Multi-company Guidelines

Warning

This tutorial requires good knowledge of Odoo. Please refer to the Server framework 101 tutorial first if needed.

As of version 13.0, a user can be logged in to multiple companies at once. This allows the user to access information from multiple companies, but also to create/edit records in a multi-company environment.

If not managed correctly, it may be the source of a lot of inconsistent multi-company behaviors. For instance, a user logged in to both companies A and B could create a sales order in company A and add products belonging to company B to it. It is only when the user logs out from company B that access errors will occur for the sales order.

To correctly manage multi-company behaviors, Odoo’s ORM provides multiple features:

Company-dependent fields

When a record is available from multiple companies, we must expect that different values will be assigned to a given field depending on the company from which the value is set.

For the field of the same record to support several values, it must be defined with the attribute company_dependent set to True.

from odoo import api, fields, models

class Record(models.Model):
    _name = 'record.public'

    info = fields.Text()
    company_info = fields.Text(company_dependent=True)
    display_info = fields.Text(string='Infos', compute='_compute_display_info')

    @api.depends_context('company')
    def _compute_display_info(self):
        for record in self:
            record.display_info = record.info + record.company_info

Note

The _compute_display_info method is decorated with depends_context('company') (see depends_context) to ensure that the computed field is recomputed depending on the current company (self.env.company).

When a company-dependent field is read, the current company is used to retrieve its value. In other words, if a user is logged in to companies A and B with A as the main company and creates a record for company B, the value of company-dependent fields will be that of company A.

To read the values of company-dependent fields set by another company than the current one, we need to ensure the company we are using is the correct one. This can be done with with_company(), which updates the current company.

# Accessed as the main company (self.env.company)
val = record.company_dependent_field

# Accessed as the desired company (company_B)
val = record.with_company(company_B).company_dependent_field
# record.with_company(company_B).env.company == company_B

Warning

Whenever you are computing/creating/… things that may behave differently in different companies, you should make sure whatever you are doing is done in the right company. It doesn’t cost much to always use with_company to avoid problems later.

@api.onchange('field_name')
def _onchange_field_name(self):
 self = self.with_company(self.company_id)
 ...

@api.depends('field_2')
def _compute_field_3(self):
 for record in self:
   record = record.with_company(record.company_id)
   ...

Multi-company consistency

When a record is made shareable between several companies by the means of a company_id field, we must take care that it cannot be linked to the record of another company through a relational field. For instance, we do not want to have a sales order and its invoice belonging to different companies.

To ensure this multi-company consistency, you must:

  • Set the class attribute _check_company_auto to True.

  • Define relational fields with the attribute check_company set to True if their model has a company_id field.

On each create() and write(), automatic checks will be triggered to ensure the multi-company consistency of the record.

from odoo import fields, models

class Record(models.Model):
    _name = 'record.shareable'
    _check_company_auto = True

    company_id = fields.Many2one('res.company')
    other_record_id = fields.Many2one('other.record', check_company=True)

Note

The field company_id must not be defined with check_company=True.

Warning

The check_company feature performs a strict check! It means that if a record has no company_id (i.e., the field is not required), it cannot be linked to a record whose company_id is set.

Note

When no domain is defined on the field and check_company is set to True, a default domain is added: ['|', '('company_id', '=', False), ('company_id', '=', company_id)]

Default company

When the field company_id is made required on a model, a good practice is to set a default company. It eases the setup flow for the user or even guarantees its validity when the company is hidden from view. Indeed, the company is usually hidden if the user does not have access to multiple companies (i.e., when the user does not have the group base.group_multi_company).

from odoo import api, fields, models

class Record(models.Model):
    _name = 'record.restricted'
    _check_company_auto = True

    company_id = fields.Many2one(
        'res.company', required=True, default=lambda self: self.env.company
    )
    other_record_id = fields.Many2one('other.record', check_company=True)

Views

As stated in above, the company is usually hidden from view if the user does not have access to multiple companies. This is assessed with the group base.group_multi_company.

<record model="ir.ui.view" id="record_form_view">
    <field name="name">record.restricted.form</field>
    <field name="model">record.restricted</field>
    <field name="arch" type="xml">
        <form>
            <sheet>
                <group>
                    <group>
                        <field name="company_id" groups="base.group_multi_company"/>
                        <field name="other_record_id"/>
                    </group>
                </group>
            </sheet>
        </form>
    </field>
</record>

Security rules

When working with records shared across companies or restricted to a single company, we must take care that a user does not have access to records belonging to other companies.

This is achieved with security rules based on company_ids, which contain the current companies of the user (the companies the user checked in the multi-company widget).

<!-- Shareable Records -->
<record model="ir.rule" id="record_shared_company_rule">
    <field name="name">Shared Record: multi-company</field>
    <field name="model_id" ref="model_record_shared"/>
    <field name="global" eval="True"/>
    <field name="domain_force">
        ['|', ('company_id', '=', False), ('company_id', 'in', company_ids)]
    </field>
</record>

<!-- Company-restricted Records -->
<record model="ir.rule" id="record_restricted_company_rule">
    <field name="name">Restricted Record: multi-company</field>
    <field name="model_id" ref="model_record_restricted"/>
    <field name="global" eval="True"/>
    <field name="domain_force">
        [('company_id', 'in', company_ids)]
    </field>
</record>