Here's an overview of OpenProject. OpenProject is a web-based, open-source project management tool, and it's quite impressive. This covers some of the stronger features.
When you first load up OpenProject, you're typically looking at your project overview. As a project management tool, you can track a whole bunch of different projects. You might have demo projects or ones you create yourself, populating them with tasks relevant to your work.
Clicking into a specific project brings you to its overview, which is often a board with various widgets. You can find a project description, project status indicators, status of different tasks and phases, team members involved, and a calendar. This view is customizable; you can resize widgets or add new ones like time spent tracking. It offers a flexible front view for the project you're managing.
The real core, the thing most users care about, however, is the work packages. A work package consists of components like phases and tasks. Phases act as collections of tasks, while tasks are the individual activities to be done within a phase. You can manage these, expanding or collapsing phases as needed.
When you look into a specific task, you access its details. You can assign a task to a parent phase, add a description (like "Dig a hole"), and define who is assigned to perform the task and who is accountable for ensuring it gets done. You can estimate the time required and track the actual time spent. Start and end dates can be set, along with the progress percentage accomplished so far. Tasks can also be prioritized (e.g., high, low, immediate) and assigned to a budget you've created, ensuring funding is tracked. Relevant files can be attached, and a valuable feature is the activity tracker, which logs changes made to the task, such as creation, date changes, assignments, and description updates. Beyond assignees and accountable persons, you can add watchers – team members who need to stay informed about the task even if they aren't directly involved. This system seems quite flexible.
Once tasks and phases are set up, OpenProject offers multiple ways to view them. There's a card-based view for those who prefer a Kanban-style approach. For traditional project management, there's a Gantt chart view, showing tasks timelines visually, with phases encapsulating their respective tasks. A calendar view plots tasks and phases based on their dates, showing what's happening when.
There's also a dedicated time and costs view. If you're focused on financials, you can see costs logged against the project (for example, 20 units spent on raw materials procurement). You can create budgets and monitor the total amount assigned versus how much has been spent, giving a clear picture of financial progress.
Other potentially useful modules include forums for discussions, a document repository for uploading relevant files like project proposals, a meetings module to schedule and manage team meetings, and a team members section to manage roles and responsibilities.
You can also customize the look and feel, applying different themes or even your own logo and favicon, which is a nice touch. The tool is fairly workable in a mobile format too. While not the absolute prettiest mobile experience, it's functional. You can access menus, view projects, see work packages, filter tasks assigned to you, and essentially perform most desktop actions, albeit in a more compact interface common for responsive websites.
One feature that could enhance this open-source tool is more detailed expense tracking. While you can log costs, there isn't currently an option to upload receipts or itemize expenses with visual proof. However, this seems like a feasible addition for the future.
OpenProject supports various integrations. Through administration settings, you can find options for webhooks, allowing other tools to connect. There's likely an API available. It includes GDPR settings and supports plugins for tools like Slack, reCAPTCHA, two-factor authentication, and single sign-on methods like OmniAuth. It's a fairly well-developed tool worth exploring further.
About OpenProject (Community Edition)
OpenProject is a powerful open-source, web-based project management software designed to support classic, agile, or hybrid project management approaches throughout the entire project life cycle. The Community Edition is free to install and use.
Key Features
Core functionalities include:
- Work Package Management (Tasks, Phases)
- Gantt Charts (Timelines)
- Agile Boards (Kanban, Scrum)
- Calendars
- Time and Cost Tracking
- Budget Management
- Team Collaboration (Forums, Wikis, Meetings)
- Document Management
- Customizable Dashboards
- User and Permission Management
- Integrations & API
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- ✅ Comprehensive feature set for project management.
- ✅ Open-source and free (Community Edition).
- ✅ Highly customizable (workflows, views, themes).
- ✅ Supports multiple project management methodologies (Classic, Agile, Hybrid).
- ✅ Active community and development.
- ✅ Good integration capabilities.
Cons:
- ❌ Basic expense tracking lacks receipt uploads.
- ❌ Mobile user interface could be more polished.
- ❌ Can have a steeper learning curve compared to simpler tools.
- ❌ Self-hosting requires technical knowledge.
Availability
OpenProject Community Edition is free and open-source. You can download and install it on your own servers. Installation guides and community support are available on their official website.
