When logging work the "Time Spent" field is required. How do I make it not required

[Sam Newman]

I don't need time spent to be tracked for most tasks, but I do want the remaining time estimate updated every day. When on the Log Work screen the Time Spent field is required. Is there a way to make it not require input?

Thanks.

[Valentijn Scholten · Accepted solution]

Would it be possible in your setup to use 'Edit' on the issue and modify the remaining estimate field?

[Sam Newman]

Not in my case. The problem is not that the field has the wrong value. It's just an inconvenience to my team to enter in a value when we don't use it.

[Valentijn Scholten]

What is the use case you are using the 'log work' dialogue for?

If you don't enter 'Time spent', there's no point in using the work log?

It sounds like you just want to update the 'Remaining Estimate', which can be done via editting the 'Remaining Estimate' field of the issue.

[Sam Newman]

Ok, I can do that from the Work view on the rapidboard. Is that a recent change? I started this thread a while ago and can't remember what this did back then.

The only problem I see is that you can't edit the Remaining field for the full issue view, only in the Work view of the rapid board or by Editing. this is probably good enough though thanks.

[Valentijn Scholten]

In my JIRA I can also edit the field in the 'normal' edit issue view, so you might be able to put the timetracking fields on that screen via JIRA administration.

[Elliot Long]

I have run into the same issue. While i'm working on issues, i regularly log work on various issues. When it's time to mark them as Done, it asks me for my time spent - If i've already logged work against the issue, i shouldn't be required to add more time spent on the issue.

[Steven F Behnke]

This would be because the workflow your Administrator has set up has a validator requiring timespent > 0 to be logged at that moment, not due to any Atlassian configuration.

[Mauro Badii]

Hi Sam,

The purpose of the Log Work feature is to log time and do automatic calculations on the work done and time spent. There is no way of removing the required condition for the field Time Spent. The only workaround is to just add 0 when doing changes.

The Remaining Time Estimate will not be modified if no work is logged unless you manually change it. The idea behind it is to track work time and not real time.

I hope that clarifies. Cheers!

[Sam Newman]

Hello Mauro,

We cannot add a 0 to the Time Spent field. It has to be 1 minute or more, else it gives an error. But, even if we could, it would just be a hack to just leaving it blank.

I guess my real issue is that there is no way to update the remaining estimate without adding some value to time spent. I can only update the Original Estimate. This is bad for two reasons; first, for our workflow we don't care about time spent, only time remaining. Adding 0 ot 1 to this field is annoying and unnecessary. Second, time estimates change due to outside forces; some new information, a requirement changes, etc. that are not related to any actual work being done.

What is the reccomended way to deal with these types of changes to Time Remaining once the sprint has begun?

Thanks,

Sam

[Ferrie Bank]

Hi Mauro, I came here after a Google search on the same problem. Allowing Time Spent to be optional would be a welcome feature. Even allowing 0 would be OK, but it actually does not accept that. Best regards, Ferrie

[Sam Newman]

I'm marking this as answered so Atlassian stops sending me emails about it. I am not satisfied with the answer though, which is essentially "no you can't". I understand the purpose of the field, but I see no reason we can't change it from being required.

[Andrew Fisher]

We hit this problem also, and per previous comments, Jira doesn't support Mauro's suggested workaround. We'd have been quite happy with either solution (i.e. leaving field blank, or entering 0), but we're stuck as of right now. Any other suggestions (or workarounds)?

Thanks

[Isaac_nl]

What's the use case for using the Log Work window if you don't want to log any work/0 hours?

[Chris Dury]

Agreeing with the above people, please add the abilit to log "0" hours for an issue. Ironically, I can now log the time spent closing an obsolete issue to the 30 minutes I've wasted trying to configure the field to be not required.

[Elliot Long]

For my part, i can't think of a situation either where you'd want to use the "Log Work" dialog but not log any time - however, this same field also comes up in the "Close Issue" dialog, which i regularly need to do without logging any time. I've taken to simply adding "1m" of work, but this is hacky at best...

[Chris Dury]

The particular use case I have is obsolete issues or issues which we're not going to do any work (Won't Fix). I'd like to keep the traceability that the issue existed, was reviewed and decided to be obsolete so Deleting is not an option.

[Valentijn Scholten]

I assume you already know that you can remove the field from the 'Close' screen, but you don't want that because you want to be able to still log hours spent on the close issue screen?

[Elliot Long]

I wasn't aware of that, no, but it's also somethign i wouldn't want to do. The reason i often need to put in 0 hours is because usually a fix requires source code changes and i use commit log directives to log the work. However, if it was an issue that didn't require source code changes, i'd still need to log work through this dialog.

[Dane Kantner]

'What's the use case for using the Log Work window if you don't want to log any work/0 hours?'

The actual root of my issue for needing this is there is no way to split the comment log within JIRA to show actual human comments vs. those added via the API from say our build server.  SO, in short I want a comment log just for "dev automation" really; the work log is a better place to clutter up with 0 minute entries from the build server than the comment log which is primarily between PMs/Devs/Ops/etc. and itself is busy in its own right.  On the other hand, the work log if used will be used primarily to log time and though it's good to see the breakdown, maybe for later analysis, at EOD the total calculations are the main interest there anyway. 

Additionally, compared to our old Bugzilla system, we find the Fisheye method of tracking actual file commits in a nice list to be extremely convoluted and are considering just adding explicit post-commit comments with the details of the file.

So, alternatively to adding entries to the worklog with a 0 time, It would be really great if there were just a way to add additional comment logs as their own tabs. It doesn't seem like that complex of an addition.

[Ryan Gamo]

you can go to the "Work Log" tab under Activity section of the issues where you can edit/delete the work log. There, you have your options not to enter time spent.

[Sam Newman]

Hello Mauro,

We cannot add a 0 to the Time Spent field. It has to be 1 minute or more, else it gives an error. But, even if we could, it would just be a hack to just leaving it blank.

I guess my real issue is that there is no way to update the remaining estimate without adding some value to time spent. I can only update the Original Estimate. This is bad for two reasons; first, for our workflow we don't care about time spent, only time remaining. Adding 0 ot 1 to this field is annoying and unnecessary. Second, time estimates change due to outside forces; some new information, a requirement changes, etc. that are not related to any actual work being done.

What is the reccomended way to deal with these types of changes to Time Remaining once the sprint has begun?

Thanks,

Sam