OpenProject Blog

Looking back: OpenProject in 2025 🌟

2025-12-18T08:53:12+00:00

What a year of contrasts 2025 was! Full of growth, progress and meaningful impact. But at the same time, full of threats, uncertainties, and alarming announcements. How can we remain positive with all the challenges we face every day? We believe that this is precisely why optimism matters more than ever. It is a choice to see opportunity where others see obstacles, to focus on solutions rather than problems. We should roll up our sleeves and be the change we want to see in this world, not waiting for someone else to act. Every small effort, every thoughtful decision, and every collaboration contributes to a larger impact. By staying hopeful, committed, and proactive, we turn uncertainty into possibility and challenges into milestones for progress. And we are proud of everything we have achieved together over the past year.

As we close another chapter, we want to pause, look back, and celebrate together: with our team, our Community, our partners, and our users — with you! This year, OpenProject continued to live up to its mission: delivering open source, sovereign, and powerful project management to organizations of any kind: Empowering teams to achieve great things together for the good of society. And we did that not just by adding features but by thinking deeply about why open source matters today more than ever.

🚀 What we shipped in 2025

Continued regular releases, real improvements

In 2025, we shipped a total of 28 releases, each bringing meaningful, visible improvements to our users. Among the most important enhancements were:

Major UI and accessibility upgrades, along with improved filtering, usability refinements, and new configuration options for dark and high contrast modes.
Significant enhancements to the Meetings module, including meeting backlogs, recurring meetings, agenda item outcomes, PDF exports, and improved invitation flows.
Improved scheduling with automatic “as soon as possible” scheduling mode, better progress calculations, and support for entering lags.
Portfolio management improvements, incl. project life-cycle management and calculated values for project evaluation and scoring.
Time-tracking improvements, including a dedicated calendar view and PDF exports for timesheets.
Enhanced file-storage integrations for Nextcloud and SharePoint.
Additional collaboration features such as internal comments (Enterprise add-on), automatically generated work package titles, work package reminders to notify users at a later point in time, and numerous refinements to support more flexible and efficient teamwork.

These updates reflect our commitment to continuous meaningful improvements instead of bells and whistles, but making the tool more helpful, more accessible, and more reliable for everyday work. Our release notes provide an overview of all updates. You can even view the fantastic new release videos we introduced in 2025.

Industry recognition: OpenProject as a top-rated PM solution

In March 2025, we were honored to be recognized by Gartner Digital Markets (via Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice) as one of the leading project management solutions 2025 worldwide. This recognition is not just a badge but a tribute to our users, our Community, and our persistent dedication to quality and open source values.

Reinforcing our strategic roadmap: our vision meets execution in 2026 and beyond

At the start of 2025, we published our roadmap, spotlighting key themes like portfolio management, team collaboration, integrations & API, usability & accessibility — and even a mobile app on the horizon. It’s inspiring for us to see so many of those planned items take shape throughout the year and not least because they align with real needs of organizations scaling sustainably.

In 2026 and beyond, OpenProject is expanding its capabilities across key strategic areas to empower organizations with even more robust, secure, and future-ready collaboration. The 2026 roadmap focuses on advancing the migration from Atlassian Jira, strengthening IT Service Management (ITSM), and deepening support for agile project management. It further enhances test management, portfolio management, and resource and capacity planning to improve cross-team efficiency and transparency.

In addition, OpenProject is investing in powerful AI integrations to automate workflows and provide actionable insights, while also extending real-time collaboration in text editors. Together, these focus areas shape a comprehensive strategy to support digital transformation and agile administration in the years ahead.

💙 Why 2025 mattered — beyond features

Because open source and digital sovereignty matter more than ever

We live in a world where digital infrastructure shapes power, autonomy, and trust. With rising geopolitical tensions, shifting regulations and increasing attention to data sovereignty, it’s no longer optional to ask where your data is stored, but it becomes fundamental.

OpenProject stands for a different path: open source, transparent, self-hostable, privacy-conscious. In 2025, we saw more organizations, especially in public administration and regulated environments, look for exactly that kind of sovereignty, control, and independence, rather than signing up for closed SaaS tools. This is not just about software, it’s about preserving freedom, democracy and trust in digital collaboration.

All the happier we are that also openDesk, the sovereign workplace by Zentrum Digitale Souveränität (ZenDiS), is gaining traction and organizations such as German State Premiers and the International Criminal Court chose openDesk in 2025. We are happy that we are part of this, contributing Portfolio and Project Management as well as collaboration functionalities.

Because our team and Community outshine everything

Our success this year would not have been possible without the vibrant and engaged team. In May this year, we gathered for our company offsite in Brandenburg. Spinning new ideas, fostering team spirit and spending fun time together. Watch our team video to get an impression. We want to thank our team, who showed up with passion, patience and persistence throughout the year. You make it happen!

“When the wind turns wild, set your sails with intention. Storms reveal the strongest navigators. In these times of uncertainty, it is more important than ever to collaborate with our friends. Digital sovereignty is a joint task for Europe in order to stand up for our values and thus for our democracy.” – Birthe Lindenthal, CMO and Co-founder

And all of this would not have been possible without the Community around OpenProject. From bug reports and feature requests to translations, documentation contributions, testing, feedback and support: every single contribution matters. The 2025 Gartner recognition, the smooth releases, the roadmap follow-through, all of it stands on the shoulders of our Community.

And finally, we thank our close partners and sponsors once again. i.e. City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, and ZenDiS. Of course, it’s great to release software for free. But developers want to be paid, open source or not. That’s why we would like to express our heartfelt thank you to our loyal partners who support us with feature sponsorship. All these upstream contributions benefit other users.

Because we stand up as a serious alternative to proprietary PM stacks

With the announced discontinuation of Atlassian Data Center, 2025 has become a crucial year for companies evaluating their future tools. We were aware of this and worked to position OpenProject not just as “another project management tool”, but as a standalone, mature alternative and a reliable partner for an immediate switch. In doing so, we have made a small but important contribution to digital independence on a large scale.

Because we build a strong ecosystem with our partners

2025 also marked an important year for strengthening the open source ecosystem around OpenProject. We know that digital sovereignty cannot be achieved alone. It is a team effort — in Germany, across Europe, and with strong partners who share our vision. In 2025, we were proud to strengthen international collaboration, from our participation in the DINUM Hackathon in Paris, where we explored cross-border solutions for open, privacy-first collaboration, to participating in the Franco-German Digital Sovereignty Summit in Berlin, reaffirming the importance of sovereign solutions for public administration.

Together with our partners, we deepened a network of powerful, privacy-respecting alternatives to proprietary platforms. Our long-standing partnership with Nextcloud continued to grow, enabling seamless content collaboration through our Nextcloud integration and offering organizations a secure, sovereign alternative to Microsoft 365. We were excited to participate as sponsors in many Nextcloud Enterprise Days, such as in Copenhagen, The Hague, and Paris, as well as at the Nextcloud Summit in Munich. At the same time, we intensified our collaboration with XWiki to build an open, extensible alternative to Atlassian Confluence — and we are already working on the first integration. This is where open source truly shows its strength: when independent projects unite their communities, their knowledge, and their innovations. Because in this ecosystem, 1+1 becomes 3 — and organizations gain real freedom of choice.

🧱 The challenges and what still needs attention

Of course, not everything is done. As we grow and evolve, we see areas where improvement is still needed:

Ensuring smooth migration paths for larger organizations switching from legacy tools, especially for those coming from proprietary stacks.
Continuing to build integrations and interoperability because tools don’t live in isolation.
Enhancing UX and accessibility further, especially with more diverse users, platforms, and needs.
Preparing for global uncertainties: security, data protection, and sovereignty, and ensuring OpenProject remains a safe, stable and trustworthy place for organizations to collaborate.

We accept these challenges, and we are committed to working on them together with you.

❤️ Thank you to our Community, our users, our team

We started 2025 with a lot of energy. Today, at the end of 2025, we look back with pride, gratitude and optimism. Thank you for your trust, your feedback, your engagement and your contributions.

Whether you are a long-time user, a newcomer, a contributor, a supporter, or just someone curious: you make OpenProject what it is. Let’s carry this spirit into 2026!

Let’s continue building software that empowers teams — not locks them in.
Let’s continue our support for digital sovereignty, open collaboration and transparent infrastructure.
Let’s stay open, inclusive, quality-driven and always ready to listen to our Community.

Together, we make OpenProject not just a any tool, but a shared foundation for collaboration, trust and freedom.

Here’s to 2026. 🌟 The OpenProject team

News from the Product Desk: Real-time collaboration in Documents

2025-12-15T08:16:00+00:00

Starting version 17.0 – currently planned for January 2026, OpenProject introduces a completely redesigned Documents module with real-time collaboration capabilities. This marks a significant step forward in how teams can work together within OpenProject, enabling multiple users to edit documents simultaneously while seeing each other’s changes as they happen.

Why we needed this change

Project teams work in increasingly distributed and asynchronous ways. Whether you are brainstorming ideas, drafting project requirements, writing status reports or planning the next phase of work, collaboration is at the heart of what makes projects successful. However, traditional document editing workflows often create friction: files are duplicated, versions become out of sync, and team members struggle to know which version is the most current. Parallel editing leads to conflicts, data loss and frustration.

At OpenProject, we’re always trying to find ways to help our users communicate and collaborate in better ways. We believe teams want to work together in real time, see who else is contributing and have confidence that their edits won’t be lost or overwritten. This is precisely why we worked on upgrades to the Documents module.

Important
Please note that the changes outlined in this article are planned for release in version 17.0, which is currently scheduled for January 14, 2026.

Real-time collaboration in OpenProject

The redesigned Documents module brings true real-time collaboration to OpenProject. When you open a document, you can see who else is actively editing it. Their cursors appear on the page, showing exactly where they are and what changes they are making, as they type.

Real-time collaboration is not simply about being able to see other users’ changes. It’s also about removing the barriers that slow teams down: no more waiting for someone to finish editing before you can make your contribution, no more merging conflicting versions, no more hunting through email attachments or shared drives to find the latest version of a document. The most current document is always in one place, and everyone works from the same source of truth.

What’s new in Documents

The new Documents module represents both a significant user experience improvement and a fundamental technological shift:

Real-time collaborative editing: Multiple users can edit the same document simultaneously. You see who’s online, where their cursors are, and what they’re changing in real time. Complex conflict management happens automatically in the background, ensuring that no one’s edits are lost.

Modern rich text editor: Documents now uses BlockNote, a modern open source rich text editor that makes writing and formatting simple and intuitive. Adding rich content like images, videos, audio files, or code blocks is straightforward.

Dynamic work package references: You can now include references to work packages directly within documents using the /op or /workpackage commands. These references update dynamically, so if the name, status or type of a work package changes, these are reflected automatically in the document. This also makes it easy to link to features or reference bugs without manually copying and pasting information that might become outdated.

File attachments: Attach files to any document to provide additional context, supporting materials, or related resources. Everything stays organized in one place.

Improved design and usability: The entire interface has been redesigned with a focus on clarity and ease of use, with a particular focus on providing a distraction-free editing experience.

Take a look at this short preview Gif that shows the features listed above:

Preview for OpenProject 17.0: Four active editors in the Documents module, adding a heart image to the document, linking work packages and collaboratively writing and editing text.

Technical foundations

Making real-time collaboration possible required substantial work on the technical foundation of the Documents module. We’ve adopted two powerful open source technologies: BlockNote as our rich text editor and Hocuspocus as our real-time collaboration toolkit.

BlockNote provides the editing experience users interact with directly. It’s extensible, modern and designed with collaboration in mind. One particularly exciting aspect of using BlockNote is that our new work package reference components are built to be generic and reusable, such that other tools that use BlockNote can also benefit from these same components. For example, Docs, part of France’s LaSuite and Germany’s openDesk, is based on BlockNote. XWiki is also testing an integration with BlockNote, which will allow users of these tools to call our BlockNote extension add dynamic links to OpenProject work packages in their text. The combination of XWiki’s knowledge management platform and OpenProject’s work management capabilities is especially potent as a replacement for Atlassian’s Jira-Confluence package. Such integrations create a more consistent experience for users working across different tools in their digital workspace.

Hocuspocus handles the complex real-time synchronization and conflict resolution that happens behind the scenes. When multiple users are editing simultaneously, Hocuspocus ensures that changes are merged correctly, no edits are lost and that the editing experience remains smooth.

These technologies form a solid foundation for collaborative editing in the Documentions module today, and potentially across other areas of OpenProject in the future.

Looking ahead

The new Documents module is the first step in a larger vision for real-time collaboration in OpenProject. However, it’s also a test bed. We’re using Documents to refine our technology, test our infrastructure and learn how our users collaborate in practice.

Once the technology is stable and we’ve gathered real-world experience, we plan to introduce real-time collaboration in other areas of OpenProject where it can bring value. Work packages are an obvious next candidate. Our goal is to make it possible for you to see your colleagues editing work package descriptions or updating custom fields in real time, with the same experience you now have in Documents.

How to access the new Documents module

For Cloud users: If have an OpenProject Cloud subscription, the new Documents module is available starting with version 17.0. You don’t need to do anything. Hocuspocus and all other dependencies are already installed and configured. Simply ensure the Documents module is enabled for each project where you want to use it, and you can start collaborating immediately.

For on-premises users: How you access the new Documents depends on your installation type:

Containerized installations (Kubernetes, Docker, or Helm charts): Everything works out of the box. Hocuspocus is automatically installed and configured for you and real-time collaboration is enabled by default.
Package-based installations (DEB/RPM packages): You’ll need to manually install dependencies such as Hocuspocus and configure them to enable real-time collaboration. We’re preparing an admin guide to walk you through this process.

What happens to existing documents

All documents created before version 17.0 remain accessible exactly as they were, using the CKEditor-based text editor. These documents do not support real-time collaboration, but they’re fully functional and unchanged. You can continue to use them as you always have.

Starting with version 17.0, all newly created documents use BlockNote and support real-time collaboration (if real-time collaboration is properly configured and enabled). This means you’ll have both old-style and new-style documents coexisting in your OpenProject instance. Older documents will have a ‘Legacy’ label on them for easy identification.

Important
If real-time collaboration is enabled and users create new documents, but real-time collaboration is subsequently disabled (either manually or due to issues reaching the Hocuspocus server), those documents will no longer be accessible. We are aware this can lead to loss of access to data, so we strongly recommend that you not disable real-time collaboration after it has been enabled.

If real-time collaboration is not enabled—for example, because Hocuspocus is not available—new documents will continue to use the old style with CKEditor, without real-time collaboration features.

Your feedback

There is of course still a lot of work to do before we have real-time collaboration across all of OpenProject. We would really appreciate your help in getting us there.

Your feedback will help us understand what we’re doing right, what we can improve and what we should focus on. Does having real-time editing in OpenProject change the way you work? Will you use this in your own projects? What are ways we can improve it?

As an open source company, we develop in the open and value input from our user Community. If you have thoughts about the new Documents module, questions about how it works, or ideas for how we can make it even better, we’d love to hear from you. Join our Community instance and share your feedback.

Credits

We would like to thank the team behind BlockNote — Yousef El-Dardiry, Nick Perez, and Matthew Lipski — for creating such an excellent open source rich text editor. Thanks as well to the team behind Hocuspocus for providing the robust real-time collaboration infrastructure that makes this possible.

We’d also like to thank the design, development and QA teams at OpenProject for their hard work in making all this possible.

OpenProject at the Berlin Summit on European Digital Sovereignty

2025-11-20T07:51:12+00:00

Europe needs open, interoperable tools to collaborate across borders. Especially in the public sector. This vision was reaffirmed at the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin, where leaders committed to strengthening open source infrastructures like openDesk OpenProject was invited on site as part of openDesk.

Summit on European Digital Sovereignty

This week, the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty took place in Berlin, hosted by the German government and attended by high-level political leaders and open source innovators from across the continent. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron laid out a joint vision for a sovereign digital Europe.

OpenProject participated as part of openDesk

When we talk about digital sovereignty in Germany and Europe, we talk about openDesk. openDesk is the secure all in one office and collaboration suite, for the public sector and everyone else. OpenProject is proud to be a core component, powering project and task management in a secure, privacy-first environment.

In his speech, Merz mentioned ZenDiS’s OpenDesk as an alternative that is already being used at the Robert Koch Institute and is also in use, at least selectively, in the Chancellery and the Ministry of Digital Affairs. We reported on this in our blog a few weeks ago.

The significance of digital sovereignty is evident

It is a positive sign that all 27 EU member states have signed the “Declaration on European Digital Sovereignty” initiated by Austria, thereby establishing a framework for action on digital sovereignty.

Another strong signal is the increasing presence of openDesk and the topic of digital sovereignty in general in the press. After the summit, the official German news programs Tagesschau and Tagesthemen have reported on the importance of digital sovereignty.

As Adriana Groh, CEO of Sovereign Tech Agency, summarizes at her speach on the Berlin summit this week: “Open source has proven itself to be a winning strategy — not recently, but for decades.”

Conclusion: Attention is great, but the work continues

Europe has the talent, the tools, and the momentum to shape its digital future, openly and collaboratively. The Berlin summit was a powerful reminder that open source is no longer a niche solution, but a strategic choice at the highest levels of government.

OpenProject is proud to be part of this movement. Together with the openDesk ecosystem and partners across Europe, we are committed to creating digital tools that serve the public good.

Still, we share the feeling expressed by ZenDiS on LinkedIn, that we miss even clearer commitments to open source solutions. Because even though the importance of digital sovereignty is becoming increasingly apparent, there is still a lack of clear communication, decisions, and speed.

If you’re working in digital public administration, now is the time to join the conversation. Learn more about openDesk and book a demo with ZenDiS to discuss your options.

How to use OpenProject as OKR software

2025-11-17T08:26:00+00:00

Managing goals in form of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a proven framework used by companies of all sizes to align strategy and execution. To successfully work with OKRs, teams need a flexible and transparent OKR software that supports both high-level strategic planning and day-to-day task management. OpenProject is perfectly suited as an OKR software to meet this goal.

Read the following guide to learn how you and your organization can use the OpenProject software to manage your OKRs in three steps.

Insights: Our experience with OpenProject as OKR software

OpenProject is known as top project management and task software. What many people don’t yet realize is that the tool can also be used wonderfully for the OKR methodology. In other words, for strategic goal setting with Objectives and Key Results. The OpenProject team is a good example of how OpenProject works in practice as OKR software. Since Q1 2025, we have been using OpenProject to plan and track our corporate Strategic Initiatives, Objectives, and corresponding Key Results.

Today, we share our experience and learnings, so that you can benefit from our test runs and use these instructions to get started with your own OKRs right away.

Note
We will show some screenshots in this article. Please note that some of them actually show our real company OKR project while others are based on demo data. Nevertheless, the process and structure reflects the way we work with Objectives and Key Results internally.

Learning 1: OKR masters and regular check-ins

To start with OKRs in our company, we selected and trained two so-called OKR masters. They are experts in the OKR framework and know best how to handle Objectives and Key Results, e.g. when it comes to phrasing or questions like “What do I do with OKRs that we didn’t finish in this quarter?”.

To do so, they also attend our regular OKR check-ins – to answer questions and stay informed on how the different OKR teams proceed. In the first quarters, we scheduled these check-ins weekly. Now that everyone is more experienced in working with OKRs, some teams changed the frequency to bi-weekly or even monthly check-in meetings.

Learning 2: Dedicated OKR teams in a dedicated project

As we use the OpenProject software for many different projects, it was quite clear that we needed a dedicated OKR project for all our Objectives and Key Results. Nevertheless, this OKR project is not time-limited. New OKRs are added every quarter, and at the same time, we can view past quarters at any time.

What we have learned: Creating dedicated OKR teams is very helpful. Not only because the composition of OKR teams can differ from our usual team structure, but also because OKR teams may require different permissions.

In addition, we created an OKR wiki right at the beginning, which the OKR masters keep up to date. In it, employees can find all the information they need for internal work with OKRs.

Guide: How to use OpenProject as OKR software in 3 steps

These were our most important learnings after three quarters working with OKRs in OpenProject. Now, let’s see how exactly you can use the tool for OKRs, step by step.

Quick navigation:

Step 1: Setting the project

Type, status, versions, groups and custom fields

Step 2: Adding OKRs

Step 3: Monitoring

Step 1: Create an OKR project with specific settings

The first step in OpenProject is always creating a new project, inviting members – and adjusting all necessary settings.

For an OKR project, you’ll need specific work package types like:

Strategic Initiative
Objective
Key Result
Task

These are the work package types we use to manage our OKRs at OpenProject.

For statuses, we rely on the same ones we typically use, e.g. “new”, “in progress” or “closed”. Additionally we added the status “moved to next quarter”, which is very helpful if you want to continue on an Objective or Key Result in the following months. This way, accountables just need to update the status and change the version, e.g. from “Objectives 2025 Q3” to “Objectives 2025 Q4”.

As mentioned above, we advise to set up OKR groups for different teams so that everyone, e.g. the OKR master, can assign work packages to the specific teams. This allows individual teams to see at a glance which OKRs belong to them and decide among themselves who is accountable for which Objective or assigned to which task.

Tip
We’re still experimenting with custom fields for OKR work packages. One idea is to set up a custom field for the Confidence Level, on Objective and on Key Result level. Accountables can then update the Confidence Level regularly to track how certain they are that the Objective or Key Result will be achieved by the end of the quarter – for example, by setting it to 0.7 if they estimate the probability to be 70%.

Step 2: Start Strategic Initiatives, Objectives and Key Results for the next quarter

Now that everything is preset, step 2 can start: defining quarter-specific Strategic Initiatives, Objectives and Key Results. This step builds on the company’s vision, mission, and annual goals — ensuring that each new OKR directly contributes to the overall strategy. Typically, the Strategic Initiatives and Objectives are defined and approved at the management level, while the corresponding Key Results and related tasks are then discussed and refined collaboratively within each team.

Work package relations

Of course, these work packages should all be linked in a smart way. In OpenProject, simply use parent-child relations to display dependencies between a Strategic Initiative, its Objectives and Key Results:

Learn more about work package relations in OpenProject.

Work package attributes and descriptions

Once you have created all relevant work packages for the quarter and have set up all relations, it might be helpful to bulk edit them to add more information:

Set the start and finish date to the start and end of the quarter.
Set the version e.g. to Q4 2025, so that you can filter for that.
Adjust priorities if necessary.

Apart from these general attributes, it is always helpful to add work package descriptions and if you work with estimates and progress, fill out the fields for Work – depending on your progress reporting mode (which is defined on an instance level).

Step 3: Monitor and schedule regular OKR meetings

Once everything is set up in OpenProject, the real work can start. To keep track of your OKR progress, you can filter and save Work package tables, Boards or Gantt charts.

Work package tables

Here’s a real screenshot of our internal OKR work package tables:

You can see saved work package tables for all teams for different quarters as well as team-specific tables. Helpful on a management level is a filtered view for all Strategic Initiatives across quarters.

Boards

Some teams prefer working with boards instead of table views. For OKRs, a parent-child board is helpful to display Objectives and their corresponding Key Results:

This type of board view works well for (bi)weekly OKR check-ins to monitor and discuss progress for each Objective.

Meetings

When it comes to OKR, regular check-ins are essential not only for the team but also on a management or OKR master level. Here’s where one of OpenProject’s most popular features comes into play: the Meetings module. Set up a recurring meeting series based on a template, and you’ll have a dedicated space to regularly review the progress of your Objectives and Key Results.

With just a few clicks, you can add them to the agenda, include comments, and record an outcome during the meeting. It couldn’t be more convenient — everything is presented at a glance, with direct links to the work packages and email invitations sent to participants. Done.

Overview and statistics

Use the project overview page to see at a glance which Key Results are at risk, closed or moved to the next quarter. Here’s an example of the OpenProject company OKR overview page:

Note
OpenProject is an OKR software that is frequently updated, with new releases every month. Looking ahead, we plan to improve our setup by experimenting with even more detailed dashboards and further automation. Take a look at our roadmap to see what we plan to release next!

Start a trial to test OpenProject for your OKRs

With everything set up, your team can now fully leverage OpenProject as OKR software to align goals, track results, and stay accountable.

OpenProject helps teams implement OKRs without switching tools. With flexible work package types and intuitive tracking, you can align strategy and execution in one place. Are you and your team working with OKRs as well? Try OpenProject now and see how OKR software built on open source can streamline your strategic alignment.

Digital sovereignty in Government: German State Premiers and the International Criminal Court choose openDesk

2025-11-06T07:19:00+00:00

Open Source collaboration for the public sector

Digital collaboration in public administration is becoming increasingly important across Europe and beyond. Questions of data protection, interoperability, and digital sovereignty are now central to how governments organize their work.

In Germany, one initiative is setting a strong example: openDesk, an open source collaboration platform designed specifically for public institutions, developed by the Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration (ZenDiS), a government-owned organization promoting open and secure IT infrastructures. openDesk integrates several trusted open source applications – including OpenProject for project management and task tracking – to enable secure, transparent, and independent collaboration within and between public organizations.

A milestone for openDesk: The German conference of Minister Presidents

A key milestone for openDesk was its successful use by the Conference of Minister Presidents (“Ministerpräsidentenkonferenz”, MPK). This conference brings together the heads of all 16 German federal states several times a year to coordinate policy decisions across the country.

At the October 2024 meeting in Leipzig, openDesk was used for the first time – only one week after the platform’s official launch. The organizing team from the State of Saxony wanted a secure, sovereign system for sharing documents, recording decisions, and collaborating on materials between all 16 states.

The result was a complete success. openDesk proved to be reliable, secure, and interoperable. The conference’s digital processes ran smoothly, and all participating offices could collaborate efficiently. This first real-world use case demonstrated that open source collaboration works even at the highest levels of government.

The technology behind openDesk

openDesk is a modular, fully open collaboration suite that combines several established open source solutions into one cohesive environment. It is developed and supported by a strong network of European and German partners who are committed to transparency, data protection, and digital sovereignty:

B1 Systems GmbH – consulting and infrastructure services for open source deployments.
Collabora Online – collaborative editing of office documents directly in the browser.
Element Software GmbH – secure chat and video communication based on the Matrix protocol.
Nextcloud GmbH – secure file storage, synchronization, and sharing.
Nordeck IT + Consulting GmbH – software development and integration of open collaboration tools.
OpenProject GmbH – project management, task planning, and transparent team collaboration.
Open-Xchange GmbH – open e-mail and groupware infrastructure.
STACKIT GmbH & Co. KG – cloud hosting infrastructure based in Germany.
Univention GmbH – identity and access management for public IT systems.
XWiki SAS – open knowledge management and documentation platform.

Together, these organizations deliver a sovereign, privacy-respecting digital workspace that meets the strict security and data protection standards of European public administrations.

Secure hosting within Germany

During the first deployment at the MPK in Saxony, openDesk was operated by Adfinis and hosted on the cloud infrastructure of IONOS, which is certified according to the C5 security standard of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

The more recent MPK meeting under the chairmanship of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was hosted by STACKIT, the cloud provider of the Schwarz Group (known for Lidl and Kaufland), with technical support from B1 Systems.

This collaboration between public institutions, mid-sized IT service providers, and open source software vendors shows how digital sovereignty is becoming a practical reality in Europe – secure, independent, and future-proof.

Growing momentum: The International Criminal Court joins the movement

Digital sovereignty is not just a German or European topic anymore. The idea of using open, transparent, and locally controlled software is gaining international traction.

Recently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced its decision to replace Microsoft products with openDesk. This move by one of the world’s most important international justice institutions underlines a growing trend: organizations handling sensitive information are increasingly turning to open source solutions to ensure long-term independence and control over their data.

OpenProject as a key component of openDesk

As one of the core components of openDesk, OpenProject provides the backbone for structured project and task management. It enables transparency, accountability, and traceability of decisions – essential qualities for complex administrative environments.

OpenProject helps public sector teams coordinate their work effectively, stay aligned on responsibilities and timelines, and maintain full control over their data. Hosted on European infrastructure and fully open source, it meets the highest privacy and compliance standards.

Learn more about openDesk and the software providers behind it.

Looking ahead

By the end of 2025, openDesk aims to deploy around 160,000 licenses across German public institutions. The platform continues to expand – from large organizations like the Robert Koch Institute to smaller but strategically critical bodies such as the Conference of Minister Presidents.

openDesk and its components, including OpenProject, represent a shared vision: digital sovereignty as the new standard, not the exception.

OpenProject 16.6: Project evaluation and scoring

2025-11-05T08:12:00+00:00

OpenProject 16.6 has been released and this version introduces new features and improvements again. Please take a few minutes to learn what changes for you. We will summarize the most important changes in this blog article and, as always, please see our release notes that contain all changes, features and bug fixes.

Project evaluation and scoring (Enterprise add-on)

With OpenProject 16.6, project portfolio managers gain new ways to make their work more measurable and transparent. The release introduces three new project attribute types: Hierarchy, Weighted item lists, and Calculated value. They can be combined to evaluate and compare projects based on consistent criteria.

These attributes allow organizations to build their own evaluation models. Hierarchy project attributes let you organize information in a structured, nested way — for example, grouping initiatives by region, department, or program.

Weighted item lists extend this concept by assigning numeric scores to list options, such as effort levels or risk ratings. These values can then be used as input for automated calculations.

Calculated values enable automatic computations based on formulas using numeric project attributes, including scores from Weighted item lists or even other calculated values. The computed result is displayed directly on the project overview and in the project list. It automatically updates whenever one of its source attributes (e.g., Benefit or Effort in the example below) changes.

Here’s an example of a calculated value called ‘Overall score (calculated)’ with the following formula: (Strategic impact * 0.6) + ( Benefit * 0.3) - (Effort * 0.1)

These new attribute types open up flexible ways to work with project data. Scoring is just one typical example — the same structure can be used to represent strategic priorities, aggregate indicators, or define your own evaluation framework that fits your organization’s needs.

Note
Please note that these new project attributes are part of our Enterprise add-ons in the Enterprise Premium plan.

Significant performance improvements

Working with large projects and complex portfolios can be challenging when pages take too long to load or filters lag behind. That’s why OpenProject 16.6 focuses on improving performance, ensuring that even large-scale installations with thousands of projects and millions of work packages remain fast and reliable.

To achieve this, several backend processes have been improved. Database queries and API responses have been refined to avoid unnecessary counting operations, and the autocompleter for adding work package relations now only retrieves the data it actually needs. These changes reduce query load and make the application more efficient overall.

As a result, users will notice faster response times, smoother navigation, and more responsive filtering — even in the largest environments.

New index page for Documents module

Managing project documents efficiently is key to keeping everyone aligned. But as projects grow, finding the right file can become a challenge. To make this easier, OpenProject 16.6 introduces the first step toward a more powerful and collaborative Documents module.

The new index page provides a structured overview of all project documents, showing each file’s Name, Type (the category), and Last edited date. The most recently updated items are always on top. A quick filter helps you search by title, and the navigation menu on the left lets you narrow the list by Type (previously called Category). Both terms are used synonymously in this first step, as Type will gradually replace Category in future updates.

A new + Document button makes adding content straightforward, and on mobile devices, the view adapts to show only the most relevant details.

While this is a smaller change on its own, it marks the beginning of a broader improvement to how teams will work with documents in OpenProject. We are excited about the upcoming changes that will make document management and live collaboration easier and more intuitive.

See our roadmap for more information.

Further usability updates

Small usability enhancements can make a big difference in everyday work. OpenProject 16.6 brings several refinements that make managing information smoother, meetings more efficient, and administration tasks easier to navigate.

Change parent of a custom field item or project attribute (Enterprise add-on)

Administrators can now rearrange items within hierarchical custom fields (Enterprise add-on) or project attributes without having to recreate them. A new Change parent option opens a dialog showing the hierarchy tree, allowing quick reorganization through search and selection.

In the Meetings module, moderators can now move agenda items directly between sections using the new Move to section action. This saves time in meetings with multiple sections or longer agendas and helps keep discussions better structured.

Learn more about meeting management with OpenProject.

Editing individual attributes even if other fields are invalid

Users can now edit visible fields even if other required fields are missing or invalid. This prevents unnecessary validation errors — for example, when a required field was added later — and lets users continue their work without interruption.

In Administration → Work packages → Workflow, the table now has a sticky header and sticky first column. This makes it easier for administrators to keep an overview of transitions when scrolling through large workflow tables.

Mini calendar re-added on mobile

On mobile devices, the date picker once again includes a mini calendar view for selecting start and finish dates. This makes it easier to see weekdays and working days at a glance, improving usability when managing tasks on the go.

OpenProject 16.6: Migration, installation, updates and support

Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 16.6. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, November 5, 2025.

You will find more information about all new features and changes in our Release notes or in the OpenProject Documentation.

If you need support, you can post your questions in the Community Forum, or if you are eligible for Enterprise support, please contact us and we are happy to support you personally.

New to OpenProject? To test all features of OpenProject 16.6 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
Prefer to run OpenProject 16.6 in your own infrastructure? Here you can find the Installation guidelines for OpenProject.
Want to upgrade from a Community version to try out the Enterprise add-ons? Get a 14 days free trial token to test the Enterprise add-ons (all plans).

Credits

A very special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, City of Cologne, Deutsche Bahn and ZenDiS for sponsoring released or upcoming features. Your support, alongside the efforts of our amazing Community, helps drive these innovations. Also a big thanks to our Community members for reporting bugs and helping us identify and provide fixes. Special thanks for reporting and finding bugs go to Sven Kunze, Stefan Weiberg, Gábor Alexovics, Alexander Aleschenko, and Tobias Nowakow.

This release, we specifically want to thank Emon for reporting a security vulnerability on our website. Reports and feedback like this are one of the reasons we love OSS and appreciate being part of such an amazing community.

Last but not least, we are very grateful for our very engaged translation contributors on Crowdin, who translated quite a few OpenProject strings! This release we would like to particularly thank the following users:

William, for a great number of translations into Chinese Traditional.
Pickart, for a great number of translations into Catalan.
Maxime77, for a great number of translations into French. Would you like to help out with translations yourself? Then take a look at our translation guide and find out exactly how you can contribute. It is very much appreciated!

As always, we welcome any feedback on this release. 💙

OpenProject Blog

Looking back: OpenProject in 2025 🌟

🚀 What we shipped in 2025

Continued regular releases, real improvements

Industry recognition: OpenProject as a top-rated PM solution

Reinforcing our strategic roadmap: our vision meets execution in 2026 and beyond

💙 Why 2025 mattered — beyond features

Because open source and digital sovereignty matter more than ever

Because our team and Community outshine everything

Because we stand up as a serious alternative to proprietary PM stacks

Because we build a strong ecosystem with our partners

🧱 The challenges and what still needs attention

❤️ Thank you to our Community, our users, our team

News from the Product Desk: Real-time collaboration in Documents

Why we needed this change

Real-time collaboration in OpenProject

What’s new in Documents

Technical foundations

Looking ahead

How to access the new Documents module

What happens to existing documents

Your feedback

Credits

OpenProject at the Berlin Summit on European Digital Sovereignty

Summit on European Digital Sovereignty

OpenProject participated as part of openDesk

The significance of digital sovereignty is evident

Conclusion: Attention is great, but the work continues

How to use OpenProject as OKR software

Insights: Our experience with OpenProject as OKR software

Learning 1: OKR masters and regular check-ins

Learning 2: Dedicated OKR teams in a dedicated project

Guide: How to use OpenProject as OKR software in 3 steps

Step 1: Create an OKR project with specific settings

Step 2: Start Strategic Initiatives, Objectives and Key Results for the next quarter

Work package relations

Work package attributes and descriptions

Step 3: Monitor and schedule regular OKR meetings

Work package tables

Boards

Meetings

Overview and statistics

Start a trial to test OpenProject for your OKRs

Digital sovereignty in Government: German State Premiers and the International Criminal Court choose openDesk

Open Source collaboration for the public sector

A milestone for openDesk: The German conference of Minister Presidents

The technology behind openDesk

Secure hosting within Germany

Growing momentum: The International Criminal Court joins the movement

OpenProject as a key component of openDesk

Looking ahead

OpenProject 16.6: Project evaluation and scoring

Project evaluation and scoring (Enterprise add-on)

Significant performance improvements

New index page for Documents module

Further usability updates

Change parent of a custom field item or project attribute (Enterprise add-on)

Updated “More” menu in meetings

Editing individual attributes even if other fields are invalid

Sticky header and first column in workflows

Mini calendar re-added on mobile

OpenProject 16.6: Migration, installation, updates and support

Credits