project-Open

]project-open[

File:Logo-project-open.gif
Original author(s)	Philip Greenspun, Frank Bergmann, Klaus Hofeditz
Developer(s)	]project-open[ Development Team
Stable release	3.4 / November 5, 2009
Operating system	Any
Platform	OpenACS, PostgreSQL
Type	ERP, Service Management,Project Management
License	GPL, ]po[ Licenses
Website	http://www.project-open.org/

]project-open[ is a web-based ERP/Project Management application. It is an open-source software maintained by a group of software developers principally based in Spain and Germany.

Principal modules and functionality

Project Management

Top-down/Bottom-up project planning

Projects can consist of arbitrary number of sub-projects and tasks. Using a top-down approach a project total budget is split over a number of subprojects. In terms of financial estimations, the system indicates if the sum of planned units for each task in a subproject is beyond its estimated budget. Using a bottom-up approach a group tasks can be aggregated to a sub-project, multiple subprojects can form a main project. The budget of the main project is calculated based on the estimations made on a task level.

Resource Management

Based on resource assignments based on a project level a resource reports indicates availability or oversubscription of resources across all open projects.

Project completion tracking

Task owner reports task completeness. A weighted total completeness is calculated by the system.

Gantt Charts

The system provides a native Gantt view of projects.

Export to/import from OpenProj and GanttProject

Projects can be exported to OpenProj and GanttProject and further edited and extended using either of teh two desktop applications. The results than can be re-importet. Conflicts are resolved based on user feedback.

Project templates

New projects can be created based on project templates. Which elements of a template are copied to the new project is configurable.

IT Service Management

IT Helpdesk

The IT Helpdesk (also: Service Desk) manages the lifecycle of tickets. For each ticket types a workflow is defined allowing configurable routing of incidents through the organization. This way the module allows the management of Incidents, Request for Change, Feature Requests, Software Bugs and other events that require life cycle management. Collected data serves Key Performance Indicators and Business Intelligent Reporting supporting management decisions.

Configuration Management Database

Configuration Management is supported by an integrated CMDB that ensures transparency of changes performed and provides real-time information of Configuration Items managed.

Nagios Integration

Result of Nagios scans and notifications feed the IT Helpdesk and CMDB. It is possible that Helpdesk tickets are closed automatically in case Nagios indicates correction of the defects.

Timesheet Management

Timesheet Management allows tracking of time on project tasks and tickets. Several reports ara available to extract time sheet data and make it available to supervisors or HR staff based on the integrated permission system. A pre-configured workflow allows supervisors to confirm time sheet data entered by subordinates.

Financial Management

Managing internal/external costs

Besides Time sheet costs the system also allows tracking other project expenses such as costs for travel, accommodation, etc. A pre-configured workflow allows the creation of "expense bundles" that would need to be confirmed before these costs are considered in the projects profit & loss calculation.

Invoices

Invoices can be created based on various criteria (planned/billable/logged units). This process is supported by a wizard. Also other financial documents such as Provider Bills and Quotes are created semi-automatically based on data about customers and projects managed by the system.

Cost Center

The cost center module allows assignments of costs to costs centers across projects.

Financial Reporting

Several financial reporting are available to determine profit & loss, cash flow and cost-effectiveness of operations. Data cubes provide data-warehouse like reporting giving the user the option to select dimensions.

Knowledge Management & Collaboration

File Manager

File Managers are used to connect arbitrary files to principal business objects such as customers, clients, users and projects. Permissions can be set on a folder level.

Wiki

Wiki integration allows managing project wiki pages.

Forum

Forum supports project collaboration. Several thread types are available. For each contribution permissions can be set. Some types provide basic workflow support.

Full text search engine

A user can search across all data stored in the system. Results depend on access permissions of items found.

Human Resources

Absence Management

Users can enter their absences. A pre-configured workflow is available routing the inquiry to the users supervisor.

Unified employee record

Employee data about can be managed is available to HR managers.

Skill Management

This module allows the management of user skills. Categories and attributes therein are configurable. Users can manage their skills themselves if permission is given. Supervisors can confirm or deny skills set by a user.

Customer Relationship Management

Unified customer record

A unified customer record contains relevant information about customers, such as contact information, financial data, past projects. etc.

Email campaigns

Emails campaigns can be performed.

Email integration

Emails can be imported from a mail server and will be auto-assigned to users and projects.

Pre-sales Support

Forum and additional dynamic fields helps managing the pre-sales phase of a project.

History

]project-open[ has been build based on the work of Philip Greenspun of ArsDigita. Frank Bergmann took this system and added extensions for the management of translation companies in 2003. In 2003 the project was published on Sourceforge and Klaus Hofeditz joined the team. In 2009 the application had been extended by a ITSM Service Desk, Configuration Management Database and a [1] integration to support IT Management processes.

Support and Community

Community support is provided through Open Discussion Forum at Sourceforge.net. Professional support is provided by the ]project-open[ core team and more than 40 IT service organizations. As of December 2009 the ]project-open[ community page had more than 10,000 registered users.

Current Developments

]project-open[ core team is currently working on a first alpha of version 4.0 that will be based on the most recent [OpenACS] version 5.5.

See also

• Optaros Enterprise Open Source directory classifies ]project-open[ with three stars (out of four) as "mature" and "enterprise ready".
• German IT publisher Heise Online conducted in 2009 an Open Source trend study which revealed that ]project-open[ is the most popular Open Source ERP in Germany.
• Software-Trends.de lists ]project-open[ amongst the leading Open Source Project Management tools.
• brighthub.com ]project-open[ Review: The Latest in Open Source Project Management Software
• ohloh.net states that ]project-open[ consists of 792.000 lines of code as of 01/2010.

External links

• Official community web site
• Project on SourceForge.net
• All time SourceForge statistics of Project-Open
• Survey by Heise Verlag on the use of Open Source CRM/ERP applications in Germany 2009

Footnotes

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