Development Book V18: Pivot View

Pivot views are one of the most powerful features in Odoo when it comes to analyzing and summarizing data. With the pivot view, users can generate tabular reports that are both interactive and insightful, helping them break down records into meaningful statistics without needing external tools like Excel.

In Odoo 18, creating a pivot view follows the same core steps as in previous versions, but with enhanced UI support and better integration with the new reporting and dashboard tools. You can define a pivot view for any custom model, allowing users to view the data grouped by rows and columns with dynamic measures.

Step-by-Step: Setting Up a Pivot View

First, define your custom model. Here’s an example for a Visa Application model:

from odoo import models, fields

class VisaApplication(models.Model):
    _name = "visa.application"
    _description = "Visa Application"

    name = fields.Char(string="Name", help="Name of the applicant")
    age = fields.Integer(string="Age", help="Age of the applicant")
    gender = fields.Selection([
        ('male', 'Male'),
        ('female', 'Female'),
        ('other', 'Other')
    ], string="Gender", help="Gender of the applicant")
    date_of_birth = fields.Date(string="Date of Birth", help="Applicant's date of birth")

Next, define the action and menu items so users can access the model from the frontend:</p>

<record id="action_visa_application" model="ir.actions.act_window">
    <field name="name">Visa Applications</field>
    <field name="type">ir.actions.act_window</field>
    <field name="res_model">visa.application</field>
    <field name="view_mode">tree,form,pivot</field>
    <field name="help" type="html">
        <p class="o_view_nocontent_smiling_face">
            Click here to create a new visa application.
        </p>
    </field>
</record>
<menuitem id="menu_visa_root" name="Visa Management" sequence="10"/>
<menuitem id="menu_visa_application" name="Applications" parent="menu_visa_root"
          action="action_visa_application" sequence="20"/>

Now, create the pivot view XML definition:

<record id="view_visa_application_pivot" model="ir.ui.view">
    <field name="name">visa.application.pivot</field>
    <field name="model">visa.application</field>
    <field name="arch" type="xml">
        <pivot string="Visa Applications">
            <field name="gender" type="row"/>
            <field name="age" type="measure"/>
        </pivot>
    </field>
</record>

• Improved Measure Fields: In Odoo 18, numeric fields like Integer, Float, and Monetary are automatically available as measures in pivot views. You can also use compute fields marked as store=True.
• Default Measures: You can use the default_order attribute or customize the pivot behavior via view customization options to set which measure or row appears first.
• Export Options: Pivot views now offer better CSV and Excel export support directly from the interface, without custom modules.
• Integration with Spreadsheets: Odoo 18 improves integration with the built-in Spreadsheet app, so users can pull pivot data into dynamic spreadsheets using the "Insert in Spreadsheet" option.