Archive for the ‘Time Doctor features’ Category

Two new features and other planned features

We have two small new features just released.
 

Add all people to all projects

This is a simple new feature where you can select for all people to be added to all new projects. This is useful if you have a lot of people in your company and you want to really add everyone to all of your projects. It can get tedious to do this one by one, so this way you can automatically add all of your new people to your new projects. This feature applies more to companies that have at least 10 users.
 

Prevent deletion of screenshots

This one we debated about quite some time before releasing it. It’s a simple feature where an admin can prevent deletion of screenshots. We introduced the feature because we had several requests for it. The way that deletion of screenshots works is that it will delete the length of time of the screenshot from the person’s worked time. So there shouldn’t normally be any need to prevent deletion of screenshots. However some companies are very interested in this feature so we have added it as an option.

My personal philosophy around screenshots is that they are not critical for most people in your business. They are a useful addition to the software because you can see a person’s workflow to look for improvements in processes and also if you have a problem team member, you can take a look to see what is going on and where they are actually spending their time. However it does take some time to examine screenshots, and so I personally use it more as an occasional thing rather than an every-day process. The way Time Doctor is designed is that as a manager you receive weekly and daily reports that give you the information you need at a glance to understand what everyone is working on and the productivity of your team.
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Launch of Time Doctor Tasks

We’ve recently launched Time Doctor Tasks which is the task management version of Time Doctor. This version is for individuals that need to manage their tasks into groups and want to organize and prioritize their tasks.

This is a version that we have been working on for quite some time and now we’re excited to launch it as a live product.

This is what it looks like (click to enlarge):

 

How can TD Tasks help to make me more productive?

This is the version that I personally use to manage my tasks. I have a bunch of different tasks organized into folders. I use generally the GTD (Getting things done) method of organizing tasks.

First you notice there are three main folders for your tasks:

  • Today’s priorities
  • Medium priority
  • Low priority

The purpose of organizing tasks into these folders is that it forces you to properly prioritize your tasks. Productive people are productive NOT because they get everything accomplished every day. In fact if you are getting every single task accomplished every day that’s probably a sign that you are un-productive with your work. Why? Because productivity is all about prioritizing and making sure that you only work on the very important top priority tasks.

Time Doctor Tasks helps you to do this because you will allocate your tasks into these three different folders.
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Toggl versus Time Doctor

Toggl versus Time Doctor
 

Toggl is billed as a super simple time tracker, but let’s see how it compares to our Time Doctor.

Although Toggl and Time Doctor both track time, they are not exactly competitors. Toggl is designed as a simple time tracker for individuals or teams. The way it works is that you enter your activity, select a project and client and then start timing. You can then easily edit the start and end time of any activity and you can use the reports for billing clients.

Time Doctor has a different focus. It’s more orientated to time management and productivity improvement for organizations. Although Time Doctor does have time tracking, it also has a number of other features designed to improve the productivity of an individual or a team.

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Jira integration and how it works

The Jira integration is a little complex to set up so this blog post is there to help explain how to get started with the integration.

Note that the integration works with the hosted SaaS version of Jira. The APIs do not work for the self hosted version.

Firstly the owner of your company on Time Doctor needs to set up the integration on Time Doctor. You can do that under:
Settings > Company Settings > Integrations

This page looks something like this:

As your username and password you need to enter any Jira account that has access to all projects. Usually this is the owner or admin of the Jira account.

The second stage to the Jira integration is for each individual person to activate their Jira integration. This can be done on Time Doctor under:

Settings > Integration settings

Simply enter your Jira user name and click on the tick. Every user in your company will need to do this in their Time Doctor login.

After activated your Jira tasks will automatically be downloaded into your Time Doctor account. You will need to make sure you have the latest version of Time Doctor which you can get here: http://www.timedoctor.com/download.html

You will see the Jira tasks appear something like this:

 

Note that you need to click on the left and right arrows to see the list of Jira tasks. Also you can click on the right to open the task in Jira. You click on the tasks to start timing them. You cannot add Jira tasks from Time Doctor, and I think it won’t really ever make sense to do this as if you are using Jira you will need to use the full capabilities of Jira when you are adding tasks.

Note that we have not yet implemented sending time tracked to Jira. We are working on this feature at the moment and I realise that this is probably one of the most important features of the integration. Yes we’re working on it!

 


Basecamp, Jira and Google Calendar integrations

We have just released a beta version of integrations with Basecamp, Jira and Google Calendar.

The Basecamp integration (with the new Basecamp) will take your tasks from Basecamp and display them in a special Basecamp folder. To see this folder you will need to click the right and left arrows to navigate between your task lists. You can then open Basecamp tasks with a link directly from within Time Doctor.

The Jira integration will need to be set up for your whole company first before setting it up for an individual. The company set up is available from under Settings then Company settings then Integrations. After setting up the whole company Jira integration each person then needs to set up their individual Jira integration under settings then Integration settings in the Time Doctor menu

The Google Calendar integration will send your activity list to your Google Calendar.

All these integrations are in beta so please contact support if you have any difficulties with them.