Force Assignee to Start/Stop Timer to Log Work Time

Question

I'd like to be able to collect very granular metrics, and possibly even prevent Assignee's from working on more than one Issue at a time. I know that I could force time to be logged using a Screen and a Validator between Transitions, but I'd like something that looks like:

* Assignee Opens a newly assigned Issue
* Assignee Triages and Transitions to "In Progress"
* Assignee prompted to press Start (or time automatically starts)
* Assignee is locked into this ticket and cannot Edit any other until status is Closed/Blocked/Not in Progress

I'm assuming that 4 is nearly impossible but suggestions are very welcome. I'd prefer to do this with native functionality and can program external REST API workers if absolutely required but I'd like to make something maintainable by someone other than myself...

Adaeze_Jude_HEROCODERS · Answer

Hello @Dan Rico

To solve the Issue with Time Tracking on multiple Issues, Clockwork Automated Time Tracking provides a solution for this.

You can start by trying out the Free version here.

In Clockwork, you can track time automatically.

When an Issue Transitions to active status as you have mentioned above "In progress", the tiimer starts for the current assignee. To prevent that assignee from logging time on another ticket, Clockwork provides you with the functionality to stop a Timer when another timer is started. This means that the user would not be able to track time on two tickets at the same time.

You can control this from clockwork configuration, as shown:

For the Time Tracking mode, you should select Manual + Automatic, to enable users to only use Automatic timers on Issues.

Regarding limiting users from working on more than one ticket for Issues, you can try to use security levels to control when a user can view an issue.

To use Clockwork to control Time Tracking, I would be happy to discuss more with you, please reach out here.

Dan Rico · Answer

Too many people, too many constantly-changing requirements, and the types of requests are dynamic. Prioritization is a problem, and potentially limiting people to only the highest priority work AND tracking work are two issues we're working on.

I'm personally most interested in automatic time tracking, but that could be messy if people can log time to multiple issues at once.

Peter Van de Voorde · Answer

Hey @Dan Rico ,

I don't know how you could do this, but I would love to better understand why you would want to force people to work on a single issue in the first place? Wouldn't it be better to work on a process together with your team instead of trying to force it using a tool?

Cheers,
Peter