How to integrate Structure and Tempo

[BMueller]

I want to view Billed Hours (from Tempo) alongside Sum Remaining Estimate (from Structure) so I can see the total hours for an issue. I don't want Sum Time Spent alongside Sum Remaining Estimate because I didn't necessarily bill for every hour recorded against an issue.

The only place that displays a sum of hours billed is in Tempo.

But that field is not visible in Structure.

Any advice?

Also, I would like to have Tempo group issues in the same way they are grouped in Structure. I have set up every project with a neat hierarchy using structure. However, when I look at the monthly logs in Tempo, the issues are no longer presented in the same hierarchy I set up in Structure. Is there any way to integrate the two plugins?

[Igor Sereda [ALM Works] · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I don't think I can offer any solution at this point, sorry!

From the Structure side, we're working on a possibility to extend the columns available in the Structure grid. Right now it's only JIRA fields and some special columns from Structure, but it will be possible to extend the available column set from other plugins. When it's done, it will be possible to add an extension that will show Billed Hours, retrieved from Tempo (if that's possible at all). It will then be possible to also display Sum of the Billed Hours too.

As for grouping issues in Tempo - this is something for the Tempo team. Structure already provides Java and REST APIs that allows other plugins to pull hierarchy information from Structure, and it is successfully used by multiple plugin vendors. We'll be happy to work with any vendor to help with integration and making plugins work together for the benefit of the end user.

Kind regards,
Igor

[David Niro]

Hello @BMueller , @Johannes Strodel & @Andrea Roßkamp [Communardo] ,

I have a great, slightly belated, update to share on this topic!!

It is now possible to add Work Logged from Timesheets as a column in Structure!  This is true for both Cloud and On Prem (Structure 8.3) hosted environments.

I hope this finds you well!

Best,
David

[Viðar Svansson [Tempo]]

Hi,

We are working towards making Tempo more modular so that third-party plugins can inject custom data or rendering into Tempo views. We are dogfooding this internally first so don't expect any solution until next year.

Billed hours could be solved with a JIRA Custom Field. Feel free to suggest that on our feature forum.

As for custom grouping, such as based on Structure hierarchy, we intent to make Tempo flexible enough so that you could speficy your own grouping implementation. That implementation could use the Structure API to get the results you want.

Best,
Viðar
Tempo Product Manager

[Johannes Strodel]

Hello together,

I was wondering if the Structure & Tempo cooperation is still a thing?
Concrete problem: We have to read Tempo's Work Attributes in Structure's "Work Logged" Column.

Explanation:
We recently started to use Jira and built our project and accounting management with Tempo and Structure.
We use Tempo Timesheets to track time and create Time Reports for our employees. Structure is used to map our complex project structure with custom issue types and links. Also we export a "billing view" with time_spent / month columns into our billing tool.
We currently struggle at a point where we want to include productivity factors. E.g.: Employee A is a trainee and can only be billed with 50% in project A and 75% in project B.
The worklog itself should still be the plain time the employee worked, since we use worklogs to track his time, too. The Tempo Attribute Field is coming in here handy. We would use Scriptrunner to fill a Tempo attribute field "billable_hours" with the employee factor calculated time.

Is there / will there be an option to use these attribute fields in Structure's "Work Logged" column type or is it possible to make them available?
Many thanks in advance and

Best Regards,

Johannes

[Stepan Kholodov _ALM Works_]

Hello Johannes,

Billable Hours attribute is not supported by the Work Logged column. But if you already have it in a custom field you can use it in the Formula column and create new values with it the same as with the Time Spent attribute.

If it doesn't give you the solution you're looking for and it is crucial to have Billed Hours specifically in the Work Logged column, can you please clarify - do you need to see the value only in a certain period of time? And do you need to see it by a certain user(in case several users can log Billed Hours in the same issue)?

Best regards,
Stepan Kholodov
ALM Works

[Johannes Strodel]

Hello Stepan,

thanks for the reply!
Tempo makes it possible to extend the Worklog Model with custom fields.
So this is not a Jira Custom Field (that I could currently choose in Structure), but a custom field on each WorkLog.

We want to have two pieces of information on each worklog: The plain time the employee worked and the (ScriptRunner) calculated billable_hours (depends on a user factor).
We want to use these billable_hours in our Structure (Invoice View 2020) to get the number of hours, that we can actually charge the customer with.

Therefore it would be necessary to not only sum the spent time of worklogs in a custom period (what structure currently does).
We would need to select the custom worklog field (billable_hours) and sum these times in the custom period.

This would add huge value for us since we wouldn't have to rework worklog hours manually before creating an invoice.

Many thanks and best regards,

Johannes

[Johannes Strodel]

Here some explaining pictures:

[Johannes Strodel]

[Stepan Kholodov _ALM Works_]

Thank you for sharing more details and for sending the screenshot. If I understand correctly, you need to be able not just seeing the Billing Hours attribute in an issue, but to see it both for a certain period of time and logged by a certain user. I will pass your request to the team and if there is any news about the implementation in the future, we will let you know here.

Please feel free to contact us directly at support.almworks.com if you ever need help with anything else.

Best regards,
Stepan Kholodov
ALM Works

[Johannes Strodel]

Hello Stepan,

thanks for the quick response. Filtering by user is currently not a priority for us.
But being able to see how many billable_hours were made in e.g. month Mai on each structure "level" (e.g. Epics sum billable_hours of connected Storys in month Mai) would be awesome and would save us from adding another tool/step into our billing workflow.

Thank you for forwarding our request!

Best Regards,

Johannes

[Andrea Roßkamp [Communardo]]

Hi Eugene,

Thanks for you (veeery) quick reply. Unfortunately, I won't be in Barcelona (my colleagues will) but I would appreciate a call the week after to discuss the use case. 

Looking forward to date and time proposals. 

Regards,

Andrea

[Andrea Roßkamp [Communardo]]

We are also using Structure and Tempo (Timesheets) in projects. 

We are looking for "Planned" time information in Structure columns so that we can show estimated, logged and planned time in one structure. 

[Eugene Sokhransky _ALM Works_]

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for the additional details. Will you by any chance be a the Summit in Barcelona? We'd be really interested to meet and discuss the whole solution - perhaps there are other integration points that could be interesting. 

If not - can we schedule a call the week after the summit?

Thanks,

Eugene

[René Tobies _demicon_]

@Igor Sereda [ALM Works]are there any news about this? It's still a highly requested feature. At the moment it's only possible to use the Account field from TEMPO.

Best

René

[Eugene Sokhransky _ALM Works_]

Hello René,

Eugene here from ALM Works. In the last few weeks we had a few calls with Tempo team and are currently figuring out what would be the most important integration points. There are a few defined ideas for integration with Tempo Budgets, but not with the rest of the tools. Do you have some specific use cases in mind?

Thank you,

Eugene

[Brian K]

Hey BMueller. Just was curious if you're still using these two plugins together?

We're testing out JIRA now and I hope to use these two plugs in for rolling up hours from tasks to show how long it took for stories, then roll up to requirements.... and then use tempo to bill to the right project code.

I plan on testing it soon, but wanted to see what your thoughts are. Thanks!