You don't necessarily have to create a module to keep your changes persistent otherwise it would mean that it is impossible to keep changes persistent on Odoo Online (cloud environment) since you can't install custom modules there.

The solution, for views at least, is to inherit your view and make your changes in the inherited view. This way, the original view stays unchanged and can be overwritten during an update but your inherited view isn't.

In the case of views changes, it is much faster and easier to do this through the interface than to bother with module creation, so I recommend this solution.

Hi, to keep your customizations, you need to put them in a separate module.

Otherwise, you will lost every changes you've made through the interface at the next update of your code.

P.

So then I have to build my own module to apply my changes the next time the system updates?   Can you point me to some reference materials?

Maybe you can facilitate this kind of customisation using module prototyper to add and generate your module with your customisations

https://github.com/savoirfairelinux/server-tools/tree/8.0-prototype/module_prototyper