Scheduling reports in Time Manager Part 1

In my last post I told you how, in the 2010 Quarter 3 release of Time Manager reports could not be sent to a separate Scheduling and Alerts engine.  Today I am going to extend that concept and tell you a little about how reports can be scheduled.  You can view a five minute video of the process by clicking here.

Offloading reports to another process is only of limited use.  However, setting up a report once and then running it at regular intervals becomes much more interesting.  It allows you to pass a great deal of administrative work out to the alerts engine.

An example might be a productivity report you run once a month on the third of each month for the previous month.  Instead of having to remember to open Time Manager, select the report, select what data to appear on the report and run it, you can now set this up as a scheduled report and have it delivered to your inbox automatically.

The video will show you more about how scheduling of reports works.

Next time I will tell you about distribution lists and some of the other alert functions which do not rely on reporting.

Time Manager Alerts

I am just putting the finishing touches to the initial release of the Time Manager Alerts functionality.  This is a major enhancement both for Time Manager and to a smaller extent Profess.

The feature will be available in the 2010 Quarter 3 release of Time Manager which is still pencilled in for the end of September.  Hosted users will find this installed and available automatically.  Installed users of Time Manager will need to install and configure the Alerts service.  Full documentation will be available on release.

At present the following functionality is available:

• Run any report on a schedule and send back to yourself or a distribution list.  You can enter flexible selection criteria that are evaluated at the time the report is run.  This means you could run a report for This Month, or Last Month, This Week, or Last Week and it would use the dates that apply when it is run.
• Calculate and distribute Missing Timesheets.
• Calculate and distribute Missing Timesheets by Team Manager.  This is nice and simple, just set it up once and leave it run.  The calculation takes care of who to send the report to for all members of a managers Team.
• Look for and inform individual staff if they have not Submitted or Completed a Timesheet on time.

Other alerts can be added in, but these are the ones users have requested so far.

If you have any ideas for alerts that would be useful both to you and others, please get in touch with me so we can decide how achievable they are, as we are actively looking to add new alert functionality.

The Fourth Protocol

Following on from my earlier blog on booking time in 15 minute blocks to ease and speed up entry, this time I want to look at your protocol.

This refers to the in-house rules you have for time recording, and is often overlooked or taken for granted.

To keep it simple, I recommend at least the following four rules need to be considered when building a protocol for timesheeting in any organization.

The first protocol: what am I doing?

Perhaps the best place to start is with Activities.

If Projects represent the goal of either a specific job or commission (or in the service sector – the provision of an ongoing service perhaps to a specific customer/client), then an Activity is the type of effort that contributes to achieving that goal.

Against each Activity you can specify in free-text exactly what you expect your Staff to use each Activity for. This avoids confusions of generic items like ‘MEETINGS’ – is that in-house meetings AND professional customer consultations or are they separate?

Get that wrong from the start and sooner or later you’ll have people booking to the wrong Activity. So why not make it clear by specifying the type of Activity covered by a specific Activity Code.

Place your spec in the Setup > Activities > Maintain Activities {select your Activity and click Change to edit it}: Description of Work field.

When communicating your protocol (either in at least an e-mail to everyone but perhaps in a protocol document which you might place on your Intranet or whatever), why not then include as an appendix a pdf print of report Administration > Lists > Activity Listing – it offers a print of the Description of Work against each Activity?

The second protocol: how much detail do I have to go into?

This refers back to my earlier 15-minute article, but you might have a situation where other time-units apply be it more (30 minute blocks) or less (6 minute blocks is typical of legal settings, for example).

The third protocol: great, yeah but no but how do I do it?

Our contention is that day-to-day end-user use of Time Manager should be so easy that no end-user training is required. Especially if your Administrators have got their configuration right.

But Pillar can’t be responsible for the communication of the basics, such as distribution of the URL, what each individual’s Login will be and exactly what constitutes your protocol for time recording.

Rather, this is best communicated in a single, easy-to-use document that ideally details both the initial steps to access the software in your environment with all the relevant credentials and clearly states your rules and expectations of use (the protocol itself).

Most importantly, give Users the means to help themselves – give them the links to our support area, this blog and, in particular the videos. Tell them how they can access the in-system Help and where all else fails, who to discuss things with internally (they’re the Supervisor/Administrator who might then, in turn, contact our Helpdesk).

The fourth protocol: when should it be there?

All the above is naught without the fourth protocol which refers to when timesheets should have been Submitted. Unless you tie this down you could be chasing forever.

This is often looked upon as merely a practical administrative problem, but without the full set of time records, your reporting is incomplete. That means the business decisions you make may not be based on the full extent of evidence that ought to be available to you. And therein lies the risk.

Wrapped up in the fourth protocol is the process by which you then extrapolate information from the data garnered. This is the point of the entire system.

It therefore requires management and stakeholder buy-in to the whole reason d’être for deploying a time management system in the first place.

Ordinarily, I find most enterprises opt for about 2-8 monthly standard reports which could be a mix of statements and progress reports as well a bit of forecasting. If stakeholders don’t know what information they want out of the system, how can Administrators build a data structure which will reflect their needs?

And this is why the fourth protocol is the most important.

CHANGE

Sometimes those needs change – perhaps the business has changed or the way a service is to be provided requires a re-structure of the organistations resources. If this is the case, then it is a good time to look again at your protocol. And don’t forget – we’re here to help and offer on-site business consultancy on this very matter.

If you’d like to discuss any of the above, e-mail me on carl@profess.co.uk or login to WordPress and post you comments here.

Andy’s 15 minutes

You’ve probably heard Northcote Parkinson’s maxim ‘work expands to fill the time available.’

That’s probably true, but can you imagine trying to get it all on your timesheet?

When it comes to timesheeting, the balance between accuracy and expediency is a delicate one.

You want the information you squeeze out of your data to be accurate and a true reflection of how much time a job has taken and thus, perhaps, how much it has cost (and even how much we will be charging, where relevant).

But you don’t want to spend your life filling in timesheets. Not when we’ve got real, productive work to do. And, as I’ve said before, filling in timesheets isn’t fun – of that we can be sure. Until they invent a way of getting a chocolate muffin to pop out of your CD-Rom tray each time you submit your timesheet it never will be.

So how can we balance the two opposing factions of accuracy vs expediency?

One way is the 15-minute rule.

This is what we do at our office. Most jobs take a minimum of 15 minutes, even if they really only take 5. What? I hear you say.

It’s simple. You may spend 5 minutes and 36 seconds on a telephone call to a customer or colleague, for example.

• You then spend a further 3 minutes noting the outcome of that call (perhaps you create a To Do in Time Manager, a Task in Outlook, or jot something down in a notepad or Post-It).
• Maybe you need to note the conversation against the Project in Time Manager using the Comment facility, or append something in your own Document Management system because of the conversation.
• You then spend another 15 seconds visually locating the Project & Activity combination from your Favourites and dragging it into the correct time slot on your timesheet.
• You then spend another 2-3 minutes getting back to what you were doing before the telephone call.
• But not before you spend a minute talking to the person who sits opposite you.
• Or, since you’ve been disturbed anyway, perhaps you check your e-mails.
• You get the idea…

We guess that, on average, we probably spend at least a minimum of 15 minutes per distinct Activity. That does not mean our timesheet is full of 15 minute chunks, but that we’ve taken the decision not to reduce the time any less than that. We don’t charge that accurately so why record time to any greater precision?

Now the example above doesn’t add up to 15 minutes, I hear the pedants among you say. And you’re right, it doesn’t. But how often do you record that water-cooler chat on your timesheet? Or that trip to the WC? Or that impromptu turn about some anecdote about your children? Or that breezy moment spent wistfully gazing out the window, which however brief, recharges your batteries for the remainder of the day? Or that charitable round of teas and coffees you made? Or that brief but necessary corridor discussion with your line manager about that impeded Project? Or that TIME spent showing a colleague how to do something clever in Excel? Or those moments spent un-jamming the stapler?

All these things make up the rest of the 15 minutes booked throughout the day. Even if the actual Productive task really was 5 minutes.

Conversely, if I spent 1hr39mins on a Crystal Report, I’ll book it as 1hr45mins – multiples of 15 minutes. This saves me time trying to think where to book the balance, when in fact, I probably didn’t start on the button of a 15minute block, often to the credit of the customer and – either way – I will probably have to do some wrap-up or admin tasks around it and other bits and pieces. So the idea works here too.

What is apparent though is that this is EASY.

And if it is EASY it is more likely to work and become second-nature.

Of course, the 15minute example might not apply for all disciplines (for example, a lot of legal users use 6-minute time units and Time Manager allows you to set for yourself both the default time unit block size and the number of blocks to assign against a drag-Favourite action, e.g. 2×15 minute blocks = half an hour etc.), but the point is don’t make time recording any more difficult than the precision by which business decisions will be made based on the output of that data.

So, we find 15 minutes works just fine. Andy Warhol thought so too – maybe in a different way, but he simplified his concept to make it workable.

Next time I’ll talk about refining how we record our time; that is, looking at our protocol for time recording – an often overlooked element of rolling-out a managed approach to time recording.

Better Personal Time Management is Enterprise-wide Time Management

Unless you are a single-person enterprise, the nature of structured organisations has the implicit benefit that if staff manage their own time more productivity then they are innately improving the performance of the team, the department, section and entire organisation.

Put simply: workers rarely exist in islands of solitude when it comes to contributing to the goals of the enterprise.

But time management is NOT about recording time.

Better time management does not arise magically from timesheets. For sure, better analysis can be derived from time data but there is no immediate benefit to storing this data – it needs to be used.

That’s what reports are for. But then what?

The fundamental principle of better time management is straightforward: do what’s important and, conversely, ignore what isn’t.

Time Manager helps you achieve this in many ways.

By making time recording easy.

In over a decade of working in this field I’ve still to meet anyone who enjoys entering timesheets.

But if we can reduce the pain by making it easy, then this increases the likelihood that…

i) staff will actually enter their timesheets (I still occasionally visit clients where some staff still refuse to enter timesheets, hiding behind accusations of Big Brother and believing they ‘have better things to do’ with their, um, time) and,

ii) there will be improvements in the accuracy of time record entries. And let’s face it, if it’s information we want to squeeze out of data, it may as well be accurate. Otherwise it’s time to pack-up and retreat to the potting shed.

If it is tiresome to enter timesheets, short-cuts to reduce the amount of entry will naturally occur – for example, I’ll say I spent on all morning on Project X when in reality I spent most of it on X but also half an hour on Y and a bit longer than that on Z. No. No. No!

(A quick nod to the performance optimisation white paper here – ask our Helpdesk if you’re after a copy).

Hence, we use drag & drop Favourites; right-drag Copy in week journal views; all-day event booking (by dragging to the day header section) and, in the future, there’s talk of recurring events.

By reducing re-keying

I’ve already mentioned the reduction of 50% of keying-in for appointment-based work (such as HR, consultative or social work) by linking your TM Diary to MS Outlook/Exchange calendar.

Even if you only use the TM Diary (and not the MS Calendar), this still reduces keying-in for all Diary events and, don’t forget, all Leave automatically appears on your Journal/Timesheet.

By promoting better task management

By this I mean:-

• Think-forwards. Project work into your journal before you do it. What will I do this afternoon or tomorrow or next week – there’s no reason why you can’t predict what you will be doing and how long it will take. Some people call this grand idea ‘planning’. Immediately you know whether you are going to overrun if things take longer or whether you can fit in extra work. Using the Week Journal view you can look and move Staff Events around easily to squeeze in that all too-familiar last-minute or urgent task and see the ramifications. And no re-keying – this is the same data you’ll be typing as a timesheet entry, so just adjust if necessary rather than key in again. Planning made easy.
• using the To Do’s as a tasklist scratch pad – focusing on the Important mini-tasks that make up the day

These are all just tips. If you choose to use them, don’t do so just once or twice and then revert back to the old ways – keep them alive: the greater benefit is in the prolonged use.

Not only that, but using something habitually means something becomes easy if not trivial and, thus, not a distraction.

Now timesheet entry is about managing time, not just feeding the mince machine of ‘WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’.

You can now also find us on LinkedIn

You can now find Pillar Software Ltd. on the professional networking site Linked In via a new group.

LinkedIn is a fantastic way to make connections. Our Group is intended to provide short updates on the commercial side of things at Pillar as well as a forum for existing Profess, Time Manager and Contract Manager users, our partners, fellow professionals and stakeholders to exchange ideas and contacts.

The Profess Community is a very large and influential one and we want to help foster cross-communication for like-minded disciplines and professionals.

So we invite you all to join and help us help you get the most out of our wider community.

Trouble getting Team Managers to Approve timesheets?

Chasing managers to manage. It’s a popular pastime.

To make things easier – with regard to Timesheet Approval across your entire database/structure – I’ve just finished writing a new report.

You can find it on the Hosted edition NOW under Reports folder Administration > ‘Complete Timesheets to be Approved’ – or for installed users, you will need to wait until the next build (which is due for release w/c 12th July or so, depending on our own testing).

This report is specifically designed to assist with the chase-up of Approval of Completed (Submitted) timesheets by Team Managers.

The report is organised by Year, then Team then individual Staff and includes all Managers listed for each team.

You will be able to filter results by Team or select one or more Staff records.

The number of outstanding Completed/Submitted timesheets still awaiting Approval is listed per Team and as a Grand Total on the last page of the report. Obviously, if you do NOT use Approval, all timesheets Completed/Submitted will appear on the output.

Profess & Contract Manager 5.0.024(4) available NOW!

The latest build of the Profess Office Costing and Profess Contract Manager applications are now available for download for all existing Users having taken out an Annual Maintenance & Support Agreement.

If you do not have access to our FTP downloads area, call our Helpdesk on 01531 821 199 and they will pass on the appropriate credentials.

Any customer having raised a log for work in this build will be automatically notified that their request has been actioned.

Most of the development in this new build is focused on Contract Manager which has seen continued enhancement and revision in some key areas to improve, in particular, the ease-of-use of the Cashflow arena.

We’re very pleased that a number of customers are pushing the module hard, ensuring its place as a best-practice approach to the effective financial management of Contracts.

Here’s the definitive list of items included (see the Release Notes for a description of each item).

ENHANCEMENTS & NEW FEATURES

• CERTIFICATE PAYMENTS: New User-Defined Gross Valuation vs Contract Sum checks
• PROFESS TARGETING & CASHFLOW: Next & Future Year now profiles on the related Cashflow Model
• SECURITY: Increased USER GROUP security option for permitting/restricting access to Profess Office Costing
• SECURITY: Send To button added to Users and User Group
• WORKS ORDER: new fields/data columns
• WORKS ORDER: ‘Standard Text’ facility
• WORKS REQUEST: Link with Finance Codes

FIXES

• CERTIFICATE PAYMENTS: Retention changes being overridden by Percentage – now rectified
• DOCUMENT MANAGER: Issue with Contract Data Tags rectified
• EVENT PLANNING: Event Start and Finish Dates not Consistent with Duration – rectified
• PAYMENTS: The View Order button now enabled in ‘View Only’ mode
• TARGETING: Staff Charge column, where displayed in Targeting plan layout is not bringing Charge value through – corrected

CHANGES

• CASHFLOW: Cashflow Finance Code could not be removed – now rectified
• CASHFLOW: Modelling – ‘Change’ button was active even when ‘forecast manually updated’ box was OFF
• CASHFLOW: Model Cashflow lines now protected
• CASHFLOW: Zero Cashflow lines were being removed on OK of Contract record
• CERT. PAYMENT: Edit or Delete of Cert Payments once Approved/Sent to Finance no longer permitted. Un-Approve required instead.
• CONTRACT MANAGER BROWSE: What do the various colours mean? Legend Button added
• CONTRACT/PROJECT BROWSE: Six additional columns now available (see Release Notes)
• PAYMENTS: Invoice & Certificate Cashflow Category drop-down content expanded
• WORKS ORDER: Field title change or visibility now available for Inspector, Inspector Type, Contract Type etc.
• WORKS REQUEST: Permit selection of Contractor + apply defaults

If you were unaware that we provide a comprehensive Contract Management solution and are potentially interested then e-mail me on carl@profess.co.uk

Priority

In the last few days I’ve read two articles about Priority and living. At work we manage each new build of Profess, Time Manager or Contract Manager under the software development regime of scrum.

Creating a product from a sprint all comes down to Priority and it is my job, as Production Manager, to try and represent our customer’s interests by creating appropriate priorities. To me this is entirely consistent with Systems Thinking.

So – having been convinced of the value of these processes at work – it is a pity, then, that many of us don’t apply the same tenacity to our private lives. Rather we muddle along consumed by the pressures of everyday life. But at work, we delegate, work in teams and partnerships. It’s clear the most successful people prioritize.

Making a priority is a decision. In his variable Guardian column ‘This Column Will Change Your Life‘, Oliver Burkeman recently included a superb spoiler to what looks like a self-help cash-in publication that is actually, in essence, really just one simple idea: priority.

By further reduction, here’s Burkeman’s summary:-

{the} “10-10-10 method for taking decisions is genuinely wise. When faced with any dilemma, she advises, ask yourself: what will the consequences be in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years? This process “surfaces our unconscious agendas”… though what it most ­obviously does is properly balance short- and long-term perspectives, avoiding both hedonistic impulsiveness and a grim-faced fixation with the future.”

This sounds like Motivational Interviewing to me; something my psychiatric nurse wife showed me. It is (I’m seriously paraphrasing here) a tool used to measure the motivation of addicts to really change their lives.

Burkeman offers more, however…

“Here are three more short cuts for taking ­everyday decisions:

1) 5-3-1: A dependable tactic for two people choosing a restaurant or movie: one person picks five options, the other narrows the field to three, then the first person selects one. This “has saved me and my girlfriend from starving to death on more than one occasion”, writes one commenter at ask.metafilter.com. Hint: couples should agree in advance to use this rule, so that “whether or not to use 5-3-1″ doesn’t become a ­dilemma itself.

2) Be a satisficer, not a maximiser: “Satisficing”, coined by the economist Herbert Simon, means not ­letting the best be the enemy of the good. But it’s more rigorous than that. Rather than trying to pick the best bed-and-breakfast, for example, decide first on the criteria that ­matter most – “near woodland”, “serves a great breakfast” and “in Wales”, perhaps – then select the first one you encounter that ticks all the boxes. This is far less exhausting, and may actually bring you closer to the “best”, by focusing your mind on what matters, rather than alluring advertising or other distractions.

3) The 37% Rule. This is for ­sequential choices, where each ­option must be accepted or rejected in turn – as in flat-hunting, where an option may vanish if you hesitate, or, say, choosing where to picnic while hiking (assuming you don’t want to retrace your steps). Provided you can estimate the total number of options – the number of flats you’re prepared to look at, the number of potential picnic spots – it’s a weird mathematical truth that your best bet is to reject the first 37% of them, then pick the first one that’s better than any of those first 37%. (If none is, pick the final one instead.) According to an article in Lecture Notes In ­Economics And Mathematical ­Systems, this can be applied to choosing a mate, too. But maybe that journal’s not the greatest place to look for dating tips.”

To counter this, here’s Everett Bogue on priority, although his new e-book seems, on the surface, at least, not apply to people with family. I’ll check it out – though the remarks about priority still apply, assuming we’re placing our offspring and dearest at the centre of our ethical circle which, to me, has to be the our ultimate voice of reason. With decisions comes responsibility and none are arguably more foremost in our lives than our immediate family.