Hey,
Is it possible to block people from logging time on specific workitem types.
For examples I have stories and under that I have tasks. I want all time to be logged on the task level only. I can disable the 7pace functionality on the story workitems, but in the timsheet tab they can still find the Story workitem and still can log time on that. Can I configure this so it is not possible to log that time on story level?
Kind regards,
Wim
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Official comment
Hello Wim,
we currently provide only a 'soft' block via predefined global search filters as described in this blog post. We believe that global filters can naturally navigate users to 'allowed' items and the 'forbidden' ones will gradually disappear from users' timesheets. The filters will not prevent users from displaying the 'forbidden' items inside of Azure DevOps and tracking time on them from there, but they will prevent users from finding these items in search box when adding or tracking time.
Come to think of it, combination of your current approach - disabling 7pace Timetracker from layouts of specific item types - with global filters might do the trick! It would be great to discuss this together - let's have a call and find if your use case can be fulfilled. Would you mind using this Calendly link to find some suitable time?
All the best,
Roman, Product OwnerComment actions -
Hey Roman,
It is already better. It would even be more interesting if the user couldn't remove the filters themselves. If you could add a setting in the admin panel that users can't remove the global filter in the "add time" box it would be sufficient to stop them from logging time on workitems they should not.
I have also filled in the calendly link.
Kind regards,
Wim -
@roman We have been using 7pace/TFS time tracker for years in our company and almost no one ever uses the "add time" feature on "times explorer" in our company except when a manager wants to add time on behalf of someone else. But I can imagine other companies where they're used to adding time through the 'times explorer' page.
Our process is to navigate to the lowest level work item (task or bug) and add the time there. That's why our TFS on premise work item templates only include the 7pace for the task and bug work item.
We built a custom application for invoice purposes that gets time registrations and we've made it work with tasks or bugs. Inside that application we take time registrations and group them together in order to build a proper invoice draft, which we then hand over to finance, so they can add each invoice line in their invoice program. All those drafts are saved for posterity and time registrations get locked and can't exist in multiple invoice drafts.
The structure of an invoice is very simple. Its one line of text that explains the topic of work (eg. work item title), the duration, the hourly rate and the total amount/cost.
So - to be absolutely clear - we group up time registrations that belong together due to being about the same thing. They end up in the same invoice line, which is easy to read for the client.
However, problems arise if colleagues start registering time on parent tasks or God forbid, on the top parent of parents. We would have to analyze the comment of the time registration to figure out what that person was doing and how/where to invoice that. ... It becomes difficult to group time registrations together. And we might end up invoicing a client with more than 1 line about the same thing, which looks bad.
We don't invoice every time registration separately. The invoices would be extremely long and hard to read. The comments are also not customer friendly.
I was looking for the setting in the new Azure Devops version of 7pace and was surprised to learn that after all these years, you still haven't implemented a hard setting to force time registrations only on specific work item types. I guess you have some good technical reasons for not doing so, but at least the same workaround used on TFS on-premise is usable on Azure Devops (hiding the tab).
I also checked out the global filters features. And it's alright. It's helpful when you're trying to find work items by name. However, few people do that after you have years of work inside a TFS because you will have many tasks with similar names. So the only useful thing becomes the ID.
Anyway, that was my feedback. Keep up the good work.
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Hello Artjom,
thank you for such insightful details about your process! I understand that global filters will not help if majority of people use task ID when searching for an issue.
The hard limitation of task types people can add time to is tracked in this feature request. I already attached your feedback to this feature request internally, there is no need to copy the comment there. The feature request is currently one of the most popular ones, but it has not been prioritized yet, so I cannot promise any specific delivery date I am afraid. I recommend following the mentioned issue so that you are informed about updates.
Best regards,
Roman Fianta, Product Owner
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