Short answer: In Odoo 19 CRM the Salesperson field says who owns the opportunity, but each planned activity has its own Assigned to user. So changing the salesperson is only one third of a handover. You also need to review the open activities and any activity plans or activity types that name the person leaving, and leave a note describing what the customer has been promised.
Applies to
- Odoo version: Odoo 19. I read the CRM activities page in the 20.0 documentation as well and found no difference in the assignment options.
- Edition: Community and Enterprise, because the CRM app and the mail activities underneath it are in the Community code.
- Apps: CRM, with Sales if quotations are open. This is a process recommendation, not a documented one-click feature.
What does the Salesperson field actually change?
It changes who the opportunity belongs to, and in the 19.0 source it also updates the Assignment Date (date_open). I read the write method of crm.lead and saw nothing there that moves existing activities. That fits how activities are modelled: the mail.activity record has a user_id labelled Assigned to, separate from the record it sits on.
The practical result is a pipeline that looks tidy. The new owner’s name is on the card, but the call due on Friday is still in the leaver’s list. If the user is archived later, nobody may notice it go overdue.
How do I find everything the leaver still owns?
Open CRM ‣ Sales ‣ My Pipeline. The default filter is My Pipeline, so remove it, then switch to list view and group by salesperson. The lost-opportunities guide shows how to clear default filters and add a custom filter on any field, which is the same technique here.
Do the same for leads if you have leads enabled under CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Settings. Then, for each open record, check the planned activities in the chatter. This is slow by hand, which is why larger handovers deserve a short script or a data import reviewed by someone who knows the data model. If you go that way, remember activities and opportunities are separate tables, so both need writing.
Which settings will quietly send work back to the leaver?
Two places, both easy to forget.
An activity type has a Default User. When that type is scheduled, the activity goes to that user; if the field is empty it goes to whoever creates the activity.
An activity plan line has an Assignment of either Ask at launch or Default user. With the second, the work always goes to the named person. The 19.0 source also seeds a plan line’s default user from its activity type, so a leaver can appear in a plan you never edited.
Review CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Activity Types and CRM ‣ Configuration ‣ Activity Plans on the day someone leaves. My preference is Ask at launch for most lines.
What belongs in the handover note?
A few lines in the chatter, written by the outgoing owner if possible: who the real decision maker is, what has been promised and by when, what is waiting on the customer, and any open quotation. Followers are not a replacement. Following an opportunity notifies you of messages. It does not make you answerable for the next step.
What should the new owner check in the first week?
Open each inherited opportunity and read the chatter from the bottom up. Look for the last message the customer sent, not the last one your colleague wrote. Then confirm three things: the next planned activity has a date and an owner, any quotation is still valid, and the contact on the record is still the right person.
I would also ask the new owner to send a short introduction to the customer on the larger deals. It costs a few minutes and avoids the customer finding out about the change by chasing a colleague who has moved on. Managers can then check the same list again a week later and see which opportunities still have no planned activity.
A worked example
A firm that sells commercial kitchen equipment moves a regional account manager to another territory. The manager changes Salesperson on a long list of opportunities in one go. Two weeks later a customer asks why nobody confirmed the site visit.
The visit was an activity assigned to the old owner. The fix would have been a short review before the change: filter by the old salesperson, open the activities, reassign each, then add a one-paragraph note on the larger deals.
When it fits and when it doesn’t
A manual review fits a short list of open deals. It does not fit a large book of business. At that scale, I would plan the handover as a small piece of work with a test run on a copy of the database, because it touches records the documentation does not describe as a bulk operation.
Common mistakes
- Archiving the leaver’s user before the review. It becomes harder to see what is still assigned to them.
- Reassigning only open opportunities. Leads and lost opportunities may still matter.
- Merging as a shortcut. Merging deletes the secondary records after moving their messages and activities, so it is not a reassignment tool.
- Forgetting plans. A plan with a default user will keep generating work for the old owner.
Related
- Managing your pipeline in Odoo CRM explains the day-to-day activity habits a handover depends on.
- Activities, forecasting and reporting in Odoo CRM shows how to spot overdue work.
There is a longer screen by screen walkthrough of this on sajjalbajaj.in.
Official references
- CRM activities and activity plans (19.0)
- Lost opportunities (19.0)
- Merge similar leads and opportunities (19.0)
- crm.lead source (19.0)
- mail.activity source (19.0)
How this article was checked: I read the Odoo 19 CRM documentation, compared the same pages with 20.0, and read the 19.0 crm.lead and mail.activity source for the field behaviour. I did not run a live database, and I did not look for add-ons that might reassign activities.
If you need help planning a CRM clean-up or a scripted data change, the portfolio shows the kind of work I take on.