Your Templates are private to your organisation. A Community Vertical is a copy of a Template that you share with the whole Norcloud community, so other partners can find it, try it and use it for their own clients.
Say partner A builds a Template for dog grooming salons and publishes it as a vertical. Later, partner B is asked for an Odoo system by a dog grooming salon. B finds A's vertical, tries it, and launches a Host for the client straight from it. Anything that runs on Odoo Community Edition can be a vertical: your own modules from top to bottom, or a mix of community modules.
Verticals are rated by the partners who use them, so the list grows into a peer-reviewed catalogue of industry solutions.
Creating a vertical
Open the Template you want to share and click Create Vertical. Norcloud makes a copy of the Template, including its data, named after the Template with _vert added. A few extra characters are added if that name is already taken.
A vertical is a static copy: it never runs itself. It only exists to launch other instances from. Deleting your vertical later has no effect on instances that others have already launched from it.
Your own verticals
Open Norcloud Management Interface → Community Verticals and find your vertical. The list shows every available vertical, with its Odoo version, author and rating. Click yours to open it.
As the owner, you set the defaults other partners start from: the Evaluation time, whether demo data is installed, the DB master password, and the server types for Templates, Evaluations and Hosts launched from the vertical. You can also Delete Vertical, and launch from it yourself (see Using a vertical). You can't rate your own vertical.
Writing a description
The description is what other partners see first, so make it count. Click Edit next to Description to open Odoo's standard HTML editor, where you can format text and add images and links.
Say what the vertical is for, which modules it includes and how to log in to it. Save, and the description appears on the vertical's form.
The description area scrolls, but put the most important information at the top, where it's visible without scrolling.
Using a vertical
When you open someone else's vertical, you see its description, its ratings and a set of launch settings.
Before launching, check the settings. They start from the author's defaults, but they're your choice:
| Setting | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Evaluation Time | How long Evaluations launched from the vertical last. They're removed automatically at the end. |
| Install Demo Data | Adds Odoo's demo data. The more modules the vertical has, the longer this takes. |
| DB Master Password | Required. The database master password for the instance you launch. |
| Server types | The server types for the Template, Evaluations and Hosts you launch. The author may suggest one, but it's up to you. |
Then choose what to launch:
- Launch Template creates your own private Template from the vertical, which you can change and build on.
- Launch Evaluation creates a time-limited Evaluation to try it out.
- Launch Host creates a permanent Host for a client.
Rating a vertical
Once you've tried or used someone else's vertical, rate it to help other partners. Click the green Rate This Vertical button in the Community Ratings section. You can rate each vertical once.
Score the vertical out of 10 on three criteria:
- Ease of Setup
- Ease of Use
- Adaptability
Add any comments, then submit.
The Community Ratings section shows the vertical's average rating and every rating it has received: who gave it, the three scores and their average. Click the comments icon on a rating to read its comments. Ratings come only from other Norcloud partners, not the public.