Bill Wilson's picture

Hello all, this is my first post! So far, the AWS/TKLHUB solutions have exceeded my expectations so I thought I would try out the forum too! I am trying to decide which of the TKL Project Management appliances might be considered the better choice for my small staff of 6 to use. I am hoping to find something that is as intuitive as possible to shorten the learning curve. I'm a one-man shop so I don't have a lot of time for training. Any recommendations? Thanks!

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Jeremy Davis's picture

Hi Bill

TBH, most of the current TurnKey appliances tagged with "Project Management" (i.e. these ones) are more aimed at software development "project management". E.g. GitLab, Gitea, Redmine and Trac. GitLab is pretty popular in this space, but personally I much prefer Gitea. It's not as feature full as GitLab, but is much lighter weight and simpler to use IMO (and does everything that I need).

If the Projects you are planning to manage aren't software projects, then I suspect that none of those are really what you want. iceScrum does not tie so tightly into the software dev management mindset, but is around Scrum methodology, so is still primary focused on software dev.

I doubt that Sahana Eden would be of much value to you (unless of course you are planning emergency response). Tracks is more a personal "to do" manager (and is somewhat abandonware, although apparently they're attempting to reinvigorate the project). So that only leaves ProcessMaker and Collabtive. FWIW, I've never used either, so can't really provide any perspective from a user. Processmaker seems pretty heavy weight and I'm not sure how applicable it would be to your desires for project management. Although it is relatively popular. On face value at least, Collabtive seems like it may be a possibility, but it's not all that popular, so I can't really speak to how useful it might be.

So depending on what your explicit needs are, it's quite possible that we don't have an appliance that provides what you are after... But if you're feeling adventurous, then there are a number of quite good looking pieces of "web hosted" project management software, that TurnKey doesn't currently provide. Here are a few that I've looked at (some I've installed and tested out):

  • Wekan - a kanban card board somewhat like Trello.
  • OpenProject - a web hosted Collaborative Project Management suite.
  • Goodwork - is primarily focused on software development, but it does look like quite an interesting piece of software; claiming to be "project management and collaboration tool inspired by basecamp".
  • PHProject - again appears to be primarily focused on software development, but could still be of value?

So you could try installing any of these on a suitable base TurnKey appliance (obviously the PHP based ones would best go on the LAMP appliance, the others would depend on the particular software language they use and their requirements). If you were to install them yourself and document the process, then that would push ahead the likelihood of TurnKey providing them in the future. Although, if you really want to see a new appliance, then you are encouraged to develop the build code.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and what direction you might be planning to go. I hope that's of some value to you?! :) If you do investigate the option of not suing one of the existing apps and instead installing a particular piece of software on a TurnKey base, please feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to at least head you in the right direction.

kaktux's picture

somehow related - but maybe more work then you want.

As we are not software related - redmine and other stuff wasn't for us. We knew ms-project - and looked for an alternative - preferably accessable easy via browser for all.

We checked out libreplan (now dead), projectlibre (no server) and how the all are named - but in the end decided to give a then rather new project a go: openproject - jeremy already linked it. The question for you would be which software of that kind your familiar with and what your needs are ;).

It still misses some features - but is quite activly developed and useable.

Theres a normal - free- version you can host yourself and an enterprise version. But for most cases the (especially smaller companies) the normal should be enough.

We use it on a local nas installed on turnkey core.If your a bit used to linux/debian the installation is quite forward as they use their own repository you just have to add. The documention is also good.

So far we had no trouble with that (besides that they decided to drop mysql support and go with postgresql and we had to migrate (which was a bit tricky - but they had an ok tutorial for that).

Have a look and decide for yourself.

btw - i use turnkey core as a basis for some other softwares to - as some here are outdated and some not available.

also - if you "just" want something like wekan - a kanban board - you could also just use nextcloud + plugin for that. Or the nextcloud tasks which we also use.

kaktux's picture

can't edit my answer it seems:

anyway - i just wanted to add the link to their community which is as mentioned the software itself. So on your local install it will look like that.

you can also register for free if you'd like. But you can see a lot even without registering.

https://community.openproject.com/

Jeremy Davis's picture

Yeah OpenProject seems like a pretty good candidate for an appliance. I'd really love to embrace some of the potential new appliances we could produce and spend some time on them, but I honestly don't know when I'm going to have the time... :(

Regardless, thanks for posting.

Also, you should be able to edit your posts now...

darklabmedia's picture

Yes Definately openproject.com community is very helpful for excel projects. Thanks Kautax.

Jeremy Davis's picture

I've just been doing some cleanup and incidentally came across this thread.

In case you aren't aware, we now have a Leantime appliance. Leantime is a more general "project management" tool (rather than being so software development focused).

As noted in the blurb on the appliance page: Leantime is a lean, open source project management system for startups and innovators. It's written in PHP, Javascript; backed by a MySQL (MariaDB) database. Designed to help you manage your projects from ideation to delivery.

So Leantime might be a better option for non-software related Project Management.

Bill Wilson's picture

Perusing my postings I realized I was remiss in following up and in thanking you all for your info. I did review some of the suggestions that were provided. In the end, I went with a product called GQueues which tied into our Google for Education workspace. It worked extremely well allowing all of our staff to track projects and each other's tasks. I am also going to look at the Leantime appliance that Jeremy recommended. Since I've retired I am now looking for an affordable project management program for only 3 people.   

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