many2one_avatar

A plain many2one shows a name. When the linked record is a person, a vehicle, or anything users recognize by sight faster than by text, a name alone wastes the strongest cue available. The Avatar dropdown fixes that: it renders the standard many2one input with the linked record's round avatar image directly in front of the name, and shows the same avatars inside the autocomplete list while searching.

The widget is deliberately thin. In the Odoo 19 source it is a small component that composes the standard many2one through buildM2OFieldDescription, so searching, creating, opening and barcode scanning all behave exactly like the base many2one. What it adds is the image, read from /web/image/<model>/<id>/avatar_128, and one opinion about when clicking the value should open the linked record.

Unlike many2one_avatar_user and many2one_avatar_employee, this base version carries no user presence, no avatar card popover and no assign-to-me commands. That is what makes it the right choice for non-user models: core uses it for fleet drivers, lunch suppliers and livechat operators alike.

Assignment mistakes are recognition mistakes. When a dispatcher picks the wrong driver or a coordinator books the wrong contact person, it is usually because two similar names sat next to each other in a dropdown. Faces remove that ambiguity at a glance, which is why every serious CRM shows people as pictures, not strings.

The practical payoff shows up in list views. A column of avatars scans in a fraction of the time a column of names does, and misassignments become visible without reading. Teams that switch their high-traffic list views from plain many2one to avatar widgets consistently report catching wrong assignments earlier, simply because the wrong face jumps out.

The one decision to make consciously is the opening behavior. By default the value is clickable through to the linked record only on forms, which keeps list navigation fast. If your team expects to jump from a list cell to the record, that is a one-option change, and in Odoo 19 it finally works on this widget.

Basic avatar dropdown

<field name="driver_id" widget="many2one_avatar"/>

The related model must expose avatar_128. Models built on Odoo's avatar mixin, including contacts, users and employees, all do.

Clickable through to the record, even in lists

<field name="driver_id"
       widget="many2one_avatar"
       options="{'no_open': False}"/>

Explicitly declaring the option overrides the form-only default, an Odoo 19 behavior.

Locked-down picker for a controlled list

<field name="operator_id"
       widget="many2one_avatar"
       options="{'no_create': True, 'search_threshold': 2}"/>

No creation from the dropdown, and no search query until two characters are typed, which is worth setting on large partner tables.

Three source-level details are worth knowing before you rely on this widget.

The image field is hardcoded. The template builds /web/image/<relation>/<id>/avatar_128. There is no option to point it at another image field. If the related model lacks avatar_128, you get broken image requests, so custom models need Odoo's avatar mixin (image.mixin plus the avatar fields, the pattern res.partner uses) rather than a bare binary field.

Permission attributes pass through. Because the widget reuses the shared many2one extractProps, the view attributes can_create and can_write are evaluated as expressions and gate creation and editing, on top of the option-based switches. The undocumented options can_scan_barcode and create_name_field pass through the same way.

The kanban variant is registered separately. kanban.many2one_avatar renders a compact template, adds the o_field_many2one_avatar_kanban class, and passes the record's readonly state through. Odoo resolves it automatically when the field sits inside a kanban card; you never write the prefixed name in XML.

When the field is empty and editable, the template renders an empty avatar placeholder circle; when it is empty and readonly, it renders nothing at all. A list column of records without values therefore looks completely blank rather than showing gray circles.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. We read this widget's file on the public development branch at the time of writing; the branch is unstable, so treat the following as direction rather than a released behavior, and we re-verify after launch.

Two changes are visible. First, the widget declares write_date as a related field, which cache-busts the avatar URL so a changed profile picture shows up immediately instead of after a browser cache expiry, the same fix many2one_avatar_user received earlier. Second, the kanban variant is renamed from kanban.many2one_avatar to card.many2one_avatar as part of a repo-wide move of kanban-prefixed registrations to a card prefix. XML does not reference the prefixed names, so views are unaffected, but JavaScript patches against the kanban variant will need the new name.