On wide monitors the chatter panel on every Odoo form eats a third of the horizontal space that power users would rather give to columns, notebook pages, and one2many lines — while on dense operational records (manufacturing orders, sales orders, project tasks) the same chatter is exactly where people log the audit trail. Odoo ships the chatter in a single fixed layout that the user cannot move or hide, and the position differs between Community and Enterprise builds. The result is a daily friction: data-entry teams want it gone, account managers want it front and center, and there is no per-user, per-model way to have both. This is where the native experience runs out of road — you can patch one view with an XML override, but that decision is global and permanent for every user who opens that model.

We build a made-to-order module that adds a user-controllable chatter mode to Odoo form views. A lightweight OWL component injects a toggle into the form's control panel (or the chatter header) that switches the panel between states you define — for example bottom-docked, right-side-docked, collapsed-to-a-tab, or fully hidden — and remembers the choice. Preferences are stored per user and optionally per model via a small models.Model record keyed to res.users and ir.model, so a warehouse operator's collapsed layout on stock.picking never overrides a CRM lead's expanded layout for the sales team. Because the behavior is layout-only, no chatter data, mail.message, or mail.followers semantics change — messages, activities, log notes, and tracked-field history all continue to work exactly as before.

Technically the module is a clean addon with its own __manifest__.py depending on mail and web, an OWL/QWeb view extension that patches the form renderer's chatter container, and a stored-preference model guarded by ir.model.access.csv plus a record rule so each user can only read and write their own settings. Defaults are configurable through Settings so an administrator can set the organization-wide starting mode and choose which models expose the toggle, and the same defaults can be pushed via an automated action or read over the XML-RPC/JSON-RPC API for scripted provisioning. We handle the Community-vs-Enterprise layout differences for you and target whichever of Odoo 17.0, 18.0, or 19.0 you run — the chatter DOM and OWL hooks differ across those versions, so we build and test against your exact release rather than shipping one brittle template.

Delivery is build-to-order: after a short scoping call we confirm which models get the toggle, the exact modes you want, the default per role, and your Odoo version and edition, then produce a fixed quote. Typical delivery is 2 to 4 weeks from confirmed scope, and you receive the installable source, install and configuration on your staging environment, UAT sign-off, and a post-go-live support window. Pricing starts from $249 (indicative, single-company base scope); wider rollouts — many additional form models, per-team default profiles, multi-company deployments, or deeper Enterprise layout work — increase the quoted scope, and we give you a firm fixed price before any build begins.