docs/release-notes/17-0-0/README.md
Release date: 2026-01-14
We released OpenProject 17.0.0. The release contains several bug fixes and we recommend updating to the newest version. In these Release Notes, we will give an overview of important feature changes. At the end, you will find a complete list of all changes and bug fixes.
Take a look at our release video showing the most important features introduced in OpenProject 17.0.0:
OpenProject 17.0 introduces real-time collaborative editing in the Documents module. Multiple users can work on the same document simultaneously, with live cursors, continuous updates, and automatic saving. The new BlockNote editor replaces the previous CKEditor-based documents for all installations where real-time collaboration is enabled.
Real-time collaboration requires a running Hocuspocus server:
When real-time editing is enabled, Documents support:
/documents/<id>) for both editing and viewing.[!NOTE] If real-time collaboration is enabled but no functioning Hocuspocus server is reachable, OpenProject does not fall back to CKEditor. Instead, the document editor is temporarily hidden and an error banner is shown with an option to retry. Once the connection to the collaboration server is restored, the editor becomes available again automatically.
See our system admin guide for detailed information on real time collaboration with OpenProject.
OpenProject 17.0 introduces hierarchical workspaces to better organize large project landscapes. Customers of the Enterprise Premium plan can now structure related items — projects, programs, and portfolios — to align operational work with strategic goals.
With this new hierarchy:
Projects, programs, and portfolios all use the same familiar concept of an overview page with widgets, lifecycle dates and attributes. Portfolios and projects appear as top-level entries in the global navigation and project selector, while programs are accessed through portfolios.
Creating workspaces also becomes more consistent: administrators can define default templates for programs, portfolios, and projects so that new items follow the correct structure from the start. When users create new entries through the Subitems widget or other creation shortcuts, both the parent hierarchy and the appropriate template are prefilled automatically.
A dedicated global permission now controls who may create programs and portfolios, ensuring that the new hierarchy can be introduced in a controlled way.
This update lays the foundation for future portfolio-level and program-level capabilities in OpenProject. See our user guide to learn more about the portfolio module (Enterprise add-on) in OpenProject.
[!NOTE] This new hierarchy is especially valuable for organizations working with structured project management frameworks such as PM² or PMflex, where programs and portfolios play a central role.
OpenProject 17.0 introduces several great improvements that make meeting preparation and documentation more intuitive, structured, and efficient.
New meetings now open in draft mode, allowing moderators to prepare agendas, add participants, and structure content before sending out invitations or updates.
A banner clearly indicates draft mode, and invitations are only sent once the meeting is explicitly opened by clicking on the green "Open meeting" button. Only then, invitations can be sent and the usual update behaviour applies.
See our user guide to learn more about meeting draft mode in OpenProject.
The new presentation mode offers a distraction-free, full-screen view that focuses on the current agenda item. It shows the meeting title, agenda item details, and navigation controls in a clear layout, including:
Unlike the standard view, changes made by participants are reflected live in presentation mode, so moderators and attendees always see the current state of the agenda without additional pop-ups. Keyboard navigation using arrow keys is possible.
See our user guide to learn how to present a meeting in OpenProject.
Agenda items can now hold multiple text-based outcomes: The + Outcome button remains available while the meeting is In progress and allows moderators to record more than one result for the same item. The first outcome is labelled "Outcome", additional ones are numbered ("Outcome 1", "Outcome 2", and so on). These outcomes are also supported in the PDF exports of meetings. This feature is a preparation for future improvements, such as creating work packages as outcomes.
To avoid duplicate or confusing calendar invites, users can now subscribe to all their meetings through a single iCal subscription URL from the My meetings page or settings. External calendars (for example Outlook, Apple Calendar, or Open-Xchange) stay in sync automatically. Individual .ics files remain available when needed, but sending them is now more clearly controlled via dedicated options when creating or updating meetings.
See our user guide to learn how to subscribe to OpenProject meetings.
Before OpenProject 17.0, the Microsoft 365 file storage integration was a single combined OneDrive/SharePoint integration available as an Enterprise add-on in the Professional plan. With this release, it is now split into two separate integrations — one for OneDrive and one for SharePoint — giving administrators clearer setup options and more flexibility.
For the SharePoint integration, OpenProject 17.0 introduces support for Microsoft's Sites.Selected permission model. This allows administrators to grant the OpenProject Entra ID application access only to specific SharePoint sites, instead of using the broader Files.ReadWrite.All permission required in earlier versions.
This new option helps organizations meet stricter security and compliance requirements while preserving all existing functionality.
When configuring SharePoint storage, administrators now benefit from:
OpenProject continues to support both the legacy permission model and the new Sites.Selected approach, allowing administrators to choose whichever fits their security standards.
See our system admin guide to learn more about the SharePoint integration and now separate OneDrive integration for OpenProject.
OpenProject 17.0 introduces a major redesign of the project overview, which is now called "project home", making key information easier to understand and share.
The project home page is now split into two tabs:
The redesign also introduces a new widget for Subitems and improves existing ones through updated Primer styling. Administrators can additionally decide whether specific project attribute sections appear in the sidebar or directly in the main Overview as dedicated widgets.
Learn more about the project home page in our user guide.
Creating new projects is now easier and more structured. The template selection has been moved to a dedicated first step, offering a clearer visual layout and better guidance. After choosing a template or a blank project, users proceed to the regular creation form.
When using blank projects, required custom fields are shown in a separate final step. Project templates used for programs and portfolios are also prefilling properly when created from context (e.g., via the Subitems widget or the top navigation).
See our user guide to learn more about project templates in OpenProject.
This release introduces a new global permission that allows administrators to allow the visibility of all users in the system. This global permission was previously enabled by default, allowing all users with "Manage members" permission in a project to list all users globally.
When this global permission is not assigned, project administrators only see:
This prevents unintended disclosure of user names across unrelated teams and helps organizations meet stricter privacy and compliance requirements, especially when multiple unrelated teams are working together inside one installation of OpenProject.
Existing permission configurations are automatically migrated so that current behavior remains unchanged unless administrators choose to restrict visibility. A migrated global role has been created and assigned to all users that previously had "Manage members", to not interrupt any existing workflows.
The user invitation dialog has been redesigned with Primer for a clearer and more consistent experience. The flow now shows only the projects where a user is allowed to invite members, improves autocompletion for users and emails, and displays errors inline instead of multi-step confirmations. This update also prepares the system for the new visibility rules introduced in this release.
The global search now understands work package type, status, and meta-status (open/closed). This makes it much easier to find the right item in projects with many similarly named work packages.
Examples:
These improvements also benefit several autocompleters throughout the application, such as the # and ## work package quick-link references in comments and descriptions, helping users filter large datasets more precisely.
OpenProject 17.0 continues the accessibility initiative with several enhancements:
These improvements make OpenProject easier to navigate for users relying on screen readers or high-contrast environments. If you're interested in accessibility topics for OpenProject, please see this accessibility checklist.
Administrators can now manage attribute help texts directly from each project attribute or custom field without navigating to the separate Attribute help texts section. Additionally, a new caption field allows adding short clarifying text shown below input fields in forms to guide users more effectively. Please note that for now, this only applies for project attributes, not for (work package) custom fields.
Help texts continue to appear in the familiar dialog triggered by the question-mark icon.
Customers of the Enterprise Basic plan can now upload a dedicated mobile logo as part of their branded theme.
Depending on screen size:
...are shown. If no custom logo is provided, the OpenProject logo remains the default.
Project attributes now have a separate Required setting. This works in the same way as for work package custom fields and controls whether a value is mandatory when editing a project. It is independent from the existing For all projects option, which still defines whether the attribute is activated in every project.
[!NOTE] When upgrading to OpenProject 17.0, all project attributes that are configured For all projects are automatically set to Required so that existing mandatory fields keep their behavior.
Long text custom fields and descriptions included via macros such as the following are now supported in PDF exports:
workPackageValue:description
projectValue:"Field name"
This includes meetings, single work package exports, work package list reports, and project lists.
When placed at the start of a line, long text is rendered fully. If inserted mid-sentence, the content moves to its own paragraph. Nested embedding (e.g., inside tables) is supported only for plain text; otherwise, a clear fallback message appears.
The new permission "Export projects" allows administrators to control who may export project lists as XLS, CSV, or PDF. This helps manage server load and restrict data extraction to authorized users.
To reflect usage patterns, the tab order in the work package view has been updated:
Our packaged-installations were previously being fetched from dl.packager.io, hosted by our package provider. Starting with 17.0, the package source has been changed to packages.openproject.com. This new package source includes previous releases of 16.X.
To update your local package sources, please remove the package repositories from your file-system and re-add them, following the "Major upgrades" section of our upgrading installation guide. This does not affect the actual upgrade of the OpenProject application.
The docker and packaged installations are now using PostgreSQL 17.0 by default. Note that there is no automatic upgrade for your cluster if you are running older versions of PostgreSQL. Please see our database migration guide on how to upgrade to newer versions of PostgreSQL.
For packaged installations using SLES 12 and 15, automatic installation of PostgreSQL has been removed due to incompatible repositories being used. Please follow the official documentation on how to upgrade your database for these distributions.
OpenProject now includes a built-in OAuth application that simplifies authentication for external clients such as the mobile app. System administrators no longer need to manually create an OAuth configuration. The default application is available out of the box and can be used immediately for secure, user-based authentication.
The project selector has been optimized to feel significantly faster, especially in instances with many projects. Instead of loading the full project tree at once, OpenProject now loads up to 300 projects initially and fetches additional entries dynamically during search. This reduces waiting times and improves responsiveness across the application.
We removed the special fragment of the semantic version of OpenProject. This has not been in use.
Unless you are relying on this value in one of your plugins, you can ignore this change.
Reference: [#67036]
<!--more-->A very special thank you goes to Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, 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 Alexander Aleschenko, Stefan Weiberg, and Markus Preisinger.
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:
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!