I need to admit, I've fallen in love with Trello as a productivity tool. If you like retaining lists as a way to arrange your work, it is an excellent instrument. For me, it serves two major functions: keeping a GTD framework, and managing sure tasks with a kanban-like schedule.
But Trello is a closed source SaaS product, and i wished to know whether or not I may discover an open source alternative to satisfy my needs. As much as I love Trello, it lacks just a few options that I'd actually prefer to have in an inventory/job supervisor, and i needed to explore my different options.
If you're not aware of Trello or the idea of a kanban board, it's pretty easy. Items on a listing are every handled as "cards." Offline variations typically use Post-It Notes moved across a collection of bins. It's based on a process developed for manufacturing, however widely adopted by the lean software program improvement community. Cards would possibly signify a feature, which is moved throughout a board to represent its move by way of development, evaluation, testing, and deployment. Digital instruments typically permit attachments to those playing cards: photographs, links, further lists, a person assigned to the task, and so forth., and lots of have extra tools for supplying you with a fuller image of how duties are transferring throughout a workflow. For people with plenty of manufacturing-oriented work, in addition they work effectively outside of the software growth world. I take advantage of kanban boards for monitoring the whole lot from articles being written to house repairs.
But most kanban board instruments are multi-purpose, and you can too use them to trace subsequent actions, sometime/possibly lists, or even just what groceries you need to choose up. The killer characteristic of almost all of them is the flexibility to share your boards with a group, allowing group collaboration and retaining everybody on the identical web page. When looking for an open supply tool to fit my needs, I came throughout five open supply, free Trello options and wanted to share a bit of bit from my experience with each.
Taiga
First up is Taiga.io. We've reviewed Taiga before, and it's considered one of our top mission management tools. Whereas some challenge management tools appear to focus a lot on together with a kitchen sink of options, one of the things that I favored about Taiga after i first discovered about it was its give attention to simplicity and a clear interface.
new productivity app can be extremely customizable and consists of integration with lots of other options and exterior instruments, in addition to various neighborhood-created instruments.
If you're switching away from one other provider, you could possibly import boards when creating a new Taiga mission. During venture creation, select the import instrument and sign into your other account. There are importers for Trello, Jira, Github, and Asana.
taiga-import.jpg
Taiga does more than kanban boards, but since that's what I'm primarily curious about, that is most of what I explored. I preferred the power so as to add custom fields, and the factors system is something that groups would possibly find interesting; reporting was also tremendous easy. Along with being an open supply mission you possibly can obtain and run your self, Taiga features an internet hosted model offering both public venture boards and personal boards.
Taiga is written in Python with Django and on high of AngularJS, and is open source beneath a GNU Affero GPL.
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Taiga screenshot by Jason Baker. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Kanboard
Kanboard is a reasonably minimalist entry into the world of open source kanban boards. But don't let the minimal interface fool you, it still hosts various options together with process searching and filtering, subtasks, attachments, commenting, and extra, in addition to some decent analytics and reporting options. It's also possible to easily export your cards in a wide range of codecs. Kanboard is straightforward to put in, uses few resources (you'll be able to run it on a Raspberry Pi, for example), and has been translated to fairly a number of different languages.
Kanboard is written in PHP and is made accessible underneath an MIT license.
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Kanboard screenshot by Jason Baker. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Wekan
The following contender I looked at was Wekan. Wekan was formerly generally known as Libreboard, though the project has evolved considerably from this previous version. They have a free hosted demo you could try out, or you possibly can download and install it your self. They make this especially simple, offering a container image, VirtualBox image, or the power to install from source, and it is built-in into Sandstorm.io if you are already using that platform for hosting a personal cloud server.
Of all of the kanban-fashion board tools I checked out, Wekan is the one that most carefully resembled the Trello interface. Both the entrance-end and the back-end are written in JavaScript, primarily based on the Meteor framework.
As with Taiga, you possibly can import boards immediately from your Trello account when creating a Wekan board.
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Libreboard (now Wekan) screenshot by Jason Baker. CC BY-SA 2.0.
If you are fascinated about getting concerned with the undertaking, check out the undertaking wiki or the developer documentation.
Restyaboard
Restyaboard attempts to pick up the place Trello stops and extend the feature set a bit; they've acquired a handy comparison chart on their web site which lays out their further options pretty effectively. Their online demo shows off many of those features. If you're already using Trello, you will appreciate the flexibility to import your duties instantly from Trello's default format so you'll be able to get up and going shortly.
What I appreciated about Restyaboard was the templating characteristic (one thing my presently solution is missing). They even have a useful API explorer, which makes customized integrations with other instruments a breeze, assuming you're prepared to do some little bit of coding.
Restyaboard is written in PHP and is freely distributed beneath an Open Software License.
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RestyaBoard screenshot by Jason Baker. CC BY-SA 2.0.
TaskBoard
The final device I checked out was TaskBoard. Like the others, TaskBoard additionally has an internet demo you possibly can check out for yourself before you obtain and install it.
I discovered TaskBoard to have lots of the same options of other instruments I checked out, and that is actually not a fault. It is a moderately full-featured solution with filtering, feedback, attachments, and most of the standard options of a kanban board I've come to count on. What I favored most about TaskBoard was its inline assist for MarkDown, which has become my go-to format for writing.
TaskBoard is MIT licensed and written in PHP.
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TaskBoard screenshot by Jason Baker. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Do you may have one other favourite that I missed? Let us know within the feedback under, and if you have tried any of these out, tell us what you think! And you'll want to additionally check out our information to mission management instruments for agile teams, which has much more nice projects to choose from.
This text was originally published on August 27, 2015. It has been updated to mirror modifications made to a couple of the tasks initially listed.
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