TeamworkPM's Engine Room

Teamwork Project Manager  //  Online Project Management and Collaboration App. www.teamworkpm.net

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Time Tracking

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Nov 25 / 3:07pm

Keep an eye on your workload with estimates on tasks.

by Sam Kidd

As someone who was always responsible for quoting for new work back when we had a consultancy business, having a feature like our new Task Estimates would have really helped me gauge if I was quoting realistically for jobs and more importantly if we were making money on these projects.

There can sometimes be a massive gap between the time you quote for and the time you actually end up working....and it’s very rare that it’s in your favor.

We have been planning this new feature for quite a while and over the last 2 months in particular the amount of requests we received for this just grew and grew. This added to the motivation to push this feature up the Roadmap and to get it rolled out.

You now have the ability to add estimated time to a task. This feature will now really help you become even more organized. It will help you plot out the amount of time a project is going to take and for those of you that charge and quote by the hour this is going to become a vital tool.

Progress_tab
Now over time you will be able to compare the time you estimated to the actual time you logged on the project.

With this new feature comes some very nice new reporting extras. The new workload chart and the extended Task list time report.

Right, so how does this feature work?

When creating tasks you will have the option to add an estimated time. This is available in the new Progress tab. Enter in the hours and minutes you think it will take to complate the task and save.

We also added a quick way to add estimated time to tasks. On the task page you will notice a plus sign as you place your mouse over tasks. Click this to quickly add estimated time for that task.

(download)
Once you have estimates added to your tasks across your projects you can view our new Workload chat. A lot of you have been looking for this. This new chart shows you the amount of work that you and your team have on across all your projects between certain dates. If a few of you have 20 hours work to do in 8 hours you might need to split the work up a bit ;-)
(download)
You can also see from this workload chart the estimated time verses the actual time logged

The last report that has changed is the time report on a task list. If you run this you get a break down of the total time estimated, actual logged time and whats billable across all the tasks.

(download)

We really hope you enjoy this new feature and as always, if you have any feedback, please send it on.

Filed under  //  Features   Tasks   Time Tracking   estimates   reports   workload  
 
Mar 11 / 1:32pm

New Version of Desktop Timer App released

by Daniel Mackey

We have just released Version 1.34 of the Teamwork PM Desktop Timer App.

Moz-screenshot-145

This version brings the following updates:

  • Added in column for Task List
  • Added option to 'blink' the current timer if paused
  • Added option to show a total of all timers on screen
  • Added option to Pause/Resume current timer using the Space Bar
  • Added option to adjust the logged date time to when you started working on the timer
  • Masked the API key
  • Auto-saves timers and loads them at startup on update or reboot
  • Automatically select current running timer when app gets focus
  • Auto-select timer when new one is added
  • Selection is maintained when you edit or delete a timer
  • Cycle between timers using the Up and Down arrow keys
  • Double-click a task in Import now adds it as a timer
  • Allow resizing/re-ordering of columns in timer display
  • Mini-view now shows the current timer being timed
  • Minor bug fixes and glitches....
Thank you all for your comments and suggestions and helping us improve the application.

If you quit and restart the app it should prompt you to download the latest version or you can get it directly from http://www.teamworkpm.net/timerAppDownload


Be sure to let us know what you think by adding a comment to this post!

Dan.

Filed under  //  Desktop   Multiple Timers   Time Tracking   Timer   updates  
 
Jan 28 / 12:15pm

New Permission Added : View other peoples time

by Daniel Mackey
A lot of people work with contractors in Teamwork and have requested that we add a setting so people can view time they logged but not time that other people logged.

Yesterday I totted up the number of Requests from Feedback on this item and decided to implement a new permission View other people's time

Moz-screenshot-127

The change is now live in the app. For existing users, this is turned on by default so existing users time reporting will work as normal. You can now edit each person's permissions and un-check this permission if you only want them to be able to see time they logged.

Hope you like this improvement.

Dan.

Filed under  //  Features   Time Tracking   permissions   updates  
 
Dec 9 / 4:07am

Desktop Timer App on the way

by Daniel Mackey

(download)

For the last few weeks I've been busy working on our first Desktop app for Teamwork to make logging time faster and easier.

Using the web app, you can only have one active timer running at any one time. This was by design. We wanted an easy to use tool within the app to help people measure the time spent they spent working on a task or project.

As Teamwork is used by a multitude of different businesses and teams, we wanted to also offer a more advanced, flexible and feature rich add-on using the API that could benefit from technologies not available to a web app. Features such as minimizing to the System Tray (on Windows) or the Dock (on Mac), auto-pause when the computer is idle (and resume when user is active again), multiple account support (for people jumping between Teamwork accounts), multiple timers etc

In the first version due to be released in late December or early January the following will be available:

- Multiple timers and fast switching between them
- Select your Teamwork projects
- Optionally choose a task from the current project
- Auto-Pause and Resume when the computer is idle. You can decide how long the threshold is in the settings.
- Always on top of all other windows setting
- Minimize App to tray or dock
- Automatic saving/loading of timers when app loads or quits
- Edit/Add/Delete timers
- Pause/Resume timers
- Log time to your Teamwork account

I built the app using AIR and Flex so this is going to be a cross-platform app for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The API must be enabled for your user account in Teamwork to be able to log time.

Future plans include the ability to update your Teamwork status from within the app. We have some changes to make first to the way Status messages work in the main web app and this Desktop version will compliment the planned changes nicely.

Dan.

Filed under  //  API   App   Beta   Desktop   Multiple Timers   Tasks   Time Tracking   Timer  

Posted from Langkawi, Malaysia