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Team communication with the Odoo Discuss module provides a central mechanism of keeping communication alive among the employees within the organization, with supply chain management, and with the customers alike. Effective and efficient communication retains and builds the morale of employees, builds trust among the management hierarchy, and weeds out any doubts about the company policies regarding employees, customers, services, and products. Many times employees have dissatisfaction regarding the employment, merely because of the prevalent understanding of not being heard. These grievances on the part of employees can be mitigated by introducing a central communication mechanism that everybody can adapt to and trust.
A central communication mechanism also helps reduce friction in procedures, operations, and processes among various departments of an organization by onboarding every employee to a central gathering place where everybody has a voice. Reducing this friction helps improve employee perception, management satisfaction, and customer trust in the organization and the products and services it offers.
There are several communication means used within every organization big and small. They include short messages (SMS), calls, e-mail systems, and instant communication via internet-connected apps. Some of these communication means do not fulfill the organizational requirements such as confidentiality, and record (for example SMS, and calls), while others introduce huge back-and-forth communication friction and delays (such as e-mail systems). Similarly, instant messaging provided by third-party apps (such as WhatsApp, or messenger) has many risks involved when used for organizational communication means as listed below:
- No central record, or the one that vanishes when an employee chooses to leave the company
- Reliance on third-party software just for communication
- Lack of smooth operations due to the absence of integration with enterprise ERP
- Mixing of personal communication with official communication
- An individual has a hold of official communication record instead of organizational possession
- Many Individual choices of the communication platform defeat the purpose of centralization
In such scenarios, the need for an official, centralized, effective, smooth, fully integrated, and secure communication platform is verily needed. Odoo provides a communication platform called Discuss that meets all these requirements without any additional cost to the company.
Odoo Discuss is an amazing module offered by open-source Odoo ERP, a trusted platform with over 7 million users. The major Discuss features include the central communication with all your colleagues within the Odoo ERP ecosystem. This creates a central and effective communication means for people of all management levels, efficiently reducing the distance created by managerial labels. The Odoo Discuss offers a live chat option where you can communicate with your colleagues while working in different modules of the Odoo ERP system. The live chat remains open as a pop-up window in all the modules, so you don’t have to come back to any specific page for your important discussion with your colleagues.
Odoo Discuss allows the creation of public and private groups and channels because teams work together and Discuss makes sure that a team can get together in one place to discuss ideas, executions, operations, and hot topics. Sometimes, to discuss the policy matters, a private channel can be made without any hustle. The public channels can be joined by any employee while the private channels are invitation-only based. The invitations can be sent and received smoothly via Odoo Discuss.
With great power comes great responsibility. While centralized communication can be established via channels in Odoo Discuss, the moderation options can be configured for the admins of the channel. These options enable the notification settings, moderators’ addition to the channel, and options to ban/unban. These configurations make sure that a standard of communication is maintained, and a rogue participant does not destroy the environment of the channel. All the messages and channel notifications can be located at the top left corner while in the Discuss dashboard. The notifications in Odoo Discuss are not just an instant messaging or channels style. The notifications can be sent via email. This helps people with limited computing resources, to access important messages via email around the globe.
Another great feature of the Odoo Discuss module for team communication is, grabbing any colleague’s attention towards your message by mentioning him using @ character. Typing @ in Odoo messages or channels will pull the names of all the employees who can be mentioned. Once selected, and the message is sent, the mentioned colleague will automatically receive a notification and a link to the chat where he is mentioned. This opens up a range of possibilities, for example, to include the relevant employee in a discussion where his input is needed, is simplified.
Odoo ERP takes pride in being the platform with fully integrated apps. This applies to the Odoo Discuss module too. Since Discuss aims to be the central hub of communication within the organization, it is fully integrated with other modules such as HR, Inventory, and Accounting to name a few. The integration smoothly brings the departments closer to each other in a conducive and collaborative environment. Irrespective of the department or module an employee is present in, the dropped message is immediately shown as a pop-up window. The response can be sent right away, and the work is not even interrupted.
Although many of the features offered by Odoo Discuss are also available in popular third-party apps such as Slack and Monday, Odoo Discuss has added the advantage of ecosystem integration. That means, any employee can plugin a quotation within the Odoo Discuss, and the receiving party will be taken right to the quotation without leaving the app or chat window. The same applies to reporting, inventory, maintenance, and HR departments.
The compact yet powerful Discuss module leaves no space for competition. Employees, management, and suppliers are fully connected to the central communication mechanism where inter-operability is smooth and flexible. Not to mention the possibility of adding customized solution(s) via more than 1600 Odoo golden and silver partners present in more than 100 countries of the world. Team communication with Odoo in such a case is reliable, and preferred choice of organizational entities opting for open-source Odoo ERP.