Introduction to Time Management

In TeemWork, Time Management has multiple goals. It allows users to enter their time worked on virtual Time Sheets, plan their daily activities using the Agenda, and see what their supervisors has scheduled for them. 

This introduction explains the basic concepts behind Time Management. Important keywords are underlined.

As mentioned before, with Time Management, users have to enter their time worked on Time Sheets. For example, Joe White could enter that he worked on Project Y from 10 o'clock to 12, and that he mopped the floor from 1 o'clock to 4 last Tuesday. 

In this example, 'mopping the floor' and 'working on Project Y' are called Activities. There may be dozens of different Activities in a typical team, but a user can only work on Activities that his supervisor has chosen for him.  

Since there can be many different Activities to supervise, they are categorized by Activity Type. In small teams, the Administrators could manage all the Activities themselves, but in larger teams, it is much easier for them to delegate this task to others. Every Activity Type should have one or more supervisors, who is responsible for assigning specific Activities to the participating users of the Activity Type.

When the week ends, the user has to sign his Time Sheet. Signed Time Sheets cannot be modified, unless they are 'unsigned' by his supervisor, when he thinks that there is an error that should be corrected by the user. If there is no error, the supervisor should approve the Time Sheet.

Why use Time Sheets?

Time Sheets allow you to obtain various statistics on the work of your employees, such as:

• the number of work hours of an employee for any given day

• the total time worked on any Activity

• an employee's vacation time, sick time, formation time, and overtime

What you need to know before using Time Management in your team

Configuring Time Management is not very long, but it takes some information. If you are a Team Administrator and you intend to do it, here is what you need beforehand:

• Time Management users must be TeemWork users   

If you haven't already added to your team the people who will enter their time worked, you have to add them. If, for some reasons, one or more employees can't use a computer to enter their time worked, you  could designate somebody to do it for them. This person must have the right to approve their Time Sheets. 

• Make a list of all the Activities of your team

Activities are what the team members do, such as 'Work on Project X', 'Cleaning in the warehouse' or 'Talking with clients'. You can be as precise as you want; if you want to know exactly what the employees are doing, use descriptive names. If it is not important, you can use generic names like 'Office Work'.

It doesn't matter if this list is not complete; you can always add more Activities later

• Regroup similar Activities and select one or more supervisors for each group

These groups are called 'Activity Types'. Some examples are: 'Marketing', 'Administration', and 'Human Resources'.

The supervisor(s) will be responsible for choosing the specific Activities that the users can do. He can also add new Activities to the Activity Types that he has access to. In fact, Administrators don't have to make a complete list of Activities; they could simply create the Activity Types, and delegate the Activity creation to the supervisors. 

• Select the participants of every Activity Type

The supervisor of an Activity Type only supervises its participants. The supervisor of the 'Human Resources' Activity Type couldn't allow a participant of the 'Marketing' Activity Type to do an Activity like 'Interview Candidates'.

Here is what a short Activity list could look like. Each Activity Type has a few participants, and the supervisors are underlined:

In this team, the Administrator has chosen to be a supervisor for the Activities, but in practice, he only supervises 'Field Work' and leaves 'Farm administration' and 'Equipment maintenance' to Dilbert and George.  

As a supervisor, George could give Elmer the right to do the 'Tractor' Activity, but deny him the right to do the 'Monthly verification'.  

Once you have a good idea of the structure of the Activities in your team, you are now ready to setup TeemWork.

Time Sheets

As mentioned above, in TeemWork, users enter their time worked on Time Sheets.

Here is a Time Sheet for Lisa Brown, on January eighth, 2001. On that day, she worked for 7h30 on various tasks. This is detailed in the upper part of the window. The Activities that she is allowed to do are displayed in the bottom left corner.

At the end of the week, Lisa signs her Time Sheet. Then, some user responsible for her (usually, her supervisor) will Approve it. Administrators can choose who can Approve time sheets in the Time Management tab.

Click here to learn more about Time Sheets.

Time Spent on Activities

One of the benefits of using Time Sheets is that TeemWork automatically maintains detailed statistics about the time worked by the team members.

You can view these statistics in the 'Time Spent on Activities' tab of the 'List of all Activites' window.

Standard Activities and Summaries

There are eight Activities that exist 'by default'. You don't have to create them because they already exist in every team. They are in the 'Administration' Activity Type:

1. Office Work

2. Training Received

3. Holiday

4. Vacation

5. Sick Time

6. Absent with Pay

7. Absent without Pay

8. Absent - Overtime Reclaimed

These Activities have special meaning; for example, TeemWork won't count the time worked for the Activity 'Absent without Pay' on the Time Sheets.

Most companies have to keep tabs to record how much vacation time every employee has taken each year. TeemWork can replace these tabs by automatically counting the time spent on 'Vacation', 'Sickness', 'Formation' and 'Overtime'.

Every time an employee goes on vacation, he should enter the Activity 'Vacation' on his Time Sheet. The 'Vacation' Activity is not very different from other Activities, except that it is not counted in the total number of hours of the week. However, every minute spent on vacation is deduced from the user's Summary:

In this case, the user responsible for Larry, Katherine Harris, has allotted him 80 hours of vacation time at the beginning of the year. However, Larry has taken 87h30 of vacation, so he has taken more vacation than he should have. 

Larry can see his own Summary and know how much vacation time he has left, but he cannot add more time himself. Only Katherine can do so. 

Formation and Sickness are treated in the same way as Vacations. They both have an associated special Activity. 

Overtime is treated slightly differently. When someone works overtime, he has to check the 'Overtime' checkbox on his Time Sheet. The time will be added to the Overtime summary. Click here for more information. 

The Schedule and the Agenda

In TeemWork, an employee's supervisor can prepare and view his Schedule, using the Agenda. The employee can view, but not modify it. However, he also has a 'Personal Agenda', which he can use to take notes about what he has to do.

The blue lines are what the Katherine's supervisor have scheduled for her. The gray ones are what Katherine has planned herself in her personal Agenda.

Supervisors can use the Schedule window to easily view the planned Activities:

In the preceding slide, every rectangle represents an Activity scheduled for a user. Every Activity has an associated color.

The Schedule is great to detect conflicts in the planning. In our example, user Jack Bird has a problem on Monday, because he has three scheduled Activities at the same time (the three overlapping rectangles at the left of the schedule).

The Schedule could also be used to make sure that there is always a technician available for technical support.

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