We are excited to announce the release of OpenProject 17.7. This version introduces the new Resource management module (Enterprise add-on), enabling organizations to plan resources, allocate work, and manage capacity directly in OpenProject. Combined with new organizational capabilities available on all OpenProject plans, these features help organizations make better planning decisions based on people’s availability, skills, and working hours.
OpenProject 17.7 also brings improvements for agile planning with Backlogs and Sprints, expands support for PM² and PMflex, and includes many usability improvements across the platform.
In this article, we highlight the most important changes and what they mean for your daily work. And, as always, please see our Release notes that contain all changes, features and bug fixes.
A quick article navigation:
- Resource management comes to OpenProject (Enterprise add-on)
- Better organizational management
- Improved Backlogs and Sprints
- Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.7
Resource management comes to OpenProject (Enterprise add-on)
One of the biggest highlights of OpenProject 17.7 is the new Resource management module, available as an Enterprise add-on from the Premium plan onwards. It enables organizations to plan work based on actual capacity, allocate resources across projects, and match staffing needs with available team members.
Unlike solutions that rely on separate applications or Marketplace extensions for resource planning, OpenProject brings project management and resource management together in one integrated platform. This allows organizations to plan projects, allocate resources, and make staffing decisions without switching between tools or synchronizing data.
The new module builds on the organizational capabilities introduced with this release, including Departments, work-related user attributes, and working hours. These capabilities are available on all OpenProject plans and provide the foundation for realistic resource planning. We will take a closer look at them later in this article.
Consejo
Want to learn more? Read our dedicated article on resource management, where we explore the new module in detail, including the Resource planner, staffing workflows, and practical examples. For detailed documentation on the Resource Management module, please see our user guide.
Plan resources across projects
The new Resource planner provides dedicated planning views for project managers and resource managers. Project managers and resource managers can visualize resource allocations, identify available capacity, and allocate work directly from the planning timeline.
Allocate work and manage staffing
OpenProject 17.7 also introduces Staffing, making it easier to match open resource requests with suitable project members. Instead of assigning work immediately, project managers can define staffing requirements and allocate the right people based on availability, roles, skills, departments, and other work-related user attributes.
This creates a structured staffing process while giving resource managers full visibility into current allocations, utilization, and upcoming capacity demands.
Better organizational management
The new Resource management module is powered by several new organizational capabilities that are available on all OpenProject plans. These improvements help organizations better represent their teams, working schedules, and organizational structures directly within OpenProject. See our user guide for detailed information on user’s work schedule and availability.
Organize users with Departments
Organizations can now create Departments and assign users to them. Departments provide a consistent organizational structure across OpenProject and make it easier to organize teams, assign responsibilities, and support resource planning.
For organizations using LDAP, departments can also be synchronized automatically with their directory service.
Add work-related user attributes
OpenProject 17.7 introduces configurable work-related user attributes, allowing administrators to define information such as job titles, skills, roles, certifications, cost centers, or other organization-specific data.
These attributes provide additional context about team members and can be used to support staffing and resource planning decisions.
Define work schedules
Organizations can now configure a work schedule for each user, including future schedule changes and an availability factor to reflect the time actually available for project work.
This makes planning significantly more realistic by taking part-time schedules, changing work hours or work days, as well as recurring non-project activities into account.
Improved Backlogs and Sprints
OpenProject 17.7 brings significant improvements for agile teams, from support for multiple active sprints to a smoother and more efficient backlog management experience.
Multiple active sprints without sharing (Enterprise add-on)
OpenProject 17.7 removes one of the biggest limitations when scaling Scrum teams. Projects can now have multiple active sprints at the same time without the need to share sprints across several projects.
This makes it much easier to organize larger Scrum environments within a single project. Multiple teams can work in parallel, each managing their own sprint while maintaining a shared product backlog. It also supports organizations that structure work around functional sub-teams, such as development, design, and quality assurance.
Project structures become simpler, sprint planning becomes easier to manage, and teams can scale agile workflows without introducing unnecessary project hierarchies.
Add new or existing work packages to a sprint, backlog bucket or backlog inbox
Teams can now add existing work packages – or create new ones – directly within a sprint, backlog bucket, or the sprint inbox, eliminating unnecessary navigation and helping teams capture work exactly where it belongs.
Multi-select for sprint and backlog filters
Backlog and Sprint views now support selecting multiple sprints and backlog buckets to show. This makes it easier to focus on the work that matters most by displaying only the relevant sprints and backlog buckets.
Improved drag and drop
Drag-and-drop interactions have been refined across Backlogs and Sprints, providing smoother behavior on both desktop and mobile devices for an overall better planning experience.
Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.7
Beyond resource management and agile planning, OpenProject 17.7 introduces several additional enhancements that improve project management, collaboration, and reporting. We’ll give a short overview in this article. For the complete list of features, enhancements, and bug fixes, please always refer to the Release notes.
Project attributes for work package types
Organizations can now configure supported work package types to display project attributes. While project attributes can be used for different methodologies and project frameworks, the enhancement was specifically developed to support PM² and PMflex. Once configured, a dedicated Project attributes tab appears in the work package, providing quick access to methodology-specific information.
Project life cycle widget
OpenProject 17.7 also introduces a new Project timeline widget that visualizes project phases and gates directly on the project overview page, making it easier to monitor project progress at a glance. This widget complements the new support for project attributes in work package types. It is particularly valuable for organizations using PM² and PMflex, where project phases and gates are an integral part of the methodology.
PMflex Artefact PDF export
Work packages can now be exported using a dedicated PMflex Artefact PDF template. The export combines project attributes, work package attributes, custom fields, and related work packages into a structured document suitable for project documentation and governance.
Administrators can configure PMflex artefacts to be generated automatically when a work package reaches a defined status. Generated artefacts can either be uploaded to the project’s connected Nextcloud folder or added directly as work package attachments.
Improved document collaboration
Working with the Documents module becomes even more convenient in OpenProject 17.7: Pasting a work package URL into a document now automatically creates a rendered work package link instead of displaying the plain URL. Tiny links also provide a hover preview, making linked work packages easier to identify without leaving the current document. These improvements make navigating between project documentation and work packages faster and more intuitive.
Wiki improvements
OpenProject 17.7 also brings several improvements to the wiki experience. Project administrators can now create an internal wiki directly from the project settings. In addition, adding related wiki pages is more intuitive, and the search dialog now displays page hierarchies to provide better context. For users of the XWiki integration, an “As Parent” badge makes project management relations easier to identify.
Semantic identifiers leave Beta
Semantic identifiers are now generally available. They allow organizations to define meaningful, human-readable work package identifiers based on configurable patterns, making projects easier to navigate and reference.
More powerful calculated fields (Enterprise add-on)
Calculated custom fields now support comparison, logical, and numeric operators, making it possible to create much more advanced formulas. Organizations can use functions such as IF, SUM, MAX, and CASE to calculate values dynamically and automate reporting directly within OpenProject.
OpenProject 17.7: Migration, installation, updates and support
Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 17.7. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, August 5, 2026.
You will find more information about all new features and changes in our Release notes and 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 will be happy to support you personally.
- New to OpenProject? To test all features of OpenProject 17.7 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
- Prefer to run OpenProject 17.7 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, ZenDiS, and STEF 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 Walid Ibrahim, Daniel Paulo Dos Santos, Christophe GESCHÉ, Gábor Alexovics, David Masshardt, and Katja Zedel.
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:
- erdei.p, for translations into Hungarian,
- Adam Siemienski for translations to Polish,
- Yuliia Pavliuk for translations to 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!
