Over the past couple of days I set up a working installation of OpenProject on my home server. It’s running at project.rivierataylor.info.

What is OpenProject?

OpenProject is open source project management software. It’s a web-app written in Ruby which aims to enhance productivity by providing a suite of project management tools. I have a server with an arm64v8 processor and OpenProject is not officially supported on this architecture. However, it is unofficially possible to compile the source code to work in this context. It’s a little more complicated than using apt though it is possible.

Projects are composed of work packages (such as tasks, milestones and phases). Each work package can be scheduled, related to a project, assigned to a project member and viewed in different ways from various perspectives. Work packages have meta-data fields such as a start- and end-date, author, priority and status. It’s possible to create a work package and view it inside a list, Gantt Chart, Kanban board or calendar. Having work packages as project units allows for flexible approaches to planning and executing projects, whether individually or in collaboration with others.

OpenProject + Nextcloud

It is possible to integrate OpenProject with Nextcloud and I have done so. The primary reason for doing so is to add file storage to OpenProject. In this way attachments added to work packages and can be stored in Nextcloud. It is also possible to search for OpenProject work packages from within Nextcloud.

Calendar Subscriptions

As of OpenProject version 13 it is also possible to subscribe to OpenProject calendars using an iCal-enabled, third-party client. Initially, I was struggling to make use of this feature. There was an issue with my setup which was causing the iCal tokens to expire within a few hours. This was an intolerable bug which and I am optimistic I have resolved this issue having re-installed the Ruby application. Being able to subscribe to iCal calendars created in OpenProject has a distinct set of advantages. It means that I can create work packages in an OpenProject Kanban board (for example) and have them appear in a calendar on my Android phone. Fingers crossed the bug will not return!