Today, it is hard to imagine a project manager who uses no software tools in his job. The availability of effective digital instruments frequently becomes a determining factor in the success of modern project management. But it is often a major challenge for companies to find a solution that fully complies with all technical requirements and fits within a given budget. Thus it can be reasonable to think about developing a custom web-based application for achieving specific business goals of a project.
How to make the development process less arduous and time-consuming? It has become a common practice to take advantage of JS frameworks. Vue.js has been one of the favorites among programmers for years. This lightweight framework has a low entry barrier and concise documentation. It has a good pack of tools for all basic programming needs. But when we are talking about more advanced project management functionalities such as Gantt chart, Scheduler, Kanban board, event calendar, etc., you will need ready-made components that help to make them a part of a Vue-based app much faster.
In this article, we will consider a range of commercial and open-source Vue.js UI components and libraries for project management applications.
Commercial UI components for Vue
DHTMLX Vue Gantt
DHTMLX is well-known for providing JavaScript libraries and UI widgets for various business purposes. Recently, the company’s product portfolio has been enriched with a new library - DHTMLX Vue Gantt. It is a native Vue component for planning and tracking projects of any scale that can be seamlessly integrated into Vue apps. It works well on desktops as well as any mobile devices.
DHTMLX Vue.js Gantt chart in Material skin
This library comes with a set of functions that are commonly expected from a Gantt chart. First of all, it allows you to add different types of tasks, identify relationships between them, rearrange tasks in the grid by drag and drop, introduce changes via an edit form, and monitor their status along the timeline with one or several time scales. Project adjustments are performed on the fly via CRUD operations.
DHTMLX Vue.js Gantt chart with a right-hand edit form
But the most appealing thing about this Vue Gantt is its reactivity, meaning that the Gantt’s UI instantly updates in response to any configuration and editing changes. This library also relies on the virtual DOM to allow users to work with a slew of tasks (10000+) without any performance restrictions.
Enhanced customization capabilities enable you to modify the appearance of all Gantt elements. If necessary, it is also possible to change the size of scales or cells and add custom HTML content to tasks. Additional information on project tasks can be presented to end-users via tooltips and vertical markers. The Gantt layout is specified with two built-in themes. The localization feature helps to display text in various languages.
Although the Vue Gantt currently has a basic feature set, DHTMLX plans to use its wealth of experience in the development of Gantt solutions to make it more versatile in the future.
A collection of interactive samples will give you a clear idea of how the Vue Gantt features operate in practice. You don’t have to use any credentials to get started with this Vue component, just install it via npm and start building your Gantt charts.
Evaluation version:DHTMLX Vue Gantt
Price:from $699
Syncfusion Vue UI Components
Syncfusion delivers the UI components library (Essential JS 2 for Vue) for building Vue applications. Apart from basic UI elements, this library allows you to complement apps with more complex project management tools such as Gantt chart, Scheduler, and Kanban board.
The Syncfusion Vue Gantt is designed to map out and handle tasks, specify dependencies, as well as allocate all available project resources. It comes with several configurable Gantt timeline views and two modes for scheduling tasks (automatic, manual). This Vue component includes plenty of interactivity capabilities that enable end-users to select, sort, filter, and edit the Gantt chart on the go. Using the exporting feature, it is possible to save the Gantt chart in popular formats (Excel, PDF, CSV) and programmatically customize the exported document.
With the Syncfusion Vue Scheduler, you can create event calendars for arranging appointments and other business affairs along the timeline. There are multiple viewing modes with various configuration settings that allow adjusting the calendar layout. The Vue Scheduler provides many other useful features enhancing the event management capabilities. For instance, you can enable recurring events, multi-event selection, tooltips, resource allocation, various time zones, etc.
The Syncfusion Vue Kanban gives a project team visibility into different stages of the workflow process. This task scheduling control serves to organize project activities in a simple and clear way. The Vue Kanban has an intuitive layout consisting of columns, and editable cards with task details. This component also supports WIP (work in progress) limits that ensure an optimal work pace. Other useful features are swimlanes, tooltips, expanding/collapsing of columns, stacked headers. All Kanban elements can be customized using built-in templates.
A set of learning resources (documentation, demos, Vue forums etc.) will help you to use Syncfusion components in your project management app with maximum efficiency.
Evaluation version: Syncfusion Vue
Price: from $995
Kendo UI Wrappers for Vue
Kendo UI Wrappers for Vue is a suite of interface components intended for facilitating front-end development processes with Vue. Here you can also find Gantt and Scheduler components.
The Gantt wrapper for Vue helps to illustrate the scope of a project and track its progress. This component has several timeline views (day, week, or month) and allows you to specify ranges for each of them. End-users have multiple options for interacting with the grid and timeline sections of the Gantt chart as well as the possibility to manage project resources. The styling of tasks can be fine-tuned via templates.
The Scheduler wrapper for Vue is a tool for scheduling and displaying daily business activities (tasks, appointments, etc.) in accordance with the timetable. A variety of modes enables users to review events in a convenient manner and reschedule them with drag-and-drop. The component gives an opportunity to manage resources associated with scheduled events and group these resources in different ways (vertical grouping, horizontal grouping, by date). It is also possible to introduce custom restrictions that help to have better control over events and resources.
Both project management components support data binding to local and remote data sources, keyboard navigation, RTL mode, flexible theming, and export to PDF format. They share HTML rendering and web assets with other Kendo UI products, so it will be much easier for you to bring these components into action if you had previous experience with Kendo.
At the same time, the Kendo team also works on its package of native Vue components that already includes some standard UI components (such as grid, calendar, form elements, etc.) and this list continues to grow.
The documentation section, demos, and video tutorial assist in speeding up your onboarding with Kendo UI components for Vue.
Evaluation version: Kendo UI Wrappers for Vue
Price: from $1,299
Open-source UI components for Vue
Ganttastic
If you are looking for a basic Gantt chart component in pure Vue and have no desire to loosen your purse strings, you should consider Ganttastic. This lightweight tool allows adding interactive Gantt charts with multiple configuration options to Vue projects. It features the possibilities to show/hide time axis, resize rows and highlight them on hover, push on overlapping. You can also bundle two taskbars from different rows and manipulate them simultaneously. Custom styles and themes help to modify the look and feel of the Gantt chart to your liking. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the Ganttastic component has one peer-dependency - Moment.js.
Useful resources: documentation, demo, GitHub repository
Package size: 63.9 kB
License: MIT
L'atelier
L'atelier is an open-source tool designed for managing projects. Based on Vuetify.js, Meteor, and MongoDB, this instrument comes with a number of features for handling various kinds of operations commonly entrusted to project managers. For instance, it includes a Kanban board with real-time data updates for workflow management. The supported timeline view vividly shows scheduled project tasks and their timeframes. L'atelier also allows creating BPMN diagrams, developing new business models with a business model canvas sheet, generating business reports, and more.
Useful resources: Github repository
License: Apache 2.0
Kalendar Vue
Kalendar Vue is a calendar component that can be incorporated into Vue applications for more effective event management. Using this lightweight and responsive tool, you can create an intuitive event calendar with a number of useful features. The Kalendar component allows you to determine a start day, specify start and end hours, hide specific days or dates, adjust the height of calendar cells, enable read-only mode. The calendar data can be reviewed in Day and Week modes. Users can easily add upcoming or even past events in the calendar via a pop-up form. It is also not a problem to create multiple events with the same timetable (overlapping events).
Useful resources: GitHub repository
Package size: 321 kB
License: GPL 3.0
Vue Simple Calendar
Vue Simple Calendar is one more free-of-charge calendar component for Vue that can be used without any external dependencies. By default, this component shows events (including multi-day events) via a standard month-grid calendar, but also provides other views (Weeks, Years, Multiple Weeks). Any user actions (clicks, drags, etc.) are exposed as Vue events. The component supports the Flexbox layout and allows modifying the look and feel of the calendar via plain CSS and Vue slots. The calendar is localized automatically. However, Vue Simple Calendar still lacks some important things that may be important for you. For example, you cannot regulate the duration of events (resizing items) right in the calendar or drag events on touch devices.
Useful resources: GitHub repository
Package size: 123 kB
License: MIT
Final Words
As you can see, there are plenty of project management components for productive and time-saving Vue coding. They range from open-source solutions with basic functionality to more advanced commercial products. If you know some other promising Vue-based tools for covering various business needs that have not been included in this list, leave your suggestions in the comment section.
Top comments (1)
Check out HexaFlexa Timegrid. It's free for personal use and with low price for commercial projects. It has features like swiping, event drag-and-drop and resizing, resource support, and easy integration with Angular, React, and Vue. See demos and documentation at hexaflexa.com