http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1129#post1129

http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1702#post1702

ticket SNV-39939-174

Comments from Joey Smith, iTech Atlanta: http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3511

I just voted also. This is my biggest needed feature as well. I actively bill out of helpdesk. I have done a test migration so that I can get familiar with it and how it will fit in my organization and am very much looking forward to moving to v4, but like others, I cannot migrate until there is some time tracking capability in place because I run invoices out of it. I thought about doing it myself using custom fields, but if there there will be an official plugin, I will wait. Below I will list some features that would be nice to have in the plugin and some that I had created for Cerb3 that others might find useful. I am not saying this have to be done as I can implement them myself if they aren't done in the plugin and they may be more than most people need. I just want to show what was useful to us in the hope that it might help others.

1. A daily timesheet summary. - In Cerb3, I created custom time entry screens that would let my employees go back and list any activity they have been involved in during the day (by querying for email activity) and list any time that had been entered in association with each ticket. They could click on a problem or correspondence in the daily activity list and using AJAX it would pull up detail on each email transaction for easy reference in a popup. They could also enter misc time that wasn't associated with a specific ticket for that day that would show up on that screen. It would show a total of how many hours they had worked that day also. This was in addition to the ticket time entry screen on the ticket while they were working on it. Time entered in the ticket would show on the daily summary screen (i.e. they could enter it either place). While viewing the time entry screen, the user could click a checkbox to view all activity for the day (rather than just theirs) in the event they needed to enter time for a problem in which they didn't show correspondence. The tech could also jump forward and backward a day with one click as well as go directly to any specified day.

2. The ability to enter time with a short summary that was associated with a customer, but not a particular ticket. We implemented this in Cerb3 by associating one generic ticket with each customer and entering updates to this ticket for misc entries. I realize that some may not want time entered if it isn't associated with a ticket, but this worked well for us in some situations. This was done in the timesheet summary screen mentioned in #1 by selecting a customer from a select list, entering a description and a time entry that would be stamped with the date currently being viewed.

3. In Cerb3, I also created a dashboard that would show the time the employee had billed for the day, week, and month. This was indicated with a bar graph like the queue loading graphs.

4. A report that would show time billed by employee by day, week, and month. I realize this is a separate plugin, but would be great to have.

Again, these are just features I find useful. I can reimplement them myself for my situation if necessary, but need a basic time tracking infrastructure to do so (or use custom fields).

To add to my comments quoted above, it would also be nice if it was possible to import time tracking into the new format from our old helpdesk so that it could be carried forward. Not sure if this is feasible as I assume it might need to be included in the header of the imported problem somehow, but it would save us a lot of headaches to have the ability to port over this significant data.

Joey

Jeff:

Long time didnt bug you....but we would need the report function doing things.....cerberus 2.x had a good one....not trying to compare....but some kind of reporting in that sense will be great.

Ved.

Progress has started on this:
http://www.cerb4.com/blog/2008/06/24/dev_diary_june_24_2008/

It will probably take me a couple days to wrap up the various pieces (manual time slip entry, proper extension points for the new button on Display Ticket and the JS/CSS rendering in border.tpl.php).

Progress logged:
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-197?page=worklog

Here's some feedback/comments taken right from the posters:
http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?t=889

I would like to see the time tracking system include
* Date
* Worker - should allow for multiple workers
* Labor Used Hours/Minutes
* Billable / Non Billiable / Warranty
* Labor Rate - Each worker should have a labor rate assigned to them just like their job title. This should be set from the workers tab.
* Comments - Specfic to each workers time tracking entry.
* SLA - You should be able to select the SLA that this was worked under
* Company - You should be able to select the Company that this was worked under
* Exportable - to an app outside of cerberus
* You should be able to select whether to publish the number of hours and rate out into the ticket where the tickets requester can see it.



Another post in that thread recommends some of the same things with an emphasis on:
* billable time vs. actual time worked
* display based on employee, client, billable hours

Would it be possible to expose the data in the time tracking plugin to the Web Services API plugin as well? That is, on a per-ticket basis? All tickets within a date range? Within a date range on a per-worker basis? If it's just on a per-ticket basis, then it would be theoretically be possible to write code that does the date-range/per-work stuff on our own.

This is also a definite must have for our company as we bill by the hour.

Any updates?

This is a must have also we need time logging for our performace reviews, this also allows us to see if we require extra staff based on time spent/per user on certian buckets/tickets.

Uhm... that does not look good!

I would currently need time tracking for only some customers. So it would be fantastic if you could enable or disable time tracking for a group (SLA). I don't want to keep track of time for all my customers just for the few that I bill per hour.
What also would be great is when I could set a defined number of hours in a SLA that are included with the support contract the customer has and every minute past that is stored. So if I only worked one hour for a customer with an SLA of two hours support there would not be any billing but when I work three hours one hour would be reported. So crossing the defined number of hours means billable hours.

Now that Time Tracking has been included for several months, it's time to close this issue out. I have updated all the linked forum threads and any WGM support tickets who were on the "waiting list". For more details on where we go from here, please see the following two announcements I made in the forums recently:


#1 Time Tracking Announcement

This message is for those possibly still in the dark on the latest developments with Time Tracking. For the record it is officially completed and is available in the lastest stable builds for everyone to start using. Hopefully the loyal users patiently waiting for this feature got the "memo" back in November of last year. But for those that left and are just coming back looking for a reason to finally upgrade to Cerb4, this message is for you!

Time Tracking should be included on any stable build at 781 and above. So after you update your Helpdesk, enable the new tool by going to 'helpdesk setup', 'Features & Plugins' tab, and checkmarking "Time Tracking (Experimental)". You will undoubtedly notice the free version restriction notice if you do not have a paid license. Basically this caps you at having no more than 10 ACTIVE time tracking entries in play at one time. This means that you can create up to 10 time entries before you have to start deleting old ones to make room for new ones. This should be more than enough for you to get a feel for this tool and to decide if it's worth a Cerb4 purchase.

For more details and a much more user-friendly overview, see the write-up and corresponding video post on our blog:
http://www.cerb4.com/blog/2008/10/07...time-tracking/

But if you just want a short summary of how you use it and what it offers:

* From the 'Time Tracking' tab you can create your own price points for charging clients (free, $36/hour, $99/hour, etc).

* After you do that, from any ticket you can start actively creating time entries by clicking the 'Track Time' button. Using the timer and "stop" pop-up window you have the option of entering a custom time and a note explaining the work you did.

* The 'activity' menu houses a 'Time Tracking' tab where you can search, edit, or delete any of your saved time entries.

* And lastly you can look at a wealth of statistics through the 'reports' menu, at the bottom you'll find a handful of "Time Tracking reports". You can manipulate the date ranges and worker names, to find information like "amount of time spent per day by worker" or a "list of tickets with time tracking entries per company". (I believe "Reports" are enabled by default, but you can turn them on from the same 'Features & Plugins' tab where "Time Tracking" was.)


#2 Time Tracking entry in JIRA is closed out

One final note. When Time Tracking was officially released into stable that resolved JIRA issue CHD-197. So this is going to be marked as completed and closed out tonight. Note that before we close the door on this issue, I'm sifting through any notes, feedback, and suggestions that I can pull from the JIRA page for unresolved requests (including the linked forum threads and support tickets in our Helpdesk).

Time tracking plugin
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-197

So anything I find that was NOT implemented and is a viable independent request will be filed into a new JIRA issue and I will notify the corresponding thread where it originated from. Feel free to continue to vote and comment on these new JIRA items.

On the other hand, any ideas people put in the suggestion box BEFORE we finished Time Tracking that was actually implemented, I'm going to try and notify you here in the forums directly. I'll basically quote your original post and let you know which parts are "doable" in our implementation. That hopefully should help people find out specifically whether or not Time Tracking is what they were waiting for, and decide if now is finally a good time to upgrade to Cerb4.

Thanks guys!

Here's the last of the "unresolved requests" and where you can track their new issues:

@Richard Smith (Joey)

CHD-1019
[Import/Export] Way to migrate time tracking from previous versions into Cerb4

@Richard Eriksson

CHD-1020
[Web-API] Expose the time tracking data

@Maarten

"I would currently need time tracking for only some customers. So it would be fantastic if you could enable or disable time tracking for a group (SLA). I don't want to keep track of time for all my customers just for the few that I bill per hour."

You won't have to worry about disabling time tracking for certain customers, groups, organizations, or slas in Cerb4. Simply save time entries for customers you want to bill and ignore the feature altogether for those you don't. By creating a new 'activity' with a $/hour rate, you can "bill" them by selecting that rate from the drop-down when you create each new time entry. Similarly if you want to track time for non-billable customers (e.g. performance reviews), use a $0/hour activity.

"What also would be great is when I could set a defined number of hours in a SLA that are included with the support contract the customer has and every minute past that is stored. So if I only worked one hour for a customer with an SLA of two hours support there would not be any billing but when I work three hours one hour would be reported. So crossing the defined number of hours means billable hours."

This idea is definitely not compatible with the current Cerb4 Time Tracking plugin and would warrant a new feature. This has been filed into JIRA separately.

CHD-1021
 [Time Tracking] Support for defining number of SLA work hours for a customer