Creating and Configuring Internal Issues

Internal issues are Jira issues that are used for tracking time on non-project related and non-billable activities that your organization needs to account for, such as vacation, sickness, parental leave, or scheduled medical leave. They can also be used to track time spent on company meetings and events, onboarding, and internal training.

Internal issues are usually meant to be available for all employees in the organization, so to make sure that everyone can view and log time to these issues, they need to be granted the Browse Projects and Work on Issues permissions for each Jira project where the Internal issues live. Using a single Jira project to contain the Internal issues makes permission management much simpler, but you can use as many issues in as many projects as you like.

Internal issues are not used for public holidays. To do that, you must set up one or more holiday schemes for your organization.

When a Jira issue is configured as Internal in Tempo, it is identified and used properly in Tempo Timesheets, Tempo Planner, and Tempo Cost Tracker. Here's what happens when issues are configured as Internal:

• Internal issues are all grouped together on the Internal tabs in the Issues side panel in My Work and the Resource Planning view, as well as in the Log Time and Plan Time forms. This makes it easy for users to plan time and log time quickly on Internal issues because they're easy to find.

• In Tempo Timesheets, the Billable Hours field is not available when you log your time to Internal issues, even if the Set Billable Hours permission is being used for the Jira project in which the Internal issues exist. This is because the type of activity considered as internal, such as sickness and vacation, is not eligible for billable work.

• The Remaining Estimate field in the Internal issue is not used.

• If you're tracking revenues in Cost Tracker, Internal issues are not considered as billable so they are automatically excluded from revenue calculations.

You can create Internal Type Tempo accounts to organize the hours logged to Internal issues. This can be useful when there are several teams that need to track their own Internal issues, or the Internal issues are spread across multiple Jira projects and you want to aggregate the logged time from all of them in one Tempo account for easier management and reporting.

Creating a Jira Project and Internal Issues

Creating Jira projects and granting Project permissions requires Jira Administrator Permissions.

While not mandatory to do so, it's best practice to create a dedicated Jira project to keep all the Internal issues together for easier Project permission management. Users need the Browse Projects and Work on Issues project permissions to access and log time to the Internal issues in each Jira project where they reside, so it's simpler to have only one Jira project to control and manage the permissions.

Having a single Jira project makes Internal issues more easily identifiable because they all use the same project key, such as "INT". And it's simple to run reports on that single project to see the number of hours logged or planned for each Internal issue, such as to find out how many sick days have been taken for the month. Anyone running reports on the Internal issues needs the Browse Projects and View All Worklogs permission for each relevant Jira project to be able to see the logged time data.

If you have Internal issues in multiple Jira projects, you can create a separate Internal Project permission scheme to be applied to only these projects. This makes it easy to then grant the required permissions for all the relevant projects at once.

To create a Jira project and issues for internal hours:

1. Create a Jira project with an easily identifiable name and key, such as Internal and INT.

2. Grant the Browse Projects and Work on Issues Project permissions so that everyone in your organization can view and log time to the Internal issues.

   If more privacy is required, you can add external contractors or clients to a Jira group and then do not grant the Browse Projects and Work on Issues permissions to this group for the Jira projects that contain internal issues.

3. Create all the Jira issues to cover your organization's non-project related activities. You can always add more issues later, but it's best to create most of them before your employees start logging time to them.

   Internal issues should have no Original or Remaining Estimate, no Due Date, and no Assignee.

4. Configure the issues as Internal in Tempo (see below) so that they're available on the Internal tab in the issue side panel to easily view and log time to them, but are not available for logging billable hours.

   If you're not configuring the issues as Internal, make sure that the Set Billable Hours Project permission is not granted to employees so that the Billable hours field is not available for them to log time to these issues.

Configuring Issues as Internal in Tempo

When you configure Internal issues in Tempo, you select all the Jira issues that you have created for this purpose (from one or more Jira projects) and add them to a list of issues that are marked as "Internal". Make sure that the Browse Projects and Work on Issues permissions are granted to all appropriate employees in each Jira project where the Internal issues reside. These permissions allow them to access and log time to the Internal issues.

To configure Jira issues as Internal:

1. Select Settings in the Tempo sidebar

2. Under Configuration, select Internal Issues.

3. In the Issue Key search box, select a Jira issue that you want to consider as Internal for Tempo. The issue can be in any Jira project, not only a dedicated Internal Jira project.

4. Click Add.

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5. To delete an internal issue, click Delete for the issue you want to stop using as an internal issue. The issue is no longer considered as Internal for Tempo, but is not deleted from Jira. Basically, it returns to being a normal Jira issue.

   When you delete an Internal issue that's in a Jira project with the Set Billable Hours permission granted to employees, billable hours are added to the worklogs to match the hours logged to this issue.

   To bulk-edit the billable hours in these worklogs, such as to set the billable hours to 0, see Editing Worklogs in Bulk or watch this video How to Edit the Billable Hours in Worklogs in Bulk