server-tools is a collection of Odoo addons maintained by the Odoo Community Association (OCA) that gives administrators and technical staff finer control over an Odoo server, and it is written for people who run, host, or extend Odoo rather than for end users of the ERP itself.

What it is

server-tools is an OCA repository of installable Odoo modules, written in Python and licensed under AGPL-3.0. Each capability lives in its own addon directory with its own version string, such as auditlog at 18.0.2.0.9 or base_exception at 18.0.1.2.0, and the repository targets the Odoo 18.0 branch. The modules sit on top of the Odoo framework and extend base behaviour: models, views, scheduled actions, attachments, and the database layer. The README lists the addons in a generated table of name, version, maintainers, and summary, and the project is tagged erp, hacktoberfest, odoo, and python.

The concrete problem it solves is that stock Odoo does not ship many of the operational and technical controls that a production instance needs. There is no built-in audit trail across models, no module for scheduled database backups, no queue for file-processing, no mechanism to stop two scheduled actions from running at once, and no fuzzy search on relation fields. Administrators normally close those gaps by writing and maintaining one-off custom modules per deployment. server-tools replaces that per-instance custom development with maintained, versioned addons that are released against a known Odoo branch and covered by shared CI.

Key capabilities

• auditlog records changes made to records, providing an audit trail across models rather than a single hand-built log.
• auto_backup backs up the database, and database_autovacuum_tuning adds scheduled checks for autovacuum behaviour.
• attachment_queue adds a queue concept for processing files, with attachment_synchronize for synchronisation and attachment_delete_restrict to restrict deletion of attachments.
• autovacuum_message_attachment automatically deletes old mail messages and attachments, while attachment_unindex_content disables indexing of attachment content.
• base_exception provides an abstract model for customizable exceptions that can be applied to different models, such as sale order or invoice.
• base_search_fuzzy adds fuzzy search using the PostgreSQL trigram extension, and base_name_search_improved makes typing in relation fields friendlier.
• bus_alt_connection is needed when PgBouncer is used as a connection pooler, and base_cron_exclusion lets an administrator select scheduled actions that must not run simultaneously.

Who uses it and how

• Odoo administrators running an Odoo 18.0 instance who need server-side controls that core does not provide, installed module by module from the addon directories.
• Teams with compliance or traceability requirements, who enable auditlog to record record-level changes.
• Deployments running PostgreSQL behind PgBouncer, which depend on bus_alt_connection for the connection pooling case, and instances that enable the trigram extension for base_search_fuzzy.
• Operations staff responsible for data retention and recovery, using auto_backup for scheduled database backups and autovacuum_message_attachment to prune old mail messages and attachments.
• Contributors and integrators: the repository carries the hacktoberfest topic, runs pre-commit and build workflows on the 18.0 branch, reports coverage through codecov, and hosts translations on the OCA translation platform.

Getting started

The addons are installed onto an Odoo 18.0 server from the repository, and a prebuilt instance can be tried through Runboat at runboat.odoo-community.org/builds?repo=OCA/server-tools&target_branch=18.0.

How it compares

No paid or proprietary products are named in the facts, and no comparable tool is named either, so server-tools stands alone in this registry. Its positioning comes from its licence and its community ownership: it is AGPL-3.0 code maintained by the Odoo Community Association, with the project page hosted at odoo-community.org/psc-teams/tools-30.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster takes on the operation of the Odoo server, the PostgreSQL database, and the scheduled actions that modules such as auto_backup and database_autovacuum_tuning depend on; the facts describe no hosted service, no pip package, and no Docker image, only the Runboat try-me build. Anyone who wants a managed, plug-and-play product, or who runs an ERP other than Odoo, should look elsewhere. The honest caution is maintenance volume and sparse top-level documentation: the repository carries 286 open issues, and the README is a generated addon table, so the meaningful guidance for any single module lives inside that addon's own directory.