Tempo Timesheets - FAQs

Accounts

What is the Account lead used for?

The Account lead has the permission to manage the account information without being able to create new ones. They can also edit the account and change the account status.

Permissions in Tempo Cloud

What do you use Customers for?

You can use Customers as a filter option in the Tempo reports. That gives you an idea how much time you have spent on a Customer. You could refine this filter by adding another dimension (e.g. Project xyz).

Do Accounts need to be assigned to each Jira issue?

Yes, if you would like to use the option to filter/group worklogs in Tempo Reports or view information in the Account reports. Jira issues can be bulk edited to a selected Account which is linked to the project. If the relationship between an account and a project is one-to-one, then the account is selected by default when a new issue is created in the project.

While approving timesheets, if the wrong account is selected, can the reviewer fix the account?

Typically the account is set on the Jira issue by using the Tempo Account custom field. So everyone with the ability to edit the issue can change the account. However, if you’re using Accounts as a Work Attribute, and you have the permissions to edit worklogs, the account can be changed in the List View of the report.

Do you have to set up accounts by Customer?

No, you don't. You can use Tempo Accounts even if you haven't assigned a Customer to the Account.

Why aren't the customer fields linked between Jira and Tempo?

That's due to the fact that the Customer information is associated to the Tempo Account. But with the use of other tools (e.g. scripting tools like ScriptRunner) you could extract this information and populate it into a separate custom (scripted) field.

What is the best way to track initiatives that have more than one budget related to one customer but many teams working on many different Jira projects to deliver an initiative?

You can use Accounts and link them all to one Customer and use those Accounts across multiple Jira Projects. Managing budgets is better handled with our apps Cost Tracker (Jira Cloud) or Budgets (Jira Data Center). You can book a demo where you can ask questions about your particular set-up here: https://www.tempo.io/book-a-demo

What is the difference between billable Accounts and billed hours?

You have two options to determine billable projects. By using Accounts, you do that on a higher level. By using "billable hours" you can override the billable amount on a worklog level. We recommend naming conventions for Accounts, so that everyone at your organization knows which Accounts can be used for which issues for what purpose. This is very important.

Is it possible to automatically link Tempo Accounts to issues in Jira?

By using Automation for Jira, you can have Jira issues inherit the account from the Epic it is linked to. Please review this Knowledge Base article for the details: https://tempo-io.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/1210482781

Permissions

I am a Tempo admin and Jira admin but I have noticed that I cannot see all booked time. How can I make sure that I am able to see ALL time booked in the reports that I see?

The easiest way would be to add you to the "View all worklog permissions" on ALL Jira permission schemes. Please see this Knowledge Base article: https://tempo-io.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KB/pages/377291063/Cannot+see+other+users+worklogs

On Cloud, you have the option to create new permission roles and define whether users should have full access or access to multiple teams. By creating new permission roles, you can easily decide who should be able to view, manage, and/or approve worklogs, plans and timesheets, as well as manage teams. 

Creating team permission roles

We would like to give a user the visibility of all the worklogs of an Account. How can we do this?

View worklog permissions can only be granted per project (through Jira permission schemes) or per team.

Is it possible to make the teammates' timesheets visible for all?

You are always free to expand the permissions to view others' worklogs based on team membership or Jira project settings. Still, it is a good habit to ask your employees for permission or at least inform them. See Team Permissions for more information.

Setup/Configuration

How do I manage overtime?

Overtime is handled in many different ways within organizations.

In general, it is possible to configure multiple workload schemes. For team/user reports you are always able to compare the worked hours with the required working hours.
If you use the Overtime worklog attribute, then you can see a column for Overtime in My Work and in Logged Time Report. You must Group by Worklog. When you export this person's timesheet or the Logged Time Report to Excel, you can see Overtime as a true/false column per worklog. Then you can manipulate the data in Excel to filter by true and sum up all Overtime.
There are some ideas around overtime including:
Approval Workflow: https://ideas.tempo.io/ideas/T-I-14
Adding Overtime Work Attribute to PDF export: https://ideas.tempo.io/ideas/T-I-375
Seeing Overtime Work Attribute 'roll-up" to a higher level than worklog in the Report, eg issue, and display in Timesheet Approval: https://ideas.tempo.io/ideas/T-I-272
Sum of Work Attributes in the Tempo List View: https://ideas.tempo.io/ideas/T-I-367

How are "Billable Hours" configured? Is there a standard field for that?

For Cloud: add the permission "Set Billable hours" on the Jira project permission scheme(s). See Project Permissions - Tempo Cloud.

For Data Center: Ability to set billable hours is set globally from the Tempo configuration menu. https://help.tempo.io/timesheets-dc/latest/configuring-global-accounting-options-tempo-server

Can we customize what shows up in the log time dialog?

The Tempo log time dialog is customizable to a certain extent and you can add additional fields to the log time dialog if needed. See more in the documentation for Cloud and Data Center.

Users can also customize what they see in the log time dialog in Cloud: The Log Time form

How can we disable log time for the previous days?

You can use the Tempo scheduler for locking Timesheets for the past week. See more information about the Tempo Scheduler on Configuring the Tempo scheduler for Cloud or Configuring the Tempo scheduler for Data Center

Is it possible to have attributes for each worklog in addition to the account? For instance, I log work on the account, but a particular initiative under that account. I would then like to pull time logged for that account and initiative specifically.

Absolutely. You can define worklog attributes to add to your worklog dialog. However, the provided values need to be global (can't depend on the selected account). See more in the documentation.

Is it possible to have multi-level time approvals?

We are working to implement a solution to have an Account Approval on Cloud, so that a project manager can approve the time spent on a project. And separately, the Team Lead can still always approve the time spent by the users on their team.

We would appreciate it if you can add your use case as a comment on the following idea: https://ideas.tempo.io/ideas/T-I-71

Is it possible to enable/disable worklog attributes for specific Jira projects?

Tempo does not allow the appearance for worklog fields in certain environments. If you are on Data Center you should look into LiveFields from Cprime. They have enabled a possibility to hide fields on the worklog dialog screen. https://confluence.cprime.io/display/SILTEMPO/Live+Fields+for+Tempo

Does Grace Period only work if the Scheduler is configured?

Grace period is only available when the scheduler has closed the period. You can find more information about it in our documentation:

Cloud: Granting Grace Period to Team Members

Configuring the Scheduler for Periods and Reminders
Data Center: Granting Grace Period to Team Members

Configuring the Tempo Scheduler

Integrations

Is there an integration to Microsoft Outlook?

Yes, it already exists for the Tempo Mobile App on Cloud. You can learn how to connect your calendar here.

How does Tempo Timesheet bind together with Advanced Roadmaps for Jira? Can I use my teams from Roadmaps as Tempo Team? And how are reports working with the added hierarchy, will I be able to track time from the top level?

Both apps provide a "Team functionality", however Teams are not synced. Time tracking in Tempo is always against a Jira issue itself. You can certainly track time against issue types like Initiative, however, you will not see it in the Filter by options like e.g. Epic.

Does Tempo sync with BigPicture resources?

When you have both plugins installed the Tempo teams can be synced to BigPicture. More detailed information can be found here.

Is there a connector to SAP?

Many of our customers use an integration to SAP by leveraging our REST APIs. The needs for an SAP integration can be so varied that it is difficult to create a native SAP connector that fits everyone's needs. Tempo REST APIs can be used to integrate with SAP and a list of available APIs can be found on https://www.tempo.io/developers.

Performance

If you have a large organization logging time to Tempo internal tasks, it can cause performance issues.

That's a known issue in Jira and affects issues with a long history. Please reach out to Atlassian for more information about this problem.