Basic concepts

Słownik słów, które wracają w całym systemie i w całej dokumentacji: obiekt, rekord, lista, pole, proces, etap, zadanie, reguła i kilka innych, wyjaśnionych bez żargonu.

Scope of the glossary

Opero describes work with a dozen or so words that recur everywhere: in the interface, in a conversation with the administrator, and in this documentation. Once you know them, the rest of the system explains itself, regardless of whether you are looking at contracts, tickets, or invoices.

This page is for reading through once and returning to when needed, not for learning by heart.

Data

Concept	What it means
Object	a kind of record and, at the same time, its definition: it sets which fields every record of that kind has. A contract, a client, a ticket are separate objects
Record	one thing or matter: one contract, one client, one ticket
List	a way of displaying the records of a single object, opened from the menu. It does not store data, it only shows it
Form	the view of a single record with everything that belongs to it
Field	a single piece of information on a record: a date, an amount, a description
Relation	a pointer from one record to another, for example from a contract to a client
Attachment	a file pinned to a record

The most important is the object, because it belongs to the system's structure: it sets which fields describe a record of a given kind. A record is a single entry of that object, a list shows its records, and a form shows one of them. A process leads a record through successive stages.

Example. Clients are an object. One client is a record of that object. The client list shows all such records. The name, address, and phone are fields. A contract pointing to that client is a relation.

Work and flow

Concept	What it means
Process	a fixed path a matter takes from start to finish
Stage	the place a matter is currently at
Transition	the movement of a matter from one stage to the next
Task	an action directed to a specific person, waiting to be done
Approval	a task consisting of approving or rejecting

It is worth remembering the difference between a stage and a task. A stage describes where a matter is. A task says that someone is to do something with it. A matter may sit at a stage and have no task, if no one has been assigned to it.

Stage, not status. In the documentation and the interface we consistently speak of process stages. It is the same thing that other systems call a status, but the word "stage" better conveys that a matter is going somewhere, rather than just having a label stuck on it.

Automation

Concept	What it means
Rule	a set of actions the system performs by itself when specific conditions are met
Trigger	an event that starts a rule
Notification	a message from the system about something that happened

You usually recognize a rule by its effects: a field fills in by itself, a notification arrives, a matter moves on without anyone's click. If in a record's history you see a change that no one entered by hand, a rule usually acted.

System structure

Concept	What it means
Module	an area of the system grouping related objects, for example finance
Object	a kind of record inside a module; it has its own list and its own records
Menu	the list of entries into areas that you use day to day
Organization	the whole Opero instance
Company	a specific unit within the organization to which data belongs
Role	the scope of what a given person may do in the system

The split into organization and company explains most questions about why something changed everywhere while something else changed only at one company. The system's structure is shared; the data is separate.

Documents and summaries

Concept	What it means
Document template	a print pattern from which, for example, a PDF file is produced
Report	a numeric summary built from the system's data
Dictionary	a closed list of values to choose from, for example a list of statuses

The dictionary is the most often confused concept here. It is not an explanation of words, but a list of a field's allowed values. Thanks to it, everyone chooses from the same set instead of typing their own variants.

First steps describes the first day of work. Getting oriented in the system describes the screen layout. Custom objects, Record list, and The record form describe working with data. Processes describe stages and transitions. Rules describe automation.