The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has launched the latest software version 4 of Tasking Manager. It comes with a number of enhancements that will improve users’ experience of collaborative mapping in OpenStreetMap. You can check it out now on the HOT Tasking Manager or watch this video to see it in action and what has changed.

Tasking Manager has evolved: technically and visually. Guided by our community of users, who participated in our user experience discovery, and the HOT tech team listened. We have redesigned and enhanced our user interface using state of the art programming libraries.

What is Tasking Manager?

The Tasking Manager is the most popular application to coordinate mapping in OpenStreetMap. It enables anyone, anywhere in the world to team up with others and contribute to the map. The Software is being built by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) together with a vibrant Free Software community.

A new approach, a new experience:

Our new experience and new look is built with and for our users. Changes include user stories that promote: simplified sign up, project discovery and contribution review. We have also enhanced our mapping colour palette to improve accessibility to mappers who may be visually impaired.

iD editor integrated

We have integrated the iD editor, the most popular OpenStreetMap mapping tool. The integration of the iD editor moves users from task selection to contribution more simply and smoothly. Task selection, editing and saving can all be done from the Tasking Manager, no more tricky tab switching! This change brings Tasking Manager’s user experience one step closer to mapping in OpenStreetMap.org directly.

Coordinating teams and organizations

Managing projects has become even easier and more comfortable. Organizations can now create and manage teams. This change improves quality assurance and collaborative project management, particularly during high need events such as mapathons and disaster response.

Thanks to our awesome community, Tasking Manager 4 is already available in 15 languages. You are welcome to join and add or complete the translations for the languages you speak.

Find more technical details on all the changes made to the Software in the release notes and the free and open source code is available in the repository for everybody to install your own instance or dive into the code base.