The Redmine Guide¶

Welcome to Planio’s Redmine guide. You’ll find everything you need to unleash the power of Redmine.

First off, let’s get a quick introduction to Redmine.

What Is Redmine?¶

Redmine is primarily an issue tracker. Issues, also called tickets or tasks, are the atomic unit of Redmine.

An issue tracker is a to-do list on steroids. It’s focused on accountability and forward progress.

Redmine is also includes project management aspects. You can plan out milestones on Gantt charts. You can also use Agile project management techniques such as Scrum or Kanban.

Who Uses Redmine?¶

Hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide use Redmine.

Open Source Projects¶

You’ll find that open source projects often use Redmine as a way to organize the project. The Ruby programming language is one very high profile project that uses Redmine.

Universities¶

Redmine is a favourite for universities as a way of letting students and researchers organize their projects. Examples include X university, which organizes Z projects.

Redmine lets you make certain aspects of your projects public, while keeping others private, which is great for universities that want to involve the public in research projects.

Startups¶

It’s very chaotic trying to start a business out of nothing. That’s why many startups use Redmine to organize their efforts. Redmine is a good choice because you can use it to handle software development and you can also handle incoming customer support tickets.

Software Developers¶

Redmine is uniquely suited for software development. It’s highly integrated with git and svn. The wiki is often used to document software projects.

Consultants¶

Redmine and email work well together, so you can include clients on projects. That improves how you work together.

Why Do People Use Redmine?¶

Get in Control¶

To-do lists get out of hand, and they’re hard to share with others. Issue tracking in Redmine brings teamwork to to-do lists. Redmine lets you have a powerful workflow for getting tasks done and reviewing work. You can discuss problems and find solutions with others.

Keep Information in One Place¶

The wiki lets you create documentation for software, work practices and more. You can store important files in one place.

Collaborate Through Discussion¶

You have an idea? The forums let you discuss it publically with your team members. You make announcements via the blog.

Accessible from Anywhere¶

Redmine is accessible anywhere you have an internet connection.

Who Makes Redmine?¶

Jean-Philippe Lang released the first version of Redmine in 2006. Since then, a community of open-source developers have expanded and improved upon Redmine.

Open source means you can download, use and re-write the source code. If you see something that is broken, you can contribute a fix or patch to solve the problem.

All of the developers at Planio have contributed to the Redmine core.

Issue Tracking¶

The Elements of a Redmine Issue¶

Issues are the atomic element of any Redmine account. You need to create a project before you can create issues, because every issue is connected to one project.

For example, at Planio we have separate projects for English Support tickets and German support tickets. We also have projects for different areas such as marketing and the Planio website.

Let’s create a new issue.