Trawpie (Technical Research And Welfare for People In Education) is a shared board of people × weeks. Everyone can see who is doing what, what’s late and what’s next, and it updates live for the whole team. It’s built for universities (student teams, research groups, and students planning a dissertation or thesis) and for engineering teams and organisations. This page shows you everything it can do, one bite at a time.
The same board works for a student writing a thesis and for a company running a product launch. Switch on the tools you need, and leave the rest off.
Free for students and university staff with Pro Education.
For engineering companies, R&D programmes and departments with many projects.
The latest additions, and where to find them.
Create a team and choose Start with ▸ Dissertation or thesis. Give your level (undergraduate, master’s or PhD) and hand-in date, and Trawpie lays out the whole plan week by week, with phases on the timeline and milestones. 🧰 Tools ▸ 🎓 Dissertation then shows whether you’re on track, your chapter word counts, a proposal helper, checklists and supervisor meetings. Send a chapter draft and your supervisor approves it or asks for changes. How it works ↓
Your account is now four sections (Profile, Appearance, Notifications, App and data), with tabs across the top on a phone. Settings that are on or off are switches, and ticks are rounded in your team’s colour, with a round green tick for sub-tasks and Today.
Open a task and its title stays at the top, with four tabs underneath: Task, Plan, Files and Activity. Search and filters come back when you close it, and on a phone it slides up from the bottom. See it ↓
Pick ☰ List at the top of the board: every task in one table you can sort, group (by person, week, stage or priority) and edit in place. Add a Backlog column for work that isn’t planned into a week yet. More below ↓
Unfinished tasks move into the new week on their own, with their history. Owners switch it on in Settings ▸ Workflow ▸ Automatic steps, and can flag tasks that keep rolling over.
Google Drive and OneDrive files on a task show Access lost, Personal drive or ✓ Opens, with who to ask and a one-click re-link. The whole team’s list is in Settings ▸ Integrations.
Teams pick their look in Settings ▸ General; your home page has its own switch under 🎨 Theme. Professional swaps emoji for clean line icons, including task icons.
The live demo now has four made-up teams: a drone team, an engineering company, a CubeSat mission and a Formula Student race team.
Practical write-ups on planning a student project, running a Formula Student season and tracking parts and budget.
Takes about ten minutes. Click each card as you go to tick it off. We remember your progress on this device.
For undergraduate, master’s and PhD students. Tell Trawpie your hand-in date and it lays out the whole plan week by week, then keeps it up to date with you until you hand in. Your supervisor can follow along and give feedback on drafts.
Create a team and choose Start with ▸ Dissertation or thesis. Pick your level, your start and hand-in dates, any university deadlines (proposal, ethics, full draft, upgrade, viva), the kind of research, your chapters with word targets and your supervisor’s email.
Home ▸ Create a teamOne row per phase and a column per week, with tasks and checklists, milestones on the timeline and about 10% spare before hand-in. Unfinished tasks carry into the next week. A PhD gets its first term in weeks and the rest in the Backlog, with new weeks added as you go.
The board · 📊 Analytics ▸ TimelineThe overview shows days to go, the next milestone, and whether you’re on track or roughly how far behind, with anything late or due this week. 📅 Reminders in my calendar puts your deadlines in Google Calendar or Outlook, with a reminder a week before each milestone.
🧰 Tools ▸ 🎓 Dissertation ▸ OverviewEach chapter has a word target, a status and the words you’ve written. When a chapter is ready, Send draft with a link to the file and a note, and see whether feedback is waiting, overdue or in.
🧰 Tools ▸ 🎓 Dissertation ▸ ChaptersThe questions every proposal answers: topic, why it matters, the gap, your question, aims and objectives, methods, ethics and sources. Gentle hints (is your question answerable with yes or no?), then an outline to paste into your university’s form.
🧰 Tools ▸ 🎓 Dissertation ▸ ProposalEthics, before-you-hand-in and viva checklists. Supervisor meetings from a template, where the agreed next steps become tasks. A reading list with DOIs, notes and BibTeX for Zotero, Mendeley or LaTeX.
Checklists · Supervisor · 📚 LiteratureInvite your supervisor during setup, or later from the Supervisor tab. They join with the Supervisor role: they see the plan, chapters and progress and can comment, but can’t change your plan. Supervising several students? Each student invites them to their own workspace, and all of them appear on the supervisor’s home page.
Your work stays yours. Trawpie never writes any part of your dissertation or proposal. Universities treat AI-written work as academic misconduct, so it helps with the part that’s fair game: planning, keeping track and keeping going.
One row per person, one column per week. Click a red dot (or a line on the right) to see what each part does.
Pick the day your project starts and every week follows on, 7 days apart. Change one week’s date and all the weeks after it move with it. Number them your way, and give each week a headline number with the weekly metric.
✏️ Click a metric badge to type your own, e.g. “Flights: 3”.
Right-click the board ▸ Set week dates… and choose when Week 1 starts. Every later week lines up behind it, and new weeks you add continue the run.
Right-click a week ▸ Set start date…. That week and all the weeks after it shift together, 7 days apart. Earlier weeks stay put. Ctrl + Z undoes it.
Settings ▸ General ▸ Week numbering: count from Week 1, or use the calendar week of the year (Week 43 for the week of 19 October). You can still give any week its own name, like “Reading week”.
A small badge on every week header for the one number that matters that week: hours logged, budget left, flights flown, words written. Click it to type. Rename it in Settings ▸ Fields, or hide it.
The week containing today is marked THIS WEEK, and 🎯 Today scrolls straight to it. Dated weeks also power the timeline, the burndown and calendar exports.
Click any card and its editor opens on the right (on a phone, it slides up from the bottom). The title stays at the top and four tabs hold the rest. Everything saves as you type, for everyone, instantly. Try the tabs on the example.
Task: status, priority, deadline, sub-tasks and who’s helping. Plan: phase, stage and sign-off, start date, effort, “waits on”, repeat and what shows on the card. Files: Drive and OneDrive files, linked parts and papers, and the lab notebook. Activity: comments and the change history. ‹ Search & filters takes you back; prefer one long list? Choose Show everything in one list at the bottom.
Drag the slider as work moves. Deadlines drive the late flags, the timeline and the Monday email digest.
Break big jobs into a checklist. Ticking them off moves the progress bar.
Add teammates who help, and link tasks that must finish first. The Kanban view and the planning charts use these links.
Talk about the task where the task lives. Type @name and they get a 🔔 notification (and an email on Pro).
Attach from Google Drive, or from OneDrive and SharePoint by pasting the file’s share link (Attach a file ▸ Open OneDrive ▸ Share ▸ Copy link): it works with university Microsoft accounts and needs no approval. Any other link works too. The file stays in your own drive; the task just keeps the link. Linked GitHub issues and pull requests show right under the task name with their live state.
Every task keeps a log of changes. Made a mistake? Ctrl + Z undoes it, and Ctrl + Y redoes it.
Right-click a card, a cell, a week or a person to get the actions that fit it. On a phone, press and hold or tap ⋯ on a card. Prefer a circle? Switch the style in Your account ▸ Appearance ▸ Right-click menu.
Same data, different questions answered. Switch at the top of the board; switching never moves or copies anything.
The home view: people down the side, weeks along the top.
To do · Doing · Done, for the week or the whole project.
KPIs, charts and insights, worked out for you from the board.
Deadlines and project phases on one timeline.
Every task in one table, with no weeks needed.
New teams start simple. Owners and admins turn extra tools on or off in Settings ▸ Features. They then appear under 🧰 Tools. Nothing is lost when you turn one off.
A week-by-week plan from your hand-in date, on-track signal, chapter word counts and drafts for feedback, a proposal helper, checklists and supervisor meetings. Undergraduate, master’s and PhD. More ↑
Effort estimates, “waits on” links between tasks, workload charts and a burndown.
Meeting notes with attendees and decisions. Action items become real tasks on the board in one click.
Dated entries with photos on every task: what you tried, what happened, what’s next.
Add papers by DOI. Track reading status, keep notes and export BibTeX for your references.
Split a project into groups (Fuselage, Payload, Electronics), each with leads, its own board view and its own progress.
Components with suppliers, quantities and order status. Add tax, shipping or discounts as fixed amounts or percentages.
Budget lines, spending with receipts, income, and a burn-rate forecast. Link payments to parts. Every change is logged and can be undone.
Hours per week, time off and skills for each person. A workload heatmap, plus “who could take this task?”.
Log the hours actually spent, compare them with estimates, and export timesheets.
Risks scored by likelihood × impact, with owners, mitigations and review dates.
Your own stages (Design → Review → Build → Test), each with a checklist. A stage can need a lead’s or an admin’s sign-off before work moves on.
Parts over a limit you set (say £100) need the treasurer’s OK before they’re ordered. Approved spend counts against the budget straight away.
When all of a task’s parts arrive it moves to Build; people waiting on a task hear when it’s done; slow sign-offs get a nudge.
Every task has a reference (TT-XXXXXX). Put it in a branch or pull request and it links itself; a merge can finish the task. Create, close (completed, not planned, duplicate) and reopen issues from the card, and see their state update live.
Notes, shapes, frames, pen and real task cards joined by arrows. Right-click for quick tools; copy, paste and line things up.
Requirements linked to the tasks that deliver them and how they’re verified, with coverage and a traceability export.
An email when someone @mentions you, and a Monday digest of your overdue and upcoming tasks. Each person can switch them off.
Finance history kept for good (Free shows the last 90 days), so audits and handovers are painless.
Every member has a role. These five come built in, including Guest for people from outside the team (a supplier, supervisor or partner team): guests work on the tasks given to them and comment, and nothing else. Owners can create custom ones, like “Treasurer” or “Supervisor”, in Settings ▸ Roles & permissions.
| Permission | 👑Owner | 🛠️Admin | 🙋Member | 👀Viewer | 🤝Guest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit own tasksCreate and edit tasks in their own row | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Edit everyone’s tasksMove and edit any task | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Manage weeksAdd, rename and date weeks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| View analytics & timeline | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Export & AI summaryExcel, Google Sheets, backups | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Invite & manage members | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Team settings & plan | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| See & manage finances | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Approve leaving & task deletionHand a leaver’s open tasks to someone else | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Create & edit roles | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
Trawpie is live: when someone changes something, you see it straight away, with no refresh and no “which version is latest?”.
The bell shows who mentioned you and what changed. Unread mentions get a badge.
The home screen lists your tasks from every team, soonest first. 👥 Workload shows everyone’s hours across all your teams.
Press Ctrl + K (or /) to find any task, person, meeting or paper in a heartbeat.
One click writes a status update from the board. Paste it into any free chatbot, or add your own free Gemini key to get answers inside the app.
Download an Excel report, export to Google Sheets, add deadlines to your calendar, or download a full backup.
Switch on Settings ▸ Workflow ▸ Automatic steps ▸ carry unfinished tasks and anything not done moves into the new week with its history. A task that keeps rolling over gets a flag.
Drive and OneDrive files on a task are checked with your own sign-in: Access lost comes with who to ask and a re-link button; Personal drive warns before someone leaves with the file.
See where teammates are pointing, with their name, in their own colour. On whiteboards it’s on by default; on the board, tick Live cursors under the online faces.
A task someone has open glows in their colour with “Tom is editing”, so two people don’t change the same task at once.
In more than one team? Joint board on your team list shows them all side by side, week by week. Click a card to open it in its own team.
📣 Share writes the week’s summary for your group chat. It ends with a small “Made with Trawpie” line, so others know where it came from.
Drag the right edge of the people column to make it narrower (just faces) or wider. Double-click the edge to reset it. Press F for focus mode.
Install it like an app from your browser’s menu (“Add to Home Screen”). Press and hold works like right-click.
Twelve themes, including high-contrast ones, chosen per person under 🎨 Theme. Go on, click one: this page plays along.
Friendly uses emoji and colour; Professional uses clean line icons. A team’s owner picks its look in Settings ▸ General, and you choose your own home page look under 🎨 Theme.
Stages of the project (Research → Design → Build → Test) with dates. Pick a task’s phase in the editor or from its right-click menu.
Save a task with its sub-tasks (“Experiment: plan, run, analyse, write up”), then add it anywhere from a column’s right-click menu.
Add fields like “Supervisor”, “Module code” or “Lab booked?”. Rename built-in labels to match how your team talks.
Upload a team logo, and number weeks your way: your own count, or calendar weeks.
A plan belongs to a team, like a workspace: upgrade one team and everyone in it gets the extras. Make as many teams as you need. Owners and admins manage the plan in Settings ▸ Plan; everyone else can ask them with one click.
Everything you need for a real project.
Everything in Pro, for students and university staff.
Billed yearly, or £4 monthly
For start-ups, labs and bigger clubs.
From £3,000 a year
For a department, society or company with many teams.
Why it works this way: like most team tools, you pay for the shared space and the people in it, never for how many teams you create. Students and university staff get the paid plan free.
What each plan includes. Pro Education (free with a university email) includes everything in Pro.
| Feature | Free | Pro Pro Education free | Organisation |
|---|---|---|---|
| People and teams | |||
| People per team | 30 | 100 | 500 |
| Teams you can make | As many as you need | As many as you need | As many as you need |
| Roles and permissions, enforced by the server | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sub-teams with leads | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Who’s online, busy / free status | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Leaving and deleting need an admin’s approval | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| English, Español, Français, Deutsch, 中文 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Planning and views | |||
| Board, Kanban and Gantt | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Analytics, timeline, burndown and workload | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Weeks on your own calendar, weekly metric | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whiteboards with task cards | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Workflow | |||
| Custom stages, checklists and sign-offs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Purchase approvals over a limit | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automatic steps (parts in, waiting tasks, reminders) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| GitHub: references, links, live issue state | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tools | |||
| Meetings, lab notebook, literature | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Parts, budget and finance in your currency | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Risk register and requirements | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Import from Excel, Jira, Trello, Asana, Planner… | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pro | |||
| Email @mentions and the Monday digest | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full change history (finance beyond 90 days) | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Supervisor and sponsor view (read-only link) | — | Soon | Soon |
| Bill of materials, mass budget, document control | — | Soon | Soon |
| Organisation | |||
| Single sign-on (Microsoft / Google) | — | — | Soon |
| Admin console across teams | — | — | Soon |
| Signed data agreement, UK data residency | — | — | Soon |
| Safety | |||
| Daily and weekly backups of the whole service | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data kept in London (europe-west2), UK GDPR | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
On a Mac, use ⌘ instead of Ctrl.
Ask them to check spam. In Settings ▸ Members ▸ Pending invitations you can see whether it was emailed, press Resend, or Copy link to send it yourself. They must sign in with exactly the email address you invited.
Yes. Edits save automatically and appear for everyone in the team within a second, with no save button and no refresh.
Press Ctrl + Z straight away to undo. For finance, deleted budget lines can be restored from the finance history. Owners can also download a full backup any time from Team data.
In your own Google Drive or OneDrive. Trawpie only keeps a link on the task, so nothing is copied to our servers.
Yes. Upload or find the file in OneDrive, click Share ▸ Copy link, and paste it into Attach a file. Trawpie names the file from the link and shows it as a OneDrive file. Your university doesn’t need to approve anything for this.
Open Settings ▸ Plan. If you signed in with a university email (.ac.uk, .edu…), just switch it on. If you use a personal email, add your university email there, enter the 6-digit code we send, and you’re done. The team’s owner switches it on for the team.
Yes. Invite them with the Viewer role. They can see the board, analytics and timeline but can’t change anything. For a dissertation, use the Supervisor role instead: supervisors can also comment and give feedback on chapter drafts.
Yes. A team can be just you (plus your supervisor, if you like). Create a team and choose Start with ▸ Dissertation or thesis. It’s free, and your home page also has a personal Today view for habits and tasks outside your projects.
Yes. Each project is a team with its own plan, roles and data. Turn on workflows and sign-offs, purchase approvals, requirements and risks in Settings ▸ Features, and invite clients or contractors as Guests. The Organisation plan puts many teams on one bill.
Yes. Go to Team data ▸ Import tasks and choose an Excel file, a CSV, a Jira export or a Trello board export. You get a preview before anything is added.
Only members of your team can see your team’s work, and the server enforces this. How it’s protected, backed up and what’s still to come is on the security page; the privacy policy has the details.
Create a team, invite your people, and drop in the first task. It takes two minutes.
Open Trawpie → or try the demo first