project

The project widget is a thin fork of the standard many2one that the project module applies to the project field on tasks. Functionally it is a normal relational picker: autocomplete, quick create, internal link, everything the base widget does.

Its whole reason to exist is the empty state. Odoo 17 introduced private tasks, tasks that live outside any project, and the UI needed to say so. When the record's project_id is empty and the field is not required in the current view, the widget injects a Private placeholder and a private_placeholder CSS class that styles it gray with a lock connotation. It also forces the input to full width with a hardcoded w-100 class.

One subtlety from the source: the emptiness check reads record.data.project_id and record._isRequired("project_id") by literal field name. Put this widget on a many2one named anything else and the placeholder logic silently follows the record's project_id field, not the field you attached it to.

For teams that use personal to do lists inside Odoo, this placeholder is the difference between a task that looks broken (empty required looking field) and a task that clearly says it is private. Nobody files a support ticket about an empty project field when it reads Private.

For implementers the widget is a reminder that task privacy is a first class state in modern Odoo. Workflows that assume every task has a project (billing rollups, stage automations) need an explicit rule for private tasks, and this little gray label is where users will first notice the concept exists.

The task form usage from project_task_views.xml, where required is conditional and drives the placeholder:

<field name="project_id"
       required="parent_id or child_ids or is_template"
       widget="project"/>

The task list usage, combining the widget with an inherited many2one option:

<field name="project_id" string="Project" optional="hide"
       required="1" options="{'no_open': 1}" widget="project"/>

Note that with required="1" the Private placeholder never appears: the widget only shows it when the field is allowed to stay empty.

The widget looked quite different in Odoo 17, and the history explains some behavior you may remember:

17.0: the placeholder appeared when both project_id and parent_id were empty, the displayed name was blanked when a task had a project but display_in_project was false, and picking a project auto set display_in_project to true through an extra updateRecord override.

18.0: all the display_in_project logic was dropped. The check became what it still is in 19: empty project_id plus not required in this view.

19.0: same behavior, rebuilt on the new computeM2OProps composition pattern (a plain component wrapping the Many2One component instead of subclassing the field), and the forced w-100 class arrived.

Because required ness is evaluated per view (record._isRequired), the same empty task can show Private on one form and a normal empty input on another where the field is required. That is intentional, not a bug.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The changes below are read from the public development branch and are not final until release.

Template tasks get their own placeholder. Master adds is_template to the widget's related fields and branches the empty state: a normal task still shows Private, while a template task shows All Projects instead. Two label getters (a lock prefixed Private and All Projects) appear alongside.

The many2one composition itself moves to the shared many2OneFieldProps export as part of the framework wide props migration, with no option changes. We will re verify this page against the released branch after the launch.