OpenProject 17.1: Automated project initiation requests (Enterprise add-on)

OpenProject 17.1 has been released and introduces several major improvements across the platform. Dans cet article, nous mettons en évidence les changements les plus importants et ce qu’ils signifient pour votre travail quotidien. We will summarize the most important changes in this blog article and, as always, please see our release notes that contain all changes, features and bug fixes.

Une navigation rapide dans les articles :

• Automated project initiation requests (Enterprise add-on)
• Smarter meeting workflows with work package outcomes and more
• Release Attribute highlighting to Community
• Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.1
• Migration, installation, updates and support

Automated project initiation requests (Enterprise add-on)

Starting new projects often involves more than just creating a project space. In many organizations, project initiation includes collecting key information, aligning stakeholders, and requesting formal approval before work can begin.

With OpenProject 17.1, automated project initiation requests help structure this process in a dedicated workflow. Instead of coordinating project details via emails, spreadsheets, or meetings, teams can collect all required information directly within OpenProject and track the initiation status transparently.

Project initiation requests are based on predefined templates and guide requesters through the necessary input. This makes project intake more consistent and reduces back-and-forth between project requesters, project managers, and decision-makers.

Once submitted, OpenProject automatically creates a work package with all relevant information as well as a PDF artifact. This way, initiation requests can be reviewed, discussed, and approved in a structured way before the project moves forward.

This feature is particularly useful for organizations with standardized project processes, governance requirements, or approval workflows. It supports a clear separation between requesting, reviewing, and starting projects, while keeping all information in one place.

If you want to learn more about the concept behind project initiation workflows and how they support structured project governance, take a look at our preview article on project initiation request workflows for PM² and other standards .

To learn about how to use the automated project initiation requests, please see our documentation.

Important 

Automated project initiation requests are available as an Enterprise add-on in the Premium plan. See our pricing page and contact us for more information on upgrading to a higher plan.

Smarter meeting workflows with work package outcomes and more

Meetings are most effective when decisions and action items are clearly captured and followed up on. With OpenProject 17.1, meeting workflows have been improved to help teams turn discussions into concrete next steps and keep recurring meetings better connected.

One of the great improvements is that meeting outcomes can now be directly created as work packages. Instead of manually transferring notes or action items after a meeting, teams can immediately turn agreed outcomes into tasks and assign responsibilities. This helps ensure that decisions made in meetings lead to actual progress.

For recurring meetings, agenda items and outcomes can now be copied to the next occurrence. This makes it easier to continue discussions, revisit open points, or carry forward unfinished items without recreating content from scratch.

OpenProject 17.1 also improves calendar integration for meetings. Participant responses such as accepted, declined, or tentative are now visible directly in the meeting sidebar. These responses are collected from calendar invitations, for example when an ICS event is sent by email or downloaded and shared, giving organizers a clearer overview of who plans to attend.

Together, these improvements make meetings more actionable, better connected to ongoing work, and easier to manage across recurring sessions and external calendars.

Attribute highlighting released to Community edition

At OpenProject, we remain committed to our Community and are convinced that the continuous development of the OpenProject Community Edition benefits everyone. That’s why we regularly release Enterprise add-ons for the Community version. With OpenProject 17.1, we are releasing attribute highlighting for our Community, so that it’s no longer an Enterprise add-on.

Depending on which attributes you want to highlight – and which colors you choose – your work package table looks different. Here’s an example of a work package table highlighted by Priority:

Read more about this seemingly small, but very effective feature in our blog.

Other great improvements with OpenProject 17.1

OpenProject 17.1 offers more features and updates. Pour que cet article reste concis, voici un aperçu rapide de quelques améliorations supplémentaires qui méritent d’être soulignées :

Enable a warning before opening external links in user-provided content (Enterprise add-on)

To improve security awareness, OpenProject 17.1 introduces an optional warning before opening external links that were added by users. This helps teams better assess potential risks when leaving OpenProject, especially in environments with many collaborators or external contributors. Available as Enterprise add-on in the Premium plan. Read more about capturing external links in OpenProject.

Show short and weight values for Hierarchy and Weighted item list fields (Enterprise add-on)

Hierarchy and Weighted item list custom fields now display their short and weight values more clearly. This makes it easier to understand priorities and calculations at a glance, especially when working with structured data or aggregated values in larger projects.

Remarque

Hierarchy fields are available as Enterprise add-ons in the Basic plan and weighted item list fields are vailable as Enterprise add-on in the Premium plan. Read more about custom fields in OpenProject.

Improved performance and UX/UI updates

OpenProject 17.1 includes further performance improvements, bug fixes and UX/UI refinements across the application. The Activity tab has been optimized to load faster and provide a smoother experience, especially in projects with a large amount of activity.

In addition, several areas have been updated to use the Primer design system, including the Access tokens section in account settings, the Backlogs administration page, and the password confirmation dialog. These changes improve visual consistency and usability while keeping existing workflows intact.

OpenProject 17.1: Migration, installation, updates and support

Follow the upgrade guide for the packaged installation or Docker installation to update your OpenProject installation to OpenProject 17.1. We update your hosted OpenProject environments (Enterprise cloud) today, February 11, 2026.

You will find more information about all new features and changes in our Release notes and in the OpenProject Documentation.

Si vous avez besoin d’aide, vous pouvez poser vos questions dans le forum Community, ou si vous avez droit à l’assistance Enterprise, contactez-nous et nous nous ferons un plaisir de vous aider personnellement.

• Vous débutez avec OpenProject ? To test all features of OpenProject 17.1 right away, create a 14 days free trial instance for our OpenProject Enterprise cloud.
• Prefer to run OpenProject 17.1 in your own infrastructure? Vous trouverez ici les instructions d’installation pour OpenProject.
• Vous souhaitez passer d’une version Community à une version Enterprise ? Obtenez un jeton d’essai gratuit de 14 jours pour tester les add-ons Enterprise (toutes les formules).

Crédits

Nous remercions tout particulièrement la ville de Cologne, le Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin pour le parrainage des fonctionnalités publiées ou à venir. Votre soutien, ainsi que les efforts de notre formidable communauté, contribuent à ces innovations. Un grand merci également aux membres de notre communauté qui nous signalent les bugs, et qui nous aident à les identifier et à les corriger. Special thanks for reporting and finding bugs go to Johannes Baumgarten, Lea Fuchs, Александр Татаринцев, Stefan Weiberg, and Natalie Stettner.

Et pour finir, nous remercions chaleureusement nos traducteurs et traductrices très engagés sur Crowdin, qui ont traduit de nombreuses chaînes OpenProject. Pour cette version, nous tenons à remercier tout particulièrement les utilisateurs suivants :

• Haura Nabila Rinaldi, pour un grand nombre de traductions en indonésien.
• arnegronkjaer, for a great number of translations into Danish.

Vous souhaitez participer aux traductions ? Consultez notre guide de traduction et découvrez comment vous pouvez apporter votre contribution. Elle sera très appréciée !

Comme toujours, nous vous invitons à nous faire part de vos commentaires concernant cette version.