Improving the first contact with Tryton

Feature Ideas
1

Rational

The current fist contact with Tryton could certainly be improved.
I describe below a first contact with the application and I underline the points that I find the most unsettling.

I install trytond via docker as described here Docker, and set the admin password.
I then connect using the sao application that is served by the server. It works.

I login as admin. The application talks to me in english, and tells me that I:
“will be able to configure my installation depending on the modules i have installed”
This a little bit unsettling as I was not aware I had installed any modules. I click Ok.
Then I am invited to create a new user. I do that.

Then the application shows me a huge list of “modules”. What exactly do those do ? Which one do I need ?
I am left to my own devices to know that.

The information displayed are the name of the modules and their installation status.
If I let my cursor on one of them, a tip appears, but it only shows me the name of the module, again.

If I open a module, no more information are displayed.

I type “tryton modules installation” in an internet search engine, the most relevant link seems to be : http://doc.tryton.org/4.8/modules/index.html
, but, then again, it is a huge list. How can I easily know what I can do with them , and which one I need ?

Let’s say I have a shop and I want to manage it with Tryton. The application does not help (apart from the name of the modules) in choosing what I need, nor does it show me what I could with it.

I choose, because the name sound right, the modules “sale” and “stock”. But really that is a kind of guess.
Maybe those won’t be nearly enough for what I need.

Once those are installed, the application tells me, again, that I :
“will be able to configure my installation depending on the modules i have installed”

I click Ok. And then Tryton suggests me to create a company and a chart of account. Seems logical. I do this.
I now see the menu has new entry points. I will try and see what I can do.

So, to sum up, neither the application nor the most easily found documentation really guide me to tailor my Tryton installation according to my needs.

Proposal

Maybe the existing documentation of the modules could be displayed (or linked to), when a module is displayed.

Some new wizard could help with the choice of modules, according to business needs.

The notion of module itself is quite technical, and a user of Tryton maybe should not have to choose modules at all, but rather to simply tell the application what she needs from it, and then the application will configure itself accordingly.

What do you think about all this ?

Implementation

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2

Hey Jeremy, welcome aboard and thank you for sharing your first Tryton impressions with us.

I like your ideas very much. Just two ideas I discussed with other Tryton implementers:

  • A kind of questionnaire which guides thru the modules forest and checks via simple questions the needs/requirements for the initial setup.
  • Functional groups of modules, which provides standard setups for several types of enterprises/usecases on a higher level than modules.

Regards Udo

3

For me, the best solution will be to rework the configuration wizard to be more focus on requesting business information.
As I see, each module could define one question which can be answered with a checkbox. If the checkbox is checked, this means the module must be activated. The question visibility may depend on the positive answer to other questions. For example, the sale_advance_payment question will not be display until sale question is checked.
Some module may not have any question because they are just glue code between modules or too much technical that standard user will not use them anyway.

Those questions should be loaded without having the module activated (of course) but the tricky point is to have translations. I guess they will have to be retrieved from po files.

The wizard should be allowed to be re-run as many times as the user wants. So it will have set default values depending on the modules already activated and those questions should be read-only (as deactivation is not fully supported).

This step should be the first one to be run (before any other configuration steps) and the steps should be run after the activation of the new modules.

Another point that I find it could be improved is the configuration of Tryton. For now, the form are scattered into each main topic. But I think we would need a place where all the configuration values can be retrieved and searched. But this maybe another topic.

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