From community plugin to official integration: OpenProject and GitLab

Collaborating with the open source community

Academic institutions often use GitLab to organize, collaborate, and complete projects related to student learning, student and departmental research, and classroom instruction. Many of these same academic teams and institutions also use OpenProject for project management when working with their teams and across departments.

Eventually, OpenProject customers wanted an integration with GitLab, and that is when a developer from the community stepped in, Benjamin Tey.

“GitLab and OpenProject are both open source, which makes them a very attractive combination. One provides the features that the other doesn’t have. This expands the scenarios in which both are able to be used for. It’s a classic 1 + 1 = 3 situation,” says Wieland Lindenthal, technical co-founder at OpenProject.

“Benjamin created a plugin for OpenProject that integrates the two systems and shared it with the community sooner rather than later. It’s wonderful to see the power of an active open source community. When you build open source software, IT becomes a public good. Everyone benefits from it. That is deeply satisfying.”

Learn more about how Benjamin Tey worked with the OpenProject core team.

Sharing the OpenProject + GitLab integration

The GitLab integration enables users to seamlessly create GitLab merge requests and link them to OpenProject work packages. For instance, engineering managers can link their software development roadmap in OpenProject with their planning and specifications in GitLab.

See what universities like Temple have to say.

Getting started and giving feedback

First, configure everything.

Then, learn how to use the features, like creating merge requests in GitLab and linking them to work packages in OpenProject.

We would love to hear how you are using the new GitLab integration. Please contact our team with stories, questions, or issues.