 13:41

And that's the magic of it.

Geoffrey: 13:42

Yeah. that's a way to say it.

Olivier: 13:45

And so indeed that's why you cannot really promise it. But I guess this kind of connectors could come into new modules even in stable after the release has been made.

Geoffrey: 13:55

Every connector will be a new model. So even if we release them in three months from now, we will backport them for the 17.0 because we know a lot of our customers are on stable version with the major one. So we don't, we will release them during the year. But every time targeting the previous version.

Olivier: 14:10

So that means if people start directly in Odoo 17 day one, they might not have So if they wait a few months before starting, they will probably have some connectors.

Geoffrey: 14:21

At the moment we are. We are mostly waiting for answers from the other side.

Olivier: 14:25

Yeah, because that's a lot of politics I guess, to follow this kind of features. All right. Um, anything else about Recruitment?

Geoffrey: 14:32

About Recruitment, we've got a new a new system, which I'm really proud. I talk about the Skills Management. The Skills Management is something which is a little bit like the red line, the line that you have to follow along all the, the HR application. And it starts with Recruitment. When you've got a candidate you want to know, to assess his skills, but it's a pain in the ass to get his resume and to write again. Okay, he's good in Python, he's good in French, he's fluent in English.

Olivier: 15:02

Because you have to like re-encode everything manually all the time, every time

Geoffrey: 15:07

It's too long. It's too long. When you create the employee, if you put them on the applicant, it will be copied on the employee. So it's good, but you need at least one.

Olivier: 15:16

To encode them at some point.

Geoffrey: 15:18

And you have too many applicants. It's not possible. And we made something. Now if you have some credits from the OCR and that you have a skills library which is a fully populated. Well, the OCR will be smart enough to get all the content of the resume and to check every words. And if he find some correspondence, some correspondence between the resume and the skills library, it will automatically add the skills to the applicant skills history.

Olivier: 15:45

So it's just using AI, well, just it's using AI to, to, to, to well, do the So that's the best use of AI actually.

Geoffrey: 15:54

Yeah. It's he's doing the, the work that you don't want to do and the most you skills library, the more results you will get out of the of the feature.

Olivier: 16:08

And again, I guess it's something that is important, especially in bigger skills of individuals and say, okay, this guy is good in that, in that. And he progressed in that these kind of things.

Geoffrey: 16:23

Well with the Skills Management, you can do a lot of things. It's really I think it was the hardest path is to encode them in the system. Now that you have them, you can use them and we can use it in a appraisals. When you create an appraisal, you have the skills listed, you have them in the employee you can use it to, to set up new goals. So the skills are really useful and it's something that we want to go further. Because now that we have, we get rid of that issue, we are open to a lot of business case.

Olivier: 16:54

It's funny because it's this this example. I mean, it's it's kind of typical, you know, you do something really cool, so all the skill system and then you realize that actually there is still a pain point at the beginning of the flow that it that is making the whole thing well less useful because people have to go through this pain point. And so I think it's nice to solve it like this.

Geoffrey: 17:13

Yeah, we already got some ideas for previous version, but it was always use it at all.

Olivier: 17:21

Okay. Okay. I suggest we move on. What's next?

Geoffrey: 17:27

Uh, after that, let's talk a little bit about Time Off, because Time Off is also Time Off is all the leave management system. So I get days, I'm taking days to do formation, training or sick time most of the time. Okay. In in the time of application, what we have to to do, what we want to do is to answer again some needs from other countries because Odoo is based in Belgium and in Belgium, you don't use accruals management. Accruals management is a system where you will say every month, I'm eligible to one day of holiday and it will go further and further on the year, maybe ten years after you will get two days instead of one and so on. And you've got some issue that we don't think at first but that we are facing now. For example, I'm at the first of the year, I'm 1st of January and I want to make my holidays for Christmas, but I'm...

Olivier: 18:21

Technically. You don't have those days yet.

Geoffrey: 18:23

Yeah, indeed. You know that you will have this because you know that you will And so we want to find a solution. And the solution that we will apply is that you can set up a time of type. So it's a management system. You have to choose, it's not automatic and you will say, okay, that time of time you can go into negative until no limit or until a dedicated level. And then the employee will say, okay, I'm on the 1st of January, I can put my Christmas holiday because I want my manager to validate it. I want my team to be aware of it. I want to plan everything on the year and I will start the year with minus ten, let's say. Okay, it's a shame, but it's okay. And during the year you will go minus ten, minus nine, minus eight, and at the end of the year you will be at zero because it's okay. You got the days they are used and it's not an issue.

Olivier: 19:15

And so at the moment where you start your holiday, everything will be balanced

Geoffrey: 19:19

Yeah. And if it's not the case, as I say, we cannot solve every situation The HR team will have some warnings to say, okay, let's be careful that employee is in negative. Maybe you have we have to pay something or maybe we have to take him back from the early days of next year. But that's human processes.

Olivier: 19:38

Okay. So there is no automatic check that when you when you're putting your ten everything goes well, right?

Geoffrey: 19:48

No, at the moment, no. But there will be a check if at the beginning of the holiday you don't have those days.

Olivier: 19:54

Okay.

Geoffrey: 19:55

Okay. Okay. And you will have a warning on your payroll, on your time of possible.

Olivier: 20:02

And why is that so? I mean, I guess it's a matter of complexity and how it's too it was more simple not to check when you put the day because there is too much variability functionally speaking or.

Geoffrey: 20:15

Yeah, we've got another way of handling that is that you can have a view of the So as long as you have an accrual plan running, so some accumulation of days, you can say, okay, today I don't have days, but if I look at the situation in one year or in ten months, I will see that, okay, I'm eligible to ten days. But there are so many situations where you've got a holiday, you put it, but you put another one during the year. So okay, the first one is okay, but the one at Christmas is maybe not anymore. And there is a lot of corner case that we need to take a lot of time on it. We still want to do that. We want to do that future visualization because it's something that is needed by the customers. But at the moment, the most easiest and fastest way to to solve those needs was to have a negative.

Olivier: 21:02

Prefer to have something working instead of some magic gadget.

Geoffrey: 21:04

Yeah. And it's always like every feature, it's a first version. And we are we want to hear the feedback from the customers and the community to they will told us what is good and what is less good and we will evolve on the long time.

Olivier: 21:17

And it will evolve in the future. Indeed. Okay. Next point.

Geoffrey: 21:22

Okay. Um, I think that I will keep the the best application. My, my my favorite for the end is the Payroll application. Okay. It's my favorite because when I started, it was really the my scope, my, my first scope. And like I say, Payroll will be the future of Odoo. Like Accounting was like some years ago. And I want that people come to Odoo for the Payroll application, and Payroll is a two sided application. You've got like the skeleton, which is common to everybody and you've got the localization. But first on the skeleton, we made some many improvements and one of the biggest is the offer management. So it's linked between the Recruitment part and the Payroll application is when you have an applicant and you want to give him a link that will be he will be able to configure his salary with the salary configurator that Odoo is providing, and then it will create a contract on the Payroll application. Before we've got a long URL with all the parameters and you just jump on a web page. There were no history. There were no checking. Because if you are a little bit technical or if you are if you want to be a little bit, let's say, less vigorous, you just want to change the you change the settings and you've got more money, you've got a bigger salary. It's not something that we want. Is it something we should say in the podcast? Don't do that. If you listen to us, don't do that because we will see it. But now it's over. You cannot do that anymore. So too late because the URL will be because it's a new object and you've got just an ID and a token. So it's more secure and it gives us as long as it's a new object, you've got history. Let's say your applicants, you send them a link or you send them now an offer and you say, No, I won't. I want more advantage. Okay, you send another link and then again and again. Or maybe it expires because he was on holiday.

Olivier: 23:21

So if I get you well, this every link you send will correspond to a new object And so you can track those objects to see how it went. And before that you had to go through the chatter all the time and just reread all the messages.

Geoffrey: 23:33

Yes. And the chatter can be messy because it's a long process. And now that you have an object, you can start to go further. Like from the Recruitment part, you can go further. Okay, maybe all of the offers behind a certain amount are refused. So I have to review my salary grad. Maybe on a certain on a dedicated job, they took a long time to answer and the offer is expiring. Why? Because maybe I'm not giving enough explanation or stuff like that. So it's not the most common use case, but you've got a lot of information out of those objects and the historic of those objects.

Olivier: 24:08

Okay. So more control, more analytics and yeah, everything is for the better Okay. Um, about localizations now, so you were telling about telling us about the, the common skeleton for Payroll. So what happened for, for the non common stuff.

Geoffrey: 24:23

Yeah. For the non common, so we are working on localization. It's not always easy. It's never easy in fact. But we want to provide for some countries a first set of walls. So in the Payroll you've got your contracts and with the wage that you sign for and in the end, with a lot of walls, you've got the net. And for the moment we are eligible for Belgium. We started for the previous version, the Luxembourg and the Kenya. And now I'm pleased to say that for the V17 you can use the Payroll in Switzerland and in United States.

Olivier: 24:58

Cool.

Geoffrey: 24:58

So it's two big projects and we are working on Australia. We are working on other countries that are less complicated.

Olivier: 25:05

And tomorrow the world.

Geoffrey: 25:07

Tomorrow, the world. It's the goal. It's the goal in the end. And we we just want to, to provide those first version because we know that maybe some reports are missing. Maybe we need to have some automation to connect to the government. But like every time it's an open door. So we provide those modules for free naturally, and the the partners will use it and will give us feedbacks about what is missing. But so people know that the paywall application is coming and that they can expect something in the future and that that's the message that we want to send.

Olivier: 25:37

Very cool. And as you said, it's always a matter of having a first version doing required step by step in the future if there are things like that. Okay. And we are running out of time. So I suggest we we jump to the conclusion. What can you tell us about what will be next? So after Odoo 17, the future of the future. The future will tell us something.

Geoffrey: 26:02

Yeah, well, like I say, we have a clear roadmap that we want to continue tackle And with the localization of the Payroll, we are starting to have localization for other topics like localization for the time of we made one for France already. With the attendance system, we see that we've got already some dedicated part to cover. So I think that working for every country and every country needs will be a big topic of the human resource, the Recruitment connectors, something that really we want to be focused to, to cover a whole lot of them. And next to that, I think that we will still have a lot of ideas. I want to go further with the skills because I think that it's really important to have a long term vision for every employee in the company. And we'll see. We've got still a lot of ideas.

Olivier: 26:51

Good. Well. Seems really, really fine, actually. So that will be it for today. Thank you for all your answers. I think we covered a lot of subjects and give gave a lot of information and people must be thrilled with all that. I hope at least.

Geoffrey: 27:08

They shall be.

Olivier: 27:10

And well, see you maybe in a future episode.

Geoffrey: 27:12

Yeah. And see you all at the Odoo experience.

Olivier: 27:15

That's a wrap for our HR sneak peek. I hope the glimpses of Odoo 17 HR innovations have piqued your curiosity. For those eager to explore more, our series continues with roadmaps across various areas. The accounting and inventory roadmaps are already available. Remember, we are just scratching the surface. Be sure not to miss the full reveal at Odoo experience this November, so don't forget to register and see you next time. Cheers.