state_selection

The state_selection widget is the traffic light of Odoo. It renders a selection field as a small round bullet that opens a dropdown on click: gray for the first value, red for the value keyed blocked, green for the value keyed done. It is the widget behind the kanban state marker you see on project tasks, event tracks and maintenance requests.

The color mapping is hardcoded in the source. The component keeps a fixed map of blocked: "red" and done: "green" with the CSS prefix o_status_, so a selection whose keys are not literally blocked and done renders every choice as a gray bullet. This is why the widget pairs naturally with Odoo's standard kanban_state field, whose values are exactly normal, done and blocked.

When no value is set, the widget displays the first selection value as the current one instead of showing an empty state. Clicking a choice updates the field and, by default, saves the record immediately.

For a team this is the fastest status flag in Odoo: one click on a list row or kanban card, no form open, no save button. Support teams mark tickets blocked, event managers approve talks, maintenance planners flag requests as ready, all from the overview screen.

The per record legend feature is the underrated part. If the model has legend_blocked, legend_done and legend_normal fields (project stages do), the dropdown shows stage specific wording such as Ready for Next Stage instead of a generic Done. The same three colors can mean different things in different stages, which keeps the flag meaningful without training anyone.

Studio exposes this widget as Label Selection on selection fields:

1. Open the view in Studio.

2. Select the selection field you want to display as a status bullet.

3. In the properties panel on the left, set Widget to Label Selection.

4. Optionally toggle Autosave off if you do not want each click to save the record, and use Hide label to control the text next to the bullet.

5. Close Studio and test a click on the bullet.

Studio cannot change the color mapping: red and green stay bound to the value keys blocked and done. If your custom selection uses keys like approved or stuck, every bullet stays gray and no Studio setting fixes it; you would need a custom widget or a rename of the selection keys in code. Studio also cannot create the legend_* per record label fields for you.

Standard kanban state on a list or kanban view, exactly as website_event_track ships it:

<field name="kanban_state" widget="state_selection" groups="base.group_user"/>

Show the text label next to the bullet and keep edits unsaved until the user saves the form:

<field name="kanban_state" widget="state_selection"
       options="{'hide_label': False, 'autosave': False}"/>

Per record labels: load the legend fields (invisible is enough) and the dropdown picks them up automatically:

<field name="legend_blocked" invisible="1"/>
<field name="legend_done" invisible="1"/>
<field name="kanban_state" widget="state_selection"/>

Three behaviors worth knowing, all read from the 19.0 source:

Legends only work if they are in the view. The options getter substitutes record.data['legend_' + state] for each selection label. Record data only contains fields the view loaded, so the legends silently fall back to the generic labels when the legend_* fields are missing from the arch. Odoo's own project views load them invisibly for this reason.

Form views get hotkeys. extractProps sets withCommand only when viewType === "form". The component then registers one command per selection value, with hotkeys Alt+D, Alt+F and Alt+G assigned to the first three values, each labeled Set kanban state as X in the command palette. Values beyond the third get a command without a hotkey.

There is dead code in the label getter. The readonly label path checks record.data['legend_' + value[0]], which takes the first character of the state key (so legend_n for normal). That field name essentially never exists, so the branch never fires and the correctly substituted fallback runs instead. Harmless, but a good reminder that the legend substitution you can rely on is the one in the options getter.

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.

The autosave option is deleted. Both the declared option and the save flag in the update call are gone on master: clicking a state updates the field but no longer forces a record save, and an existing options="{'autosave': False}" becomes a no op. If your flows rely on the one click save behavior, plan to retest them on 20.

hide_label, the color map, the legend substitution and the form hotkeys are unchanged on master. We will re verify this page against the released branch after the launch.