openerp-expert-service team mailing list archive

[Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx>]

NB:

Sorry I did a typo and forgot a negation in what I said:
"Then a hr.employee would point to a product and the right specific
resource would have to be allocated when the project starts. That did the
job but certainly lacks of universality and as you can deduce, it would
mach well the new res.users based allocation refactoring of 6.1"
In fact I meant: "it would NOT match well the new res.users based
allocation refactoring of 6.1"

Sorry about that. Still interested in your views.


On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Raphael Valyi <rvalyi@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Dear OpenERP service experts (and specially Olivier Dony which Fabien
> pointed to when I was asking about the project_long_term refactoring),
>
> For some customers selling engineering projects (civil, mechanic,
> software...), *we use to allocate HR resource by project phase*. That
> allocation can eventually derivate from project task allocation or just be
> a plain time base allocation on the phase.
>
> Also, those guys tend to have a *complex quotation process where quotes
> are derived from the draft project until the project is sold*. The basics
> of this is managed by the *base_project_costing* module from Akretion
> (while OpenERP itself is more focused on deriving tasks from quotes), but
> it receives many extension depending on the exact business logic.
>
> Here is my doubt:
> *during that project quotation phase, the project manager or the salesman
> uses to allocate GENERIC resource on a phase or task*. *This is only at
> the time the project or even the phase actually starts that we allocate
> specific users or employees. In the following I'll present the 2 options
> I'm hesitating between in how I model those generic resource templates.*
>
> So we need to have "resource templates" en specific resource belonging to
> those templates.
> example: I allocate 8 days of "electrician resource" and when the project
> starts I allocate John Doe as the specific electrician to work.
>
>
> *OpenERP Context:*
> In 6.0, by default the specific HR allocation would have been an employee
> (hr.employee). This was causing major headaches to maintain users and
> employees data (like HR manager need to be admin to create a user) and
> users had to be used because later hr.attendances would be user based. In
> any case the OpenERP client (web or GTK) also knows the current logged
> user, not the employee, meaning filtering of personal tasks, phases,
> allocations, attendances would work a lot better using the res.users object
> instead of of an hr.employee.
>
> In 6.1, the project_long_term module is one of those that received the
> most refactoring and despite it's not used at all, resource allocation on
> phase is now user based instead of resource (via hr.employee based).
> So be it, I can understand that move.
>
>
> *Now, I still need to solve my template resource issue:*
> Also, because it will be sold, a resource template also better point to a
> product at some point.
> Because on v6.0 it was already too much headache to maintain the re.users
> and the hr.employees, *I ended up modelling that a resource template
> would be a product.product object*. Then a hr.employee would point to a
> product and the rights specific resource would have to be allocated when
> the project starts. That did the job but certainly lacks of universality
> and as you can deduce, it would mach well the new res.users based
> allocation refactoring of 6.1.
>
> Moreover, In the 6.1 demo data, you can see some generic HR resource
> modeled as resource.resource objects, like "analyst" or "developer".
> So in fact you are now telling the a generic resource is a
> "resource.resource" object?
> So now, resource.resource objects are both such generic resource AND ALSO
> specific employee resources (via inheritance because hr.employee inherits
> resource.resource) that are however used nowhere (both).
> *Question 1*: is it by accident or are you serious about that?
>
> I should say that at some point I can understand that model: in fact is
> was the very first model I adopted in 2010 on 6.0 but moved to modelling HR
> resource templates as products because it was to much different kind of
> data/level of indirection to maintain for the HR/project manager folks.
>
> But because on 6.1 you are saving us some trouble on the specific resource
> allocation (which is now a res.users), I could imagine to re-introduce some
> complexity here eventually.
> *Suggestion*: so eventually I would say: a resource model like
> "electrician" is a resource.resource object. Then every user can point to a
> some of those resource model (what user can do in the company) and if
> ever instantiated, the hr.employee could be related to to those resource
> templates via the related hr.employee res.users instance. Also, to be sold
> efficiently, those resource.resource instances would point to a product
> with appropriate sale and cost prices, taxes...
>
> One of the expected benefit of such a more complex model would be in the
> future to be able to be smarter about the resource availability and load.
> Indeed, I believe OpenERP will end up coming with features to monitor the
> availability and load of specific resources over a given time period (there
> is actually some piece of such features even in 6.1 even if today
> allocating some res.users on a phase won't book any matching hr.employee
> resource). Or else let's better admit now that the resource.resource object
> would just be totally useless and especially the fact the hr.employee
> inherits it.
>
> Now, one could be interested in monitoring both the availability and load
> of specific resources (like electrician John Doe) but also of the generic
> resources like "electrician" in general.
> In the future would could even imagine to make a more sophisticated system
> where the availability of generic resource is derivated from the users or
> employees matching the skills and take their specific planned allocations
> into account.
>
> *So, Am I correct to imagine that a resource template should be a
> resource.resource object (eventually pointing to a product and with users
> or employees pointing at resource templates) or those demo data are only
> here by accident and that would be a dangerous overkill choice that OpenERP
> SA would not never endorse in the future?* (in that case I could stick
> with simpler models like the template to be the product directly).
>
> Please could you confirm that I'm not going in a wrong direction here? Or
> please give your view else.
>
> Thank you and happy 2012!
>
>
> --
> Raphaël Valyi
> Founder and consultant
> http://twitter.com/rvalyi <http://twitter.com/#!/rvalyi>
> +55 21 2516 2954
> www.akretion.com
>
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