What’s New: TimeTrak 20.1

Welcome to the first and only release of 2020, TimeTrak 20.1. In this version, we have an exciting new look and feel to TimeTrak Professional as well as many new user-friendly features. Please browse through this document to find out more about these changes.

TimeTrak version 20.1 has a minimum SQL Server requirement of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP4 as well as a new .net framework requirement.

For a full list of requirements, please review here.

Table of Contents

1. Project Management Features
2. New TimeTrak Professional layout
3. Changes to Totals in TimeTrak
4. Custom Fields in TimeTrak Professional Grids
5. Queue Changes
6. Check In to a Queue Item in TimeTrak Professional
7. Global Search in TimeTrak Professional
8. Move and expand screens in TimeTrak Professional
9. Print Job Financial Summary Report from TimeTrak Professional
10. Right Click Update Billable Status in TimeTrak Professional
11. Changes to default “fill day” behaviour
12. Changes to Job Templates
13. Ability to attach a checklist item template to a Serviceable Unit Checklist item to only display information about the selected unit
14. Exo Attachments can now flow through to TimeTrak Attachments if the Shared Folder Attachment Method is used
15. Ability to not send a scheduled report if there is no data in the report
16. Changes to Task Due Date Behaviour

1.Project Management Features

In TimeTrak 20.1 within TimeTrak Professional, jobs can now be tagged as “projects”.

Once a job (or master job) is identified as a project additional features including the ability to set milestones and resources against a project are available.

Projects can be added to workspaces in order to review a Gantt Chart as per below:

For more information, click here.

2.New TimeTrak Professional layout

In TimeTrak 20.1, TimeTrak Professional has a new look and feel with the ability to customise what displays on the “control” panel on a per user basis.

For more information on this change and how it works please click here or view demonstration video below.

3.Changes to Totals in TimeTrak

There has been significant changes to how totals are calculated in TimeTrak.

Previously, these totals were calculated on screen based on a set formula. However, these are now calculated and stored in the database directly against jobs and tasks. This provides improvement to the speed of grids where totals are displayed such as queues and Tasks.

These changes also provide further flexibility to define what type of time “consumes” budget by the new Billable Totals section in global system settings as per below:

In the above example, none of these options are enabled meaning only billable time (time that hits the job as WIP or Ready to Invoice) will consume budget and be included in totals in TimeTrak.

4.Custom Fields in TimeTrak Professional Grids

Continuing from the above regarding changes to total calculations in TimeTrak.

These totals can now be reviewed in Task and Job grids, as per below example;

There is also the added ability to add extra custom fields against clients, jobs and serviceable units to these grids. This allows you to see the information without opening the item.

For more information on adding custom fields to TimeTrak Professional grids, click here or view demonstration video below.

5.Queue Changes

Again continuing with changes to totals, Queues can now display Actual and Scheduled time.

For users who are using queues as a scheduling tool, when an item in a queue is “pinned” there is the ability to add a “New Quick Appointment”. This will add an appointment using the systems defaults without the need for the appointment form to pop.

There is a new Setting against Queue’s “Indicate Queue items are scheduled”.

If enabled against the queue and there are appointments scheduled against the queue item the first appointment user/ date and time will be displayed as per below.

There is also the ability to filter out queue items that have been scheduled via the “Toggle Scheduled” icon. This will reduce the queue list to only those that have not been scheduled.

There is also an Email address that has been added to queue. This has been added for sites who wish to email the contents of a queue to an email address on a set frequency.

A good working example of this could be where sub-contractors are allocated jobs, a queue is setup to “house” these jobs.

A scheduled report could be setup to email the list of jobs to the contractor on a set frequency using the email address specified against the queue.

For more information click here or view our quick demonstration video below.

6.Check In to a Queue Item in TimeTrak Professional

The popular “check in” method is now available in TimeTrak Professional.

If users have the ability to “check in” enabled within their profile, then any queues they also have enabled will have a new “check in” icon.

On clicking the Check In icon (1), the checked in icon will then display (2) with the logged in users name and the time they checked into the queue item.

Other users that have access to the queue can also see this information. This provides further visibility of what staff are currently working on.

Check In to an appointment, task or job in TimeTrak Professional

Continuing on from the above point where there is now the ability to check-in to a queue item in TimeTrak Professional. The ability to check-in has been added to the right click on appointments and the job and task grid.

7.Global Search in TimeTrak Professional

In Global System Setup, Global Search can be enabled for selected items in your database.

The order in which these items display in when searched can be arranged here also;

Once setup, users can search in the new Global Search function available within TimeTrak Professional only.

The results will be grouped an ordered by the order set in Global System Setup.

Users can then select any item in the search results to review the information.

8.Move and expand screens in TimeTrak Professional

Previously the window size of items had been “fixed”. In TimeTrak Professional from version 20.1 there is now the ability to expand or minimise back to the “fixed” size of a screen.

The browser will remember what you had set last time. I.e: When expanding a job screen to see the time entry detail the next time a job is opened it will be in full screen.

For more information click here or view our quick demonstration video below.

9.Print Job Financial Summary Report from TimeTrak Professional

Continuing on from above, the ability to expand the job screen makes a huge improvement when reviewing the Job Financial Summary. There is almost no need to scroll to see data as there was previously.

Against the Job Financial Summary there is now a print button which allows the report to be printed.

In line with changes to TimeTrak totals, the TimeTrak data section has been updated to show the separation of time. This is based on the line status of a time entry when posted through to job costing, as per below:

For more information click here or view our quick demonstration video below.

10. Right Click Update Billable Status in TimeTrak Professional

The most commonly updated field when verification is completed is the billable status.

Previously, this required the user to open each time entry that needed this changed and update this.

Now in TimeTrak Professional from version 20.1, within the Verification by job report users can right click the time entry and update the billable status as per below:

This functionality is also available against multiple time entries at once. This can be done via the job or task time entries tab as per below:

11. Changes to default “fill day” behaviour

Previously, TimeTrak had legacy behaviour around lunch breaks which has now been removed.

E.g: If a user’s roster was set up 8:30am to 5pm (8.5 hours) with a daily minimum of 7.5 hours and the user had no lunch breaks setup then by default when using “fill day” a break would be entered between 12 – 1pm.

In 20.1, if users have no breaks set against their roster then when using “fill day” no break will be inserted.

12. Changes to Job Templates

Previously, in order to tag a job as a “TimeTrak Template” extra fields had to be setup in TimeTrak or Job Costing as per this tip on job templates:

In TimeTrak 20.1 onwards, on creation of a new job the job template options are available by default. As per below, allowing these template jobs to be created easily from TimeTrak Professional.

If the user’s profile has “Show Job Templates Tab” enabled then TimeTrak Professional job templates can be seen and managed easily as well:

To improve the amount of Job Templates that are required for sites and the speed at which jobs can be created, there is now job defaults or must choose options for Branch and Job Manager on job creation at a profile level as per below:

This flexibility means that usually one template can be created per job type. For example:

However, depending on what is set against the users profile will be the defaults for job creation without a template:

As well as when a template is in use;

13.Ability to attach a checklist item template to a Serviceable Unit Checklist item to only display information about the selected unit

When checklists are being completed, a common request is to just see information relating to the selected unit/asset in Mobile.

This is now possible in 20.1, against the checklist item type: Serviceable Unit a Checklist Item template can be selected which provides the information on the selected unit.

14. Exo Attachments can now flow through to TimeTrak Attachments if the Shared Folder Attachment Method is used.

In previous versions of TimeTrak, there is the ability to “Link Attachments to ERP Documents”. If enabled, attachments added in TimeTrak would also flow through to the MYOB Exo Documents tab against the Client, Job, Serviceable Unit, Purchase Order, Prospect or Opportunity (depending on where the attachment was added).

For more information on this, see our article on document storage:

In TimeTrak version 20.1, if the Attachment Storage Method of “Shared Folder” is in use there is an additional global setting “Link ERP Documents to TimeTrak Attachments” which can be enabled as per below:

Once enabled, attachments added to the Documents tab of a Client, Job, Serviceable Unit, Purchase Order, Prospect or Opportunity in MYOB Exo will also be available in TimeTrak as an attachment.

Note: There is a requirement for xp_cmdshell to be enabled on the SQL server so it can access the file system.

The Services Account that SQL runs under will also need access to the file location which the document was saved to. It is best practice that users attach the files from full UNC paths, if using mapped drives these will need to be mapped on the SQL Server also.

15.Ability to not send a scheduled report if there is no data in the report.

In the previous version, we have the ability to create a scheduled report. You can set up a report to be sent to one or multiple users. This function has been optimised in 20.1 where we can put a validation to the schedule itself. This means we can stop it from sending an empty report.

In the schedule events setting, there is a new tab called ‘Validation’. In this field, you can put a query as a validation to return the value ‘True’ or ‘False’. If the query return the value True, the schedule event will fire on the specified date/time.

The ‘Validation’ query also receives date parameter if you want to see the query based on certain date period. It is very useful if you have a scheduled report based on confirmation of certain data and it includes time period (i.e. Next day appointment). This allows you to set your scheduled report to run every minute and it won’t send any emails if it returns ‘False’.

Please consult and discuss this with one of our TimeTrak consultant to help you set this up.

16. Changes to Task Due Date Behaviour

In versions of TimeTrak prior to 20.1, the default task due date was dependent on the estimated time.

This behaviour has now been altered to below

Creation of a new task:

1. On creation of a Task the Created Date is current date/time.
2. The Start Date is rounded to the next available time unit.
3. The Due Date is the end of the current roster day. i.e. my roster is until 5pm so the default due date is 5pm today

When altering the estimated time of a task the due date does not change.

The manual date picker has also been moved to the Choose Date option on the task form. This allows you to make “quick selection” dates more user friendly. See below.