OSERP Studio

What is available today

Studio is in use for approval rules and flows, print layouts, numbering, document flows, stage access, work routing, notifications, company settings and POS settings, with preview, apply and one-step rollback, and every OSERP release is checked against your pack before it reaches you. The OSERP team runs Studio for you; ask OSERP support to tailor your instance. Everything marked planned below is still being built.

1. What OSERP Studio is

1. OSERP Studio is the way OSERP is tailored to one specific business: its approval chains, print layouts, numbering and, as Studio grows, its document stages, accounts, notifications and extra fields.
2. The tailoring is delivered as a configuration pack: a versioned set of your business's settings and rules.
3. A pack is applied only to your instance. Other businesses never receive it.
4. A pack is never overwritten by OSERP updates. You keep receiving every improvement to the product, and your tailoring stays in place.

2. Why tailoring is done as configuration, not as separate software

1. If each business had its own modified copy of OSERP, every improvement would have to be rebuilt and retested for each of them. Businesses would fall behind on updates and fixes.
2. Nearly everything a business needs to change is already stored in OSERP as configuration: workflows, approval rules, routing, account mapping, print layouts, notifications, numbering, roles, dashboards and settings.
3. Studio adds what is missing around that configuration: packaging it, moving it safely between environments, keeping its history, and keeping it separate from OSERP's own defaults.

3. What a pack contains

Available now:

1. Approval rules: for example, "a purchase over 1 lakh needs approval" or "block a sale below cost".
2. Approval flows: multi-level approval chains. An approver is named by role (for example, Store Manager) or by a person's email address, so the same pack works on any instance where that role or person exists.
3. Print layouts: invoices, receipts, delivery notes and other documents. Only layouts your business has changed are carried; OSERP's own defaults keep improving with each release.
4. Numbering series: prefix, number length and separator for each document type. A pack never carries the running number itself, so it cannot make your instance reuse a number already issued.
5. Document flows: which stages your sales and purchase documents pass through, for example a two-step "quick sale" from order straight to invoice. A flow must use OSERP's stages in their normal order, the same rule as the Flow Templates screen.
6. Stage access: which roles may act at each stage of a document.
7. Work routing: who a document goes to when it reaches a stage (its creator, a role or a named person), with a due time and priority.
8. Notifications: the wording of your email, SMS and WhatsApp messages, and the rules for when they are sent and to whom. A notification rule stays off unless the pack switches it on, so a pack never starts messaging your customers by surprise.
9. Company settings: which modules are switched on (inventory, warehouses, batches, serial numbers, multi-currency, cost centres, budgets, projects, payroll, POS, approvals) and the idle screen lock. Never your company's name, address, tax number or currency: those are your business's identity, not its configuration.
10. POS settings: everything on the POS Settings screen, such as discount limits, returns, credit sales, the register close and the receipt. A pack cannot set a value the POS Settings screen itself would refuse.

For company and POS settings, a pack carries only the settings it names. A pack that switches on POS says nothing about payroll, and your payroll setting stays as you have it. Rolling the pack back puts back only what it changed.

Planned:

11. Accounting: how each document posts to your chart of accounts.
12. Roles and access, and dashboards and saved reports.
13. Extra fields: your own fields on documents, lines, items and partners, usable in approval rules, print layouts and reports.
14. Automation hooks: connections to your other systems through secure notifications, and small, safe rules that run at defined points.

4. How tailoring is done, step by step

1. Your business's configuration is prepared using the normal OSERP screens, on a company set up as you want it.
2. Studio captures that configuration as a pack version (for example, 1.0.0).
3. Before anything changes, Studio produces a plan for your instance: every item, and whether applying would create it, update it, leave it unchanged, remove it, or find a conflict. A plan changes nothing.
4. The version is applied to your instance only. OSERP checks the plan again at that moment, makes all the changes together or none at all, and keeps an exact copy of everything it changed.
5. If needed, the version is rolled back in one step: everything it added is removed, and everything it changed is put back exactly as it was.
6. A rollback never quietly throws away your own changes. If your administrator changed something the pack set after it was applied, the rollback stops and names each of those items. It goes ahead only if you decide those changes should be discarded; otherwise the version stays applied and your changes stay with it.
7. Every capture, apply and rollback is recorded in OSERP's audit trail.

5. Seeing what was set up for you

Your administrator can see everything a pack set, without asking OSERP:

1. Administration → Customisations lists each pack applied to your company: its name, version and when it was applied, and then every item it set, grouped by area (approval rules, print layouts, numbering and so on).
2. Each item shows its status:
   • As the pack set it: unchanged since the pack applied it.
   • Changed here: your administrator has edited it since. These are listed first, because they are the items the next pack version will ask about.
   • Only the settings the pack named: for company and POS settings, where the pack sets some settings and leaves the rest to you.
3. Open next to an item takes you to the screen where it is edited. The Customisations screen itself changes nothing.
4. Where you edit, the screen tells you an item came from your pack:
   • approval rules, approval chains, document flows and routing on Approvals & Workflow carry a small Set by OSERP tag;
   • a print layout from your pack shows a note above the designer.
5. You can still change any of these. Your change is kept, and the next pack version reports it as a conflict instead of replacing it.
6. Seeing this screen needs the View permission for Studio Packs, which administrators have.

6. How your tailoring and OSERP updates live together

	OSERP's defaults	Your pack	Your own changes
Comes from	OSERP releases	OSERP Studio	Your administrator, in the normal screens
Changed by an OSERP update?	Yes, improved	No	No
Changed by a new pack version?	No	Yes	No

1. When OSERP adds a new default (for example, a new report or a new setting), it appears for you without replacing anything in your pack or anything your administrator set.
2. If your administrator changes something the pack set (for example, edits an approval rule the pack created), the next pack version does not silently replace it. The plan shows it as a conflict, and it is only replaced if you decide it should be.
3. If a pack needs something your instance does not have (for example, an approval flow naming a role that does not exist on your instance), that item is shown as blocked, and the pack is not applied until it is resolved.
4. Every OSERP release is checked against your pack before it reaches you. If a new version cannot read your pack, your instance waits and keeps running the version it has, while every other business updates as usual. The OSERP team is alerted to fix the pack, and your instance takes the next version that reads it. Nothing needs to be undone.
5. If your business already has something a pack brings, for example the same approval rule word for word, the pack takes it over rather than creating a second copy.

7. What Studio will not do

1. It will not create a separate, modified copy of the OSERP software for one business.
2. It will not allow code that can change your records directly, reach the internet unchecked, or bypass OSERP's approval and posting checks.
3. It will not remove OSERP's audit trail: every change a pack makes is recorded.
4. It will not touch your transactions, masters or balances. A pack is configuration only.

8. Questions

1. Can a pack change my invoices or stock? No. A pack changes configuration: rules, flows, layouts and numbering formats. Your records are never changed by a pack.
2. Can a pack reset my invoice numbers? No. A pack sets the format of a number series, never where the counting has reached.
3. What if we change something the pack set? Your change stays. The next pack version reports it as a conflict instead of replacing it, and you decide.
4. Can we go back? Yes. Any applied version can be rolled back in one step, which restores everything it changed exactly as it was. If you changed something the pack set after it was applied, the rollback first tells you which items, and discards your changes only if you decide it should.
5. How do we see what OSERP set up for us? Administration → Customisations lists every item your pack set, and which of them your administrator has changed since.