Managing time tracking for users located in different timezones logging work in JIRA

Naren
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April 3, 2013

We are planning to go for a time-tracking plugin for fetching the reports on work logged.

1. So how JIRA handles time tracking if there are users located in different timezones and they are logging their local time as opposed to the JIRA server located in different timezone. How does it affects the time tracking report? Does it skews the time and date?

2. Is there any workaround / plugins for such scenario.

Would appreciate if anyone can share more information on this!!

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Viðar Svansson [Tempo]
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April 3, 2013

Hi Naren,

1. JIRA handles submited datetime by the user as it was a timestamp. This means that JIRA converts the user input into server time and stores it that way. When you then view worklogs in JIRA, the datetime is converted to your local time. This can be very confusing as it can appear that the user was working in the middle of the night.

2. I can answer this for the Tempo plugin. Tempo treats user submitted datetime as it was his local time and stores it unchanged. Other users viewing the worklogs in Tempo will also see the same time as the user entered. The reports also treat every datetime as the same. This makes it easy to calculate reports based on a month, even though the server is in different timezone. If you use this as bases for billing or payroll, then the datetime is always correct for a given period regardless of timezone differences. A work done on Monday at 10:00 is work done on Monday at 10:00 no matter how you look at it. At detailed explanation is available on our site.

Best,
Viðar

Naren
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April 3, 2013

Hi Viðar,

Thanks a lot for this very useful information. As this is what I was looking for. I am going to use this time tracking for billing and payroll purposes. I'll have a look a the Tempo Plugin.

Alsoo will let you know in case of any further queries. :)

Thanks.

Viðar Svansson [Tempo]
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April 3, 2013

Great to hear :-)

Feel free to post new questions on this site. We try to answer every question with the tag "tempo" on this site. You can also go over to our site for documentation and support.

Cheers,
Viðar

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