How We Transition from Renting to Owning?

Moved the team off ClickUp, Lark, and Slack to open-source tools and custom software built around Plane, tailored to their workflow and self-hosted on their own server.

Timeline
2026
Scope
Product Design
Role
Lead Designer

Custom status dashboard

Each person builds their own dashboard out of cards: work items assigned to them, daily tasks, live counters, chat notifications and bookmarks. A team lead keeps a personal board for what needs their attention, and the office TV runs a shared board with what posts today and tomorrow, the week’s schedule and the hustler rank.

Cards are added, configured and dragged into place right on the page, and the counters move as work goes through production and review.

Adding a bookmark on a lead’s dashboard, then rearranging the office TV dashboard.

Bulk selection

Coming from ClickUp, the team was used to editing many tasks at once. Work Items now works the same way: tick a row, shift-click to select a range, and a bar slides up at the bottom of the table with State, Priority, Assignee, Labels, Delete and More.

One change applies to every selected item, and a toast confirms how many were updated.

Shift-click to select three work items, then move them all to Todo from the bulk-action bar.

Time tracking

The timer sits in the navbar next to the profile, so it's one click away from any page. Opening it shows the running timer and the work item it's tracking, today's total against an 8-hour day, and earlier entries grouped by day, each of which can be resumed or deleted.

Every entry rolls up into My Timesheet, a weekly view of hours per work item.

The navbar timer and its Track Time panel.

HR Management

HR lives in the same workspace as the work. Under Submit Request, each kind of request has its own card: Time Registration, Leave and Expenses.

A leave request asks only for what HR needs: the type, start and end dates (the duration fills itself in) and a supporting document, like a flight ticket. Once it's submitted, a toast confirms the dates and the number of days.

Submitting a four-day holiday leave with a flight ticket attached.

On the HR side, requests land in the Approval Center, oldest flagged in red. HR opens one, checks the details and attachment, and approves or rejects it with a note to the employee. The approval record keeps who decided and when.

The same request on the HR side: approved with a note, and the employee is notified.