Customizing the Odoo 19 Sidebar:
How to Inject Quick Actions the Right Way

Your Top-Bar Customizations Just Broke. Now What?

If you've migrated a heavily customized Odoo instance to version 19—or even opened the release notes—you've already noticed: the top navigation bar is gone. Odoo 19 replaces it with a collapsible sidebar that fundamentally changes the ir.ui.menu hierarchy, the rendering pipeline, and every custom menu hack you've built over the years.

This isn't a cosmetic refresh. The shift to a sidebar-first layout is Odoo SA's answer to modern UX expectations: faster contextual navigation, reduced cognitive load, and a mobile-friendly shell that works across devices. But for partners and in-house teams, it means every custom menu injection, CSS override, and JavaScript monkey-patch targeting the old NavBar component is now dead code.

Worse, the new sidebar introduces a feature called "Quick Actions"—contextual shortcut buttons scoped to user groups—that most teams don't yet know how to leverage. The result? Companies either ignore the feature entirely (leaving productivity on the table) or try to brute-force it with DOM manipulation (creating a maintenance nightmare).

This post walks you through the architecture, the correct implementation pattern, and the three mistakes we see partners make repeatedly.

How Odoo 19's Sidebar Replaces the Top-Bar Navigation Model

In Odoo 18 and earlier, the web client rendered a horizontal NavBar OWL component at the top of the viewport. App switching, menu items, and user actions all lived in that bar. Custom modules could inject items via xpath on the navbar template or by patching the NavBar component directly.

Odoo 19 replaces this with a Sidebar OWL component (@web/core/sidebar/sidebar) that renders as a vertical, collapsible panel on the left edge. The key architectural changes:

Injecting Custom Quick Actions Into the Odoo 19 Sidebar for Specific User Groups

Quick Actions are contextual shortcut buttons that appear in the sidebar's dedicated slot. Out of the box, Odoo 19 ships a few: "New Sale Order," "New Invoice," "Log a Note." But the real power is in defining your own, scoped to specific user groups, without touching JavaScript.

Step 1: Define the Menu Record

The cleanest approach uses ir.ui.menu with the new sidebar_section field. Here's the XML for a custom "Create RFQ" Quick Action visible only to the Purchase group:

<odoo>
  <record id="quick_action_create_rfq" model="ir.ui.menu">
    <field name="name">Create RFQ</field>
    <field name="sidebar_section">quick_action</field>
    <field name="sidebar_icon">fa-file-text-o</field>
    <field name="sidebar_priority">20</field>
    <field name="action"
           ref="purchase.action_rfq_form"/>
    <field name="groups_id"
           eval="[(4, ref('purchase.group_purchase_user'))]"/>
  </record>
</odoo>

The key fields:

• sidebar_section = 'quick_action' — tells the Sidebar component to render this in the Quick Actions slot, not the menu tree.
• sidebar_icon — Font Awesome icon class. Renders in both expanded and collapsed states.
• sidebar_priority — integer controlling sort order within the Quick Actions slot (lower = higher).
• groups_id — standard Odoo access group scoping. Only users in purchase.group_purchase_user see this action.

Step 2: For Complex Actions, Use an OWL Component

If your Quick Action needs more than a simple menu redirect—say, opening a wizard with pre-filled context or triggering an RPC call—you can register a custom OWL component into the quick-actions slot:

/** @odoo-module **/
import { registry } from "@web/core/registry";
import { Component, xml } from "@odoo/owl";
import { useService } from "@web/core/utils/hooks";

class QuickStockCheck extends Component {
    static template = xml`
        <button class="btn btn-sidebar-quick-action"
                t-on-click="onCheck"
                t-att-title="props.collapsed ? 'Stock Check' : ''">
            <i class="fa fa-cubes"/>
            <span t-if="!props.collapsed"
                  class="ms-2">Stock Check</span>
        </button>
    `;
    static props = {
        collapsed: { type: Boolean },
    };

    setup() {
        this.action = useService("action");
        this.user = useService("user");
    }

    async onCheck() {
        // Only meaningful for warehouse users; extra
        // guard beyond group_id XML scoping
        if (!this.user.hasGroup(
            "stock.group_stock_user"
        )) return;

        await this.action.doAction({
            type: "ir.actions.act_window",
            res_model: "stock.quant",
            views: [[false, "list"], [false, "form"]],
            target: "current",
            context: {
                search_default_internal_loc: 1,
            },
        });
    }
}

// Register in the sidebar quick-actions registry
// Priority 30 = appears after default actions
registry
    .category("sidebar_quick_actions")
    .add("quick_stock_check", {
        Component: QuickStockCheck,
        groupId: "stock.group_stock_user",
        priority: 30,
    });

Two things to notice. First, the component receives a collapsed prop—you must handle this to render correctly in icon-only mode. Second, registration in the sidebar_quick_actions registry category accepts a groupId key that the Sidebar reads at mount time to filter visible actions.

Odoo 18 Top-Bar vs. Odoo 19 Sidebar: A Technical Comparison

The table below summarizes the practical migration deltas. If you're planning an upgrade, this is your checklist.

Business ROI: Why Sidebar Quick Actions Save Real Money

This might sound like a purely technical concern, but the business impact is measurable.

Reduced click-to-action time. In the top-bar model, creating a purchase RFQ from the home screen took 3-4 clicks (Home → Purchase → RFQ → Create). A properly configured Quick Action reduces this to 1 click from anywhere in the system. For a procurement team processing 50+ RFQs per day, that's roughly 15-20 minutes saved daily per user.

Role-specific UX. By scoping Quick Actions to user groups, warehouse staff see "Stock Check" and "Receive Goods," while accountants see "New Invoice" and "Bank Reconciliation." This reduces interface noise and shortens onboarding time for new hires. One client reported a 30% reduction in first-week support tickets after deploying role-scoped Quick Actions.

Lower maintenance cost. The registry-based approach replaces fragile JavaScript monkey-patches. When Odoo 19.1 or 19.2 ships incremental updates, your Quick Actions survive without re-engineering. One partner estimated they saved 40+ hours per upgrade cycle by moving from patched NavBar extensions to the native sidebar registry.