OpenProject 7 with new Gantt chart

The well-known project management solution OpenProject is now available in a new version. The application offers a powerful feature set for both traditional as well as agile project management and empowers project teams to efficiently plan, steer and communicate within projects.

The development of OpenProject is coordinated by the OpenProject Foundation, an active open source developer community.

Aside from regular software and security updates, the manufacturer offers maintenance and support contracts as well as trainings for employees.

The most important changes in OpenProject 7.1 are:

  • Simplified integration into Univention App Center
  • a new Gantt chart which allows for easy project planning and scheduling
  • show and hide sub-tasks in list view
  • the Zen mode which hides all non-essential information and lets you focus on the tasks at hand
  • improved main navigation in application header
  • multi-select custom fields
  • custom logo and color scheme

Simplified integration into Univention App Center

The integration with Univention Corporate Server (UCS) has been updated and simplified. System administrators can enable users for OpenProject directly in the web-based UCS management system.

In detail the integration is split into two parts: User provisioning and authentication. Provisioning uses a combination of App Center attributes and listener plugin. The attributes are a shortcut, so that the App Center automatically creates an LDAP schema extension and extended attributes for the UCS management system from the attribute definitions and applies them upon app installation. They are responsible for adding the checkboxes “Activate user” and “Give admin rights” to the user dialogue in UCS and storing the values in the directory service.

Furthermore, the listener plugin adds newly created users to the OpenProject database via the OpenProject API. This step allows existing users to assign items to new users in OpenProject, before they login the first time. In general, listener plugins are a very powerful method to distribute data from the directory service for example to other data stores like a database.

User authentication as second part is done by OpenProject’s default directory connection. The app configures the connection appropriately. After a user is enabled for OpenProject in the UCS user management, it is automatically provisioned to OpenProject via listener plugin. However, authentication is still done directly against the LDAP directory so that no passwords need to be stored in the OpenProject database.

The most important new functions

New Gantt chart

The new Gantt chart is a complete rewrite of the existing timeline module. It is now tightly integrated into the list view. Start and end dates can be easily set by dragging and dropping phases and milestones in the Gantt chart. It also shows relations between those elements.

Show and hide sub-tasks in list view

Work packages are often structured in hierarchies. With OpenProject 7.0 sub-tasks can now be collapsed in the list view.

Show and hide sub-tasks in list view

Zen mode

The new Zen-mode hides all non-essential information such as the navigation header and the sidebar so the user can focus on the project plan or task they are currently working on. In addition the browser is set into the fullscreen mode. This is very helpful in presentation or meeting situations.

Multi-select custom fields

Work packages custom fields of type List or User can now be set to multi-select. Once created, project members can select multiple values for these custom fields.

Logo upload and custom color scheme

In OpenProject 7.0 the OpenProject logo can be replaced with a custom logo. Additionally, the color scheme of the application can be adapted to the corporate identity.

Improved main navigation in application header

The top navigation in OpenProject has been simplified with OpenProject 7. Most notably, the project selection has moved to the left and now shows the selected project.

 

More information can be found in the official OpenProject 7 release notes and this video summary:

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Birthe Lindenthal

Birthe is chairperson of the OpenProject Foundation's (OPF) Board of Directors. The foundation governs and gives guidance to the open source project OpenProject – a web-based project management software. She’s enthusiastic about free and open source software and the way an open source community jointly contributes to a project. She's been working with OpenProject since 2009 and is head of marketing and communication at OpenProject GmbH.

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