Currently working with the tickets using the Timer. Not sure if this is how it was design or it's a bug but when I pause the ticket Timer (even closing the ticket itself) to work on other tickets or answer a call, the timer still counting.
Example. I only worked on this ticket for a minute or two. I opened it first at 9:56am (timer is set to automatically starts when ticket is opened) to review the details. Pause the timer and close the ticket to work on other tasks. When I re-open the ticket, the timer continues where I left off but when I try to ADD the timer as I have completed/Finished the ticket, it's showing more than 30 minutes.
Mikel from Gorelo
Team
Ticket Timer is now available! Navigate to your Profile (top-right) -> Settings and configure auto-start etc. :)
Mikel from Gorelo changed status to In Review
Team
Aquamarine Pie
Here's my take:
1) Autostart - Needs to be auto-started when you open a ticket, so we can accurately track and log ALL time from ALL employees who touched a ticket.
2) Turn Off Autostart - Some people won't want auto-start, so an option to have it turned off per user AND per account.
Per User for those MSP Owners or Auditors who just check tickets, and their time shouldn't be logged against a ticket. And Per Account for those MSP's etc who don't want any staff member accidentally logging time against a job.
3) Auto Pause - One thing about IT Guys is 99% of them have ADHD and are doing 100 things at once, which makes time tracking a bit of a pain. However you can't just pause a timer when they change focus.
I believe the best way to manage this is to
Start a timer when a ticket is opened automatically
Have a timeout that can be set, say 15 minutes
If you close the ticket, timer stops
If your focus changes away from the ticket, the timer continues BUT after the timeout is reached, a popup reminds you you're tracking time and gives you two options
-- Option 1: "No, I've finished" and can close off the ticket at the time that was logged when the timeout happened (And have the option to edit the time before saving)
-- Option 2: "Yes, I'm still working" and can continue the timer until your finished.
4) Calculations - Needs to be easy to calculate the time forwards OR backwards. So you can use ANY combination of start time, end time and duration to calculate (Some times you know when finished, and know it took 47 minutes, but trying to math backwards 47 minutes from 9:22am is just too hard)
5) Reporting/Auditing - We need to easily be able to pull a report per employee, or per employee group as to who logged what time where. So that we can easily audit staff activity, but also see when they spent 5 hours on 1 ticket, and be able to easily figure out why.
6) TimeDoctor Integration - I've tested all the time tracking software out there and the best one I've found for staff monitoring is called TimeDoctor. They have a chrome extension that automatically puts a start/stop timer in every email, jira, trello, asana all other apps you use. Gives me an excellent full breakdown of what staff are doing. I'd really love you to reach out to TimeDoctor and ask them what 3 lines of code they need you to copy/paste into the app to allow timing of tickets through TimeDoctor.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL
The goal here, I believe, is to have it so seamless that it doesn't require ANY action on the support engineer for the majority of tickets. That way it will always be used, and it won't become a burden or a mess that nobody uses accurately.
And To answer your question, Accelo/AfinityLive was the best implementation of time tracking I've come across to date. It was so seamless and didn't require any extra input from the user, and it just worked.
Thank you for reading this far into my novella, I hope you enjoyed it. 😜
Mikel from Gorelo
Team
Hi all, we'll be reviewing this feature in the near future -- please let me know of the best Ticket Timer implementation you've seen so we can gather ideas and inspiration! :)
Harlequin Star
Much needed feature, currently there is a timer on the mobile app to add travel time and could be modified to be used as ticket start time and stop time. An option to AutoStart the timer when the ticket is opened would be perfect.
I suggest having the timer counter on the ticket list with the elapsed time would be nice.
Purple Exoplanet
Luis Gonzalez: Agreed, if impimented - Autostart would be really important.
Log in to comment and vote
Comments7
Purple Exoplanet
Currently working with the tickets using the Timer. Not sure if this is how it was design or it's a bug but when I pause the ticket Timer (even closing the ticket itself) to work on other tickets or answer a call, the timer still counting.
Example. I only worked on this ticket for a minute or two. I opened it first at 9:56am (timer is set to automatically starts when ticket is opened) to review the details. Pause the timer and close the ticket to work on other tasks. When I re-open the ticket, the timer continues where I left off but when I try to ADD the timer as I have completed/Finished the ticket, it's showing more than 30 minutes.
Mikel from Gorelo
Ticket Timer is now available! Navigate to your Profile (top-right) -> Settings and configure auto-start etc. :)
Aquamarine Pie
Here's my take:
1) Autostart - Needs to be auto-started when you open a ticket, so we can accurately track and log ALL time from ALL employees who touched a ticket.
2) Turn Off Autostart - Some people won't want auto-start, so an option to have it turned off per user AND per account.
Per User for those MSP Owners or Auditors who just check tickets, and their time shouldn't be logged against a ticket. And Per Account for those MSP's etc who don't want any staff member accidentally logging time against a job.
3) Auto Pause - One thing about IT Guys is 99% of them have ADHD and are doing 100 things at once, which makes time tracking a bit of a pain. However you can't just pause a timer when they change focus.
I believe the best way to manage this is to
Start a timer when a ticket is opened automatically
Have a timeout that can be set, say 15 minutes
If you close the ticket, timer stops
If your focus changes away from the ticket, the timer continues BUT after the timeout is reached, a popup reminds you you're tracking time and gives you two options
-- Option 1: "No, I've finished" and can close off the ticket at the time that was logged when the timeout happened (And have the option to edit the time before saving)
-- Option 2: "Yes, I'm still working" and can continue the timer until your finished.
4) Calculations - Needs to be easy to calculate the time forwards OR backwards. So you can use ANY combination of start time, end time and duration to calculate (Some times you know when finished, and know it took 47 minutes, but trying to math backwards 47 minutes from 9:22am is just too hard)
5) Reporting/Auditing - We need to easily be able to pull a report per employee, or per employee group as to who logged what time where. So that we can easily audit staff activity, but also see when they spent 5 hours on 1 ticket, and be able to easily figure out why.
6) TimeDoctor Integration - I've tested all the time tracking software out there and the best one I've found for staff monitoring is called TimeDoctor. They have a chrome extension that automatically puts a start/stop timer in every email, jira, trello, asana all other apps you use. Gives me an excellent full breakdown of what staff are doing. I'd really love you to reach out to TimeDoctor and ask them what 3 lines of code they need you to copy/paste into the app to allow timing of tickets through TimeDoctor.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL
The goal here, I believe, is to have it so seamless that it doesn't require ANY action on the support engineer for the majority of tickets. That way it will always be used, and it won't become a burden or a mess that nobody uses accurately.
And To answer your question, Accelo/AfinityLive was the best implementation of time tracking I've come across to date. It was so seamless and didn't require any extra input from the user, and it just worked.
Thank you for reading this far into my novella, I hope you enjoyed it. 😜
Mikel from Gorelo
Hi all, we'll be reviewing this feature in the near future -- please let me know of the best Ticket Timer implementation you've seen so we can gather ideas and inspiration! :)
Harlequin Star
Much needed feature, currently there is a timer on the mobile app to add travel time and could be modified to be used as ticket start time and stop time. An option to AutoStart the timer when the ticket is opened would be perfect.
I suggest having the timer counter on the ticket list with the elapsed time would be nice.
Purple Exoplanet
Luis Gonzalez: Agreed, if impimented - Autostart would be really important.