Development Book V18: Manage Kanban Stages

The Kanban view in Odoo provides a clear and intuitive way to manage workflows. It displays records in columns, with each column representing a specific stage of the process. Users can easily view and move records between stages, streamlining workflow management.

Just like with form and tree views, the view type for the Kanban view must also be specified in the action. It can be included as shown below:

<record id="action_support_ticket" model="ir.actions.act_window">
   <field name="name">Support Tickets</field>
   <field name="res_model">support.ticket</field>
   <field name="view_mode">list,form,kanban</field>
</record>

The view can now be defined as shown below:

<record id="view_support_ticket_kanban" model="ir.ui.view">
   <field name="name">support.ticket.kanban</field>
   <field name="model">support.ticket</field>
   <field name="arch" type="xml">
       <kanban default_group_by="stage">
           <templates>
               <t t-name="kanban-box">
                   <div class="oe_kanban_global_click">
                       <div class="oe_kanban_content">
                           <div class="oe_kanban_card">
                               <div>
                                   <b>
                                       <field name="ticket_id"/>
                                   </b>
                               </div>
                               <div class="text-muted">
                                   <field name="customer_id" widget="res_partner_many2one"/>
                               </div>
                               <div class="text-muted">
                                   <field name="customer_email"/>
                               </div>
                           </div>
                       </div>
                   </div>
               </t>
           </templates>
       </kanban>
   </field>
</record>

                        

This is a basic Kanban view definition. In addition to this, various classes and attributes can be used to enhance its functionality and appearance.

As explained above, the Kanban view shows records as cards grouped by their states. These states are helpful because you can drag and drop records between them. To ensure that all states appear in the Kanban view—even when no records exist for some states—you should use the group_expand attribute on the field declaration.

Here’s an example of how to define it:

 stage = fields.Selection([
    ('new', 'New'),
    ('on_hold', 'On Hold'),
    ('pending', 'Pending'),
    ('resolved', 'Resolved')
], string='Stage', default='new')

                        

Once these steps are completed, the Kanban view along with its states will appear as shown below.

Progress bar in kanban view

Another handy feature of the Kanban view is the progress bar. When there are many records, understanding their distribution across different states can become difficult. The progress bar helps by visually indicating the status of each state at the top of the column. In the following example, the progress bar is configured based on the priority field.

priority = fields.Selection([
    ('0', 'Low'),
    ('1', 'Medium'),
    ('2', 'High'),
], string='Priority', default='1')

The progress bar uses three main attributes: field, colors, and sum_field.

• Field: Determines the basis on which the progress bar is displayed, using the values from this field.
• Colors: You can assign one of four main colors to represent different field values, success, warning, danger, and info.
• Sum_field: An optional attribute used to display the total of a specific field from the records.

The progress bar is configured in the XML using the <progressbar> tag.

<progressbar field="priority" colors='{"2": "success", "1": "warning", "0": "danger"}'/>

After upgrading the module with the added progress bar, the Kanban view will appear as shown below:

When you hover the mouse over the progress bar, it will display the records corresponding to each field value, and the total number of records will appear to the right of the column. This behavior is enabled by default. However, if you want to show the sum of a specific field from the records instead, you can use the optional sum_field attribute.