How to create custom time tracking fields in Jira?

[Hizkeel Khan]

Hi,

I have a scenario where I have to create multiple custom fields:

1. Time Estimate for Developers.

2. Time Spent by Developers. 

3. Time Estimate for QA 

4. Time Spent by QA 

First of all, I need to create these 4 custom fields as I want to track time for developers and QA separately. Is is possible in Jira?

Secondly, when these fields are created, I want to see in the report how much time is spent collectively and individually on each ticket. 

Purpose is to see if the time exceeds the original estimates given by developers? Please let me know if someone has done it or help me out here. 

This is really important for me. 

[Valeriia_Havrylenko_SaaSJet]

Hi  @Hizkeel Khan 👋

1. You can create custom fields in Jira without any add-ons. 

For this follow this steps:

1. Select > Issues.
2. Under FIELDS, select Custom fields.
3. Click Create custom field. Make sure to select All to view the available field options.
4. Select the type of field you want to create and click Next. See a list and descriptions for the available custom field types in company-managed projects.
5. Add the details for your field.
   The name you select appears as the custom field's title wherever the field appears. The description appears below the field when creating and editing issues, but not when browsing issues.
6. When you have entered the field details, select Create.
7. Add the new custom field to one or multiple screens by ticking the corresponding box and click Update.

2. You can't create report how much time is spent collectively and individually on each ticket without add-ons.

For this, i guess you can try Time in Status.

The primary purpose is to help teams gather valuable data about the lifecycle of your issues in Jira. Add-on allows you to measure and visualize the time spent in each status, such as "Open," "In Progress," "In Review," and "Closed," and provide 7 types of reports to help you identify areas for improvement. But also with our add-on and reports you easily can have information for example "how much time was spent on support versus how much time was spent on product features".

One of the helpful report for you can be The Assignee time report. Report shows the total time a particular assignee has been working on the issue. That’s why it’s especially useful for identifying who is responsible for the workflow delays.  It shows which assignee has been solving the task longer than it might be necessary. 
How it works:

For report how much time is spent collectively on each ticket we have User Groups.

For this you need to

• add user group
• write down a name to your custom column
• add necessary users to a group.

As a result, you'll get one column with summed data from your previously selected columns.

Add-on has a 30-day free trial version and free up to 10 users. 
Please, let me know if you have any questions

Hope it helps 😌

[Emre Toptancı _OBSS_]

Hello @Hizkeel Khan ,

For development and QA time estimation, your best bet would be to look at the past performance of your teams. To do that, Development and QA stages should be represented with separate status(es) in your workflow. After that you can get reports showing how much time your team spent on those statuses in the past and make future estimations based on that.

Our team at OBSS built Time in Status exactly for this. It is available for Jira Server, Cloud, and Data Center.  

Time in Status mainly allows you to see how much time each issue spent on each status or each assignee. 

   

You can combine the time for multiple statuses to get metrics like Issue Age, Cycle Time, Lead Time, Resolution Time etc. 

For all numeric report types, you can calculate averages and sums of those durations grouped by the issue fields you select. For example total in-progress time per customer or average resolution time per sprint, week, month, issuetype, request type, etc. The ability to group by parts of dates (year, month, week, day, hour) or sprints is particularly useful here since it allows you to compare different time periods or see the trend. 

The app calculates its reports using already existing Jira issue histories so when you install the app, you don't need to add anything to your issue workflows and you can get reports on your past issues as well. It supports both Company Managed and Team Managed projects for Jira Cloud.

Time in Status reports can be accessed through its own reporting page, dashboard gadgets, and issue view screen tabs. All these options can provide both calculated data tables and charts.

   

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211756/

EmreT

[Mehmet A _Bloompeak_]

Hi @Hizkeel Khan

If you prefer to use a marketplace app, you can try Status Time Reports app developed by our team. It mainly provides reports and gadgets based on how much time passed in each status.

Here is the online demo link, you can see it in action and try without installing the app. For your case, you can have a look at Time in Status for Each Issue and Time in Assignee reports as examples. For further details, please see Status Time Reports How to Videos.

• This app has a dynamic status grouping feature so that you can generate various valuable reports as time in status, time in assignee, status entry dates and status counts, cycle time and lead time, average/sum reports by any field(e.g. average in progress time by project, average cycle time by issue creation month).

• You can search issues by Project, Issue Type, Status, Assignee, Issue Creation/Resolution Date(and any other Date field) and JQL Query.
• Status durations are calculated according to the working calendar you define. Once you enter your working calendar into the app, it takes your working schedule into account too. That is, "In Progress" time of an issue opened on Friday at 5 PM and closed on Monday at 9 AM, will be a few hours rather than 3 days.
• You can set different duration formats.
• You can export reports in CSV file format and open them in MS Excel.
• You can also add this app as a gadget to your Jira dashboards and reach “Status Time” from Issue Detail page.
• You can enable/disable access to Status Time reports&gadgets and Issue Detail page per project, users, groups or project role.

If you are looking for a completely free solution, you can try the limited version Status Time Free.

Hope it helps.

[Dániel Ballabás - catworkx]

Hi @Hizkeel Khan 

this is Daniel from one of the many Time Tracking app vendors on the Atlassian Marketplace. If you are comfortable with a paid third-party plugin (although with the below 10 user count free Jira, we are also free) - I'd like to highlight the tags feature of our app, Timetracker.

In your case, you could create custom tags in the app to differentiate QA and Dev worklogs to track the time spent by the two teams. 

As for having two types of estimations, I believe you would have to use subtasks for the two teams - (instead of tags, you can also use them for differentiating the two teams) you can then roll up the estimations and the worklogs in our reports.

Daniel

[Hizkeel Khan]

It cannot be done using Jira? Do we have to install the 3rd party apps?

[Dániel Ballabás - catworkx]

It can be done, but I think it's more convenient with an app - plus maybe you'll find other benefits of apps as well. If you want to stay on native Jira, you'll have to do workarounds: 

- just keep using separate issues for the QA and the Dev teams for everything, then you can use the Jira native Estimation and Time tracking fields. - without an app, you cannot add any metadata to worklogs.

- alternatively, you can create the custom fields for the 2 separate estimations, and probably with Automations, you should be able to separate worklogs on the Issue (and to count them against the Estimations), but honestly, setting it up would be above my Automation skills.