The Knowledge article tree panel has been optimized to load articles, favorites, and access information in fewer steps. This should make navigating large Knowledge workspaces faster and smoother for users, especially when opening the side panel or the Knowledge home page.

This is done through successive commits.

The first one introduces a query counter test and then successive other commits
each improve this query counter up until the last one.

The various performances improvements include:
- Fetching all children articles that are going to be displayed all at once
- Batch compute user write access for the tree panel 
- Introduce '_parent_store' and 'parent_path' to speed up hierarchy operators
- Store the article active status on linked favorites
- Avoid checking root articles ACLs twice
- Avoid computing ACLs of the active article twice
- Avoid fetching favorited articles separately

This is best read by going through commits one by one instead of the full diff.
See underlying commits for details.

Task-2791000

Channel conversations now better distinguish regular messages from notifications. This makes discussions easier to read and helps users understand whether an item is part of the conversation or an informational update.

part of task-2918956

Community: https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/98262

Unread message counts in Odoo’s enterprise mail experience are now tracked at the conversation channel level rather than on the broader thread object. This makes the mail interface’s unread indicators more consistent and easier to maintain, with minimal direct impact on day-to-day users.

Community: odoo/odoo#98149
Part of task-2948676.

Studio approval rules can now assign a responsible person who is automatically notified through a next activity when approval is needed. This makes pending approvals easier to track and act on, while keeping activities synchronized when approvals are granted, refused, or completed.

Before this PR, it was impractical for a "manager" to know what
approval flows were waiting for them, leaving users to manually contact
their manager on a record asking for approval of the action. This made
the feature less useful in general.

This commit introduces the notion of a "responsible" on an approval rule
that will be notified that an approval is waiting for action via a next
activity that is "linked" to the approval (so granting or refusing the
approval will automatically remove the activity, and marking the
activity as done will automatically approve the action if it hasn't
been approved or rejected already).

To keep a clean link between approval rules, records and next activities
that pertain to them, a new model 'studio.approval.request' is
introduced which models such a link (indeed, since the rule has no entry
yet, there was no clean model on which to set this link and adding a
field on activities for that was not a good idea, as it would have too
wide an impact).

Task-2895596

(also fixed a display bug)

The Knowledge article form view and related tools have been rebuilt with a newer interface framework. This should make editing articles, moving content, and managing permissions more consistent and easier to maintain, while preserving the existing business workflow.

PURPOSE

Rewrite the form view and associated widgets using OWL.

SPECS

The following components have been re-written using OWL:
- Knowledge Form View (+ Renderer + Controller)
- The various Dialogs (MoveArticleDialog, ...)
- The permission panel

Task-2942515

This update keeps the Documents kanban view aligned with the latest interface styling changes. It removes a duplicated styling setting and adjusts the layout so the view continues to display correctly after the broader design refresh.

Part of the overall v16 SCSS optimization/restyle, task-2704984

Requires: 
- https://github.com/odoo/odoo/pull/96195

task-2892062

Accounting users can now work without mandatory bank statements, while still creating and assigning statements when they need control checks. Statements can include end dates, ending balances, and scanned attachments, with warnings for missing statement coverage or balance mismatches.

First release, I'll fill the info later on

Task [#2879904](https://www.odoo.com/web#id=2879904&cids=1&menu_id=4720&action=4043&model=project.task&view_type=form)

Related community PR: odoo/odoo#96128

New automated performance checks were added for key Knowledge navigation paths. These tests help monitor database usage when users open the Knowledge tree panel or main Knowledge menu, supporting future optimization work without changing user-facing behavior.

This commit simply introduces a query counter test for the tree panel knowledge
route. This will allow us to optimize that route in following commits.

While we are at it, we also add a quick query counter test for the
'action_home_page' method, as it is called every time the main Knowledge menu
is clicked.

Task-2791000