OpenProject 16.3: UX/UI Improvements

OpenProject 16.3 is here, bringing a fresh look, more control over email notifications for meetings, along with other improvements that make everyday work more efficient. This release is all about helping you stay focused, find what you need faster, and keep your projects running smoothly.

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.

Here is a quick navigation to all feature descriptions:

• UX/UI improvements
• Better control of meetings notifications
• Timer display in the My time tracking module
• More accurate progress reporting
• Better diagnostics for the Nextcloud integration
• Faster cost reporting with autocomplete

UX/UI improvements

Your workspace should help you focus — not distract you. That’s why in 16.3, we’ve refined the design and navigation to make OpenProject easier and more pleasant to use:

• The header has been redesigned with Primer, including a fresh icon for notifications.
• The grid icon now opens as a smooth lateral menu, giving you quick access to Home, My Page, and My time tracking.
• The sign-in modal and running time tracking section have moved to a new overlay menu on the right, keeping the header clean and uncluttered.

These changes make it easier to find your way around and keep important tools within reach.

Better control of meetings notifications

Receiving emails about every small update can be annoying. With OpenProject 16.3, you can now choose whether participants receive email calendar updates when creating or copying a meeting.

A simple checkbox in the meeting form lets you enable or mute notifications. The current status is always visible in the sidebar:

• For one-time meetings, you can toggle notifications directly there.
• For recurring meetings, you can set the preference in the template so it applies to the whole series.

This small change gives you more control over how and when participants are informed and keeps your communication timely and relevant.

Learn more about meeting management with OpenProject.

Timer display in the My time tracking module

We’ve made it easier to avoid double time entries and keep an eye on your work in progress. The My time tracking module now clearly shows if a timer is running: In both list view and calendar view, the work package currently being tracked is marked with a small timer icon and blue background. This makes it easy to spot ongoing tracking, especially if you step away and return later in the day.

Not familiar with the My time tracking module yet? Learn more about it in our blog.

More accurate progress reporting

Progress reporting in work package tables is now more reliable. In OpenProject 15.5, we introduced % Complete sums, but in some cases — especially when not all work packages had values for Work or Remaining work — the calculation could be misleading.

With 16.3, these % Complete sums are now calculated accurately across all progress calculation modes, including status-based and simple averages. This means you can trust the numbers you see, no matter how your team tracks progress.

Learn more about monitoring your OpenProject installation.

Better health check for the Nextcloud integration

For teams using the Nextcloud integration in the Corporate plan, there’s now a clearer way to spot one specific issue: missing token exchange capability. If your identity provider doesn’t support token exchange (often due to older OIDC settings), the health check will now flag this directly. That way, you’ll get a precise message pointing to the cause, instead of a generic “token refresh failed” error.

Faster cost reporting with autocomplete

Cost reports are a powerful way to get insight into your projects — and now, setting them up is faster. In OpenProject 16.3, key filters like User or Work package now support autocomplete in cost report filters. Just start typing and select from matching results, instead of scrolling through long lists. It’s a small change that can save you time every week.

Learn more about cost reporting with OpenProject.

OpenProject 16.3: Migration, installation, updates and support

Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 16.3. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, August 13, 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 16.3 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
• Prefer to run OpenProject 16.3 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 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, Michael Lathion, Gábor Alexovics, and Tom Gugel.

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:

• Alin Marcu, for a great number of translations into Romanian.
• William, for a great number of translations into Chinese Traditional.
• OlhaTrotska, for a great number of translations into Ukrainian.

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. 💙