HI, thank you Ghanshyam - I do not mean a custom module, I was asking about the messaging system that comes out of the box with OpenERP. Is it possible to activate the auto_refresh for this? If I change the source I think I need to make it a custom module... well, I think this is overhead for this kind of basic funtionality that every user could need - so maybe better put this in the main OpenERP source, if not available? It´s really a basic feature - work collegues will say "oh, but there was nothing new, so I did not see your message and went home..." - I mean really basic :)

Hmm, this seems to be not a bug, but default behavior? I am totally baffled - after fighting with backend installation stuff etc. I totally focussed on more advanced technical issues and did not even consider that these kind of features could be absent in OpenERP. So all you OpenERP powerusers are pressing F5 like 10.000 times a day? I can not believe this. But I did not find any hint in the sources for usage of HTML5 History/State APIs - e.g. like https://github.com/browserstate/history.js I hope I am totally wrong on this...

Where do I have to put the <field name="auto_refresh" eval="10"/> to get it working for existing messaging features (groups, inbox, etc.)?

You have to put this in your action of your object ( View XML File).

try Scheduled Action in settings - configure your needs