openproject/docs/user-guide/projects

sidebar_navigation	description	robots	keywords
[{title Projects} {priority 600}]	Manage projects in OpenProject.	index, follow	projects

Manage projects

In OpenProject you can create projects to collaborate with your team members, track issues, document and share information with stakeholders, organize things. A project is a way to structure and organize your work in OpenProject.

Your projects can be available publicly or internally. OpenProject does not limit the number of projects, neither in the Community Edition nor in the Enterprise cloud or in Enterprise on-premises edition.

Topic	Content
Select a project	Open a project which you want to work at.
Create a new project	Find out how to create a new project in OpenProject.
Create a subproject	Create a subproject of an existing project.
Project structure	Find out how to set up a project structure.
Project settings	Configure further settings for your projects, such as description, project hierarchy structure, or setting it to public.
Change the project hierarchy	You can change the hierarchy by selecting the parent project ("subproject of").
Set a project to public	Make a project accessible for (at least) all users within your instance.
Create a project template	Configure a project and set it as template to copy it for future projects.
Use a project template	Create a new project based on an existing template project.
Copy a project	Copy an existing project.
Archive a project	Find out how to archive completed projects.
Delete a project	How to delete a project?
Global projects overview	Get an overview of all your projects in the projects overview list ("View all projects").
Export project list	You can export the project list to XLS or CSV.
Project overarching reports	How to create project overarching reports across multiple projects?

Select a project

Find out in our Getting started guide how to open an existing project in OpenProject.

Create a new project

Find out in our Getting started guide how to create a new project in OpenProject.

Create a subproject

To create a subproject for an existing project, navigate to Project settings -> Information and click on the green + Subproject button.

Then follow the instructions to create a new project.

Project structure

Projects build a structure in OpenProject. You can have parent projects and sub-projects. A project can represent an organizational unit of a company, e.g. to have issues separated:

• Company (Parent project)
  • Marketing (Sub-project)
  • Sales
  • HR
  • IT
  • ...

Also, projects can be for overarching teams working on one topic:

• Launch a new product
  • Design
  • Development
  • ...

Or, a project can be to separate products or customers.

• Product A
  • Customer A
  • Customer B
  • Customer C

OpenProject, for example, uses the projects to structure the different modules/plugin development:

**Please note**: You have to be a [member](../members/#add-members) of a project in order to see the project and to work in a project.

Project Settings

You can specify further advanced settings for your project. Navigate to your project settings by selecting a project, and click -> Project settings -> Information.

• You can define whether the project should have a parent by selecting Subproject of. This way, you can change the project hierarchy.

• Enter a detailed description for your project.

• You see the default project Identifier. The identifier will be shown in the URL.

**Note**: Changing the project identifier while the project is already being worked on can have major effects and is therefore not recommended. For example, repositories may not be loaded correctly and deep links may no longer work (since the project URL changes when the project identifier is changed).

• You can set a project to Public. This means it can be accessed without signing in to OpenProject.
• Click the blue Create button in order to save your new project. Or click the blue Save button to save your changes.
• If you like, use the autocompleter to fill in the project attributes.

Find out more detailed information about the Project settings here.

Change the project hierarchy

To change the project's hierarchy, navigate to the project settings -> Information and change the Subproject of field.

Press the blue Save button to apply your changes.

Set a project to public

If you want to set a project to public, you can do so by ticking the box next to "Public" in the project settings ->Information.

Setting a project to public will make it accessible to all people within your OpenProject instance.

(Should your instance be accessible without authentication this option will make the project visible to the general public outside your registered users, too)

Create a project template (Premium feature)

You can create a project template in OpenProject by creating a new project and configuring your project to your needs. Name the project so you can identify it as a template, e.g. "Project XY [template]".

Set up everything that you want to have available for future projects.

• Adding project members.
• Selecting the modules.
• Setting up a default project structure in the Gantt chart.
• Creating your work package templates.
• ...

Navigate to the project settings and click Set as template in the upper right corner. You can remove a project from the template collection on the same spot.

**Please note**: The option to set a project as template or to remove it from templates is only available for Administrators.


Use a project template (Premium feature)

You can create a new project by using an existing template. This causes the properties of the project template to be copied to the new project. Find out in our Getting started guide how to create a new project in OpenProject. Another way for using a template project would be to copy it.

Copy a project

You can copy an existing project by navigating to the project settings and clicking Copy project in the upper right of the project settings.

Give the new project a name. Select which modules and settings you want to copy and whether or not you want to notify users via email during copying. You can copy existing boards (apart from the Subproject board) and the Project overview dashboards along with your project, too.

For further configuration open the Advanced settings. Here you can specify (among other things) the project's URL (identifier), its visibility and status. Furthermore you can set values for custom fields (not shown in the screenshot).

Then click the blue Copy button.

Archive a project

In order to archive a project, navigate to the project settings, and click the Archive project button.

**Note**: This option is only available for Administrators.


Then, the project cannot be selected from the project selection anymore. It is still available in the View all projects dashboard if you set the "Active" filter to "off" (move slider to the left). You can un-archive it there, too, using the three dots at the right end of a row.

Delete a project

If you want to delete a project, navigate to the Project settings. Click the button Delete project on the top right of the page.

Also, you can delete a project via the projects overview.

**Please note**: Deleting projects is only available for System administrators.

Global projects overview - View all projects

To get an overview of all your projects, select the View all projects option from the Select a project menu in the top left header navigation.

You will then get a list of all your projects in OpenProject. You can use this projects overview to create a multi project status dashboard if you include your own project custom fields, e.g. custom status options, Accountable, Project duration, and more.

Please note: Project custom fields are a premium feature and will only be displayed here for Enterprise on-premises and Enterprise cloud.

With the arrow on the right you can display the project description.

With the horizontal three dots icon on the right side of the list you can open further features, such as creating a new subproject, project settings, archiving a project, copying and deleting a project. Please note that you have to be a System Administrator in OpenProject to access these features. Find out how to un-archive projects here.

You can choose the columns displayed by default in the System settings in the Administration. To access it quickly use the vertical three dots icon on the upper right.

To change the order of the displayed custom fields (columns) follow the instructions here: Displaying a project custom field

To display the work packages of all your projects in a Gantt chart click on the Open as Gantt view icon on the upper right. This is a shortcut to quickly get to the report described in the chapter below. The Gantt chart view can be configured in the System settings in the Administration.

Export projects

You can export the project list by selecting the View all projects list from the drop-down. To export the project list, click on the three dots in the upper right hand corner and select > Export.

Next, you can select the format in which you want to export the project list.

It can be exported as .xls or .csv.

Project overarching reports

Often you need to see information about more than one project at once and want to create project overarching reports.

Click on the Modules icon with the dots in the header navigation. These are the project overarching modules in OpenProject.

Here you will find

• The global projects list
• The global work packages list (see below)
• The global news overview
• The global time and costs module

Global work packages list

Select Work packages from the drop down menu Modules in the upper right (nine squares). Now, you will see all work packages in the projects for which you have the required permissions.

In this project overarching list, you can search, filter, group by, sort, highlight and save views the same way as in the work package list in each project.

You can group by projects by clicking in the header of the work package list next to PROJECT and select Group by. Collapsing the groups will allow you an overview of the projects' aggregated milestones as described here.