Time Tracking in Jira with Tempo

by | Oct 8, 2019

From time to time, we like to highlight apps we at Atlas Authority recommend to our clients. In cases where clients need more than Jira’s out-of-the-box time-tracking functionality, we always recommend Tempo time tracking and its suite of apps. Tempo is one of our partners and an Atlassian Marketplace vendor. In this post, we’ll review Tempo’s apps and highlight why they’re our go-to vendor for tracking time in Jira.

Tempo’s time-tracking tools

Tempo offers three apps you can download from the Atlassian Marketplace:

  • Tempo Timesheets allows you to pull reports on your user’s logged time so that you can use that information for accounting or invoicing purposes. (This is Tempo’s most popular app.)
  • Tempo Planner allows you to quickly find available resources and manage your team’s projected work.
  • Tempo Budgets allows you to control costs, manage budgets, and manage capacity – making this a seamless app to manage the financial side of your resources. 

These apps are available for all Jira deployments.

A look at the apps

Interested in seeing these apps in action? Once you install Tempo time tracking, the first thing you will notice is the new menu in Jira’s header. In the Cloud version, Tempo’s menu tab is located on the sidebar. You can expand the “Tempo” tab to find a few options (as shown below) and in the Tempo app screen, there are corresponding icons that will be displayed.

time tracking

My Work

Diving deeper into the menu tab options, the first option available to all users is the “My Work” tab. From the “My Work” tab, you’ll be able to plan time and log time. (Please note: You will need to have Tempo Timesheets and Tempo Planner installed.)

time tracking

You can also plan and log time on issues within Jira projects. No matter where you choose to do this, you are presented with a screen similar to these two:

time tracking
time tracking

Planning

The next tab in Tempo’s sidebar is “Planning.” As you might have guessed, this is where you can plan your time for the coming days or weeks.

time tracking

You can do this in a few different ways. The first is by clicking the blue, “Plan Time” button in the top right corner. Another way to plan your time is by dragging and dropping issues into the calendar.

Nevertheless, your “Total Available” time in the top right will update depending on how much time you plan for each issue. You will see it updated real-time in your issue detail view like below:

time tracking

Reports

One of the most sought-after features within the Tempo suite of apps for Jira is their reporting functionality. In the cloud version, there are two main reporting options:

time tracking

On server deployments, those options look a bit different.

time tracking

Regardless of the reports you choose, you can always save your report and refer back to it at a later time. This is especially useful if you need to bill or invoice clients at the end of the month. Instead of creating a new report each time, you can simply create a report once, then adjust the dates for your current month.

Teams

In the “Teams” tab, you can create or manage all your teams within Tempo. In order to configure or manage the team, you will need one of these three permissions: Jira Administrators, Tempo Team Administrators, or the Tempo Team Lead role.

For larger organizations, it is useful to put users into teams in order to manage their roles and dates of availability. If one team member works across two teams, it’s possible to manage their capacity at a team level. You can do this from the Team’s page.

time tracking

Accounts

The last tab in the Tempo sidebar concerns the Tempo Budgets app, this is the “Accounts” tab.

Within the Accounts tab, you can create a new account using the “Create Account” button in the top right corner.

time tracking

You can also see a list of all accounts and sort them by a variety of parameters. In addition to accounts, you can create and manage customers within the Accounts tab.

Time tracking in Jira with Tempo’s apps

Although Jira has its own time tracking functionality straight out-of-the-box, we found that it didn’t meet some of our client’s requirements. After researching and testing other time tracking apps on the Atlassian Marketplace, we found Tempo’s apps to be the most robust app available for time tracking and reporting. For more information on Tempo’s apps, check out their documentation page or contact us for additional help. 

You might also be interested in: How Teams Can Maximize Their Resources in Jira Using Tempo Planner

Subscribe to receive our monthly
blog posts in your inbox

Latest Blogs
CVE-2021-44228 Analysis

CVE-2021-44228 Analysis

This is a living document (Last Updated 09:55 ET Dec 11th 21), and we're working to update it as we find more information. If you have feedback, please feel free to email boris@atlasauthority.com Official Responses Official response from Atlassian for Customers:...

read more
Share This