January 2013 Archives

I've just uploaded Timesheets MTS Version 2.5.5. This new version includes the following changes:

• The project expense report now includes the expense incurred date.
• The current projects report can now display closed projects as well as open projects.
• The employee abbreviation field is now colored yellow as it is a required field when creating a new employee.
• <PROJECT_CUSTOMER_REFERENCE> field has been added to the detailed project task template.
• Fixed a bug with projects managers not being able to edit the projects they "own" when project manager security is turned on.
• Project charge rates are now hidden from project managers for projects they do not "own" when project manager security is turned on.
• Fixed up some resizing issues on various screens, including the project maintenance screen, the user maintenance screen, the contact maintenance screen, and the who is logged in screen.
• Project budget amounts are now updated correctly when task level budgets are changed.
• Current timesheet date is now displayed on timesheet travel, expense, and issues tabs.

Editing Another Employees Timesheet

A recent release of our employee timesheet software Timesheets Lite added the ability for some users to edit other employee timesheets. Above you can see a screenshot of the employee timesheet with the employee timesheet dropdown highlighted in red.

If the logged in employee is a super user (see here for a discussion on employee security levels in Timesheets Lite) then they'll be able to select other employees names from the dropdown. When another employee is selected their timesheet data will be displayed. That data can then me added to, edited, or deleted exactly the same as the employee's own data. The task timer cannot be used to record time for another employee. This is the only real restriction on working with another employees data.

Another new release of Timesheets Lite today. Version 3.4.6 now allows super user employees to edit the timesheets of other employees. The other minor change is to set the selected timesheet day to the current day when an employee first logs in. This will only really effect users who have multiple employees using the same computer to record their timesheet data.

In most parts of the world it is now 2013. This means in a lot of cases you may find that when you try to add activity to a project in Timesheets MTS that you get a message box popping up saying:

No period is defined for this date.
Someone with Super User privileges must define a period covering this date

By default for the last year the software created a single period covering all of 2012. Now that we are in 2013 this has expired and you must create a new period. To do this just log into Timesheets MTS as a super user and go to the Tools->Options->Periods menu and add some new periods covering the coming year (or several years if you like).

For your reference you can make use of periods to stop forward posting by users or to stop users editing data in previous periods.

Add / Edit Time Screen with Colors!

Happy New Year to all Timesheets MTS Software Blog readers! I've taken the opportunity given by the usual slow Christmas/New Year period to spend several days working on Timesheets Lite. I added a few new features in this release but most of the time was focussed on performance issues for users with very long project and employee lists. It was an interesting exercise that taught me two things. First, I am kicking myself for the truly dumb ways I tried to handle large datasets and the impact this had on performance. Second, I am amazed by some of the performance improvements I've managed to eke out. The best improvement is in the speed of display of the Employee Login Screen. Testing against my reference database gave a loading speed that was 80 times faster than previous versions.

Anyway, enough chatter, here's the details of all the changes.

• Common activities can now have a fore and back color. These colors are visible on the Manage Common Activities screen and on the activity drop down on the Add/Edit times screen.
• Project fore and back colors are now displayed on the project drop down on the add/edit time screen. See the screenshot above for what the add/edit time screen can look like.
• Use Non Billable Fields checkbox added to the Interface Options screen. When checked employees can mark a time as non-billable and will see a non-billable column on the employee timesheet.
• Project colors are applied correctly to the Manage Projects screen after an existing project's colors are changed.
• An internal system has been added to allow the addition of new tables and columns to the Timesheets Lite database.
• Much time spent working on the load speed of the employee login screen. Good performance improvements seen.
• Internal loading speed of employees improved greatly. Should reflect in better report generation times.
• Much time spend working on the Add/Edit Time screen for users with very long project lists (1000+ projects). Much of the data is now cached or pre-emptively loaded. While the first load of the Add/Edit Time screen may be a little slow for very long project lists subsequent loads will be much faster.