Is it possible to have a Timesheet report that shows the time spent based on worklogComment string?

[paul_oiegas]

Hi everyone,

For one of my teams that receives very dynamic requests with a short time of completion, I have a setup where I have a general task for that type of requests, with no estimated time. All the work done on that type of requests is logged on it with time spent accompanied by a comment in the form of "Worked on [QA-2029] bla bla bla"

I want to extract the time spent on a specific request from that task based on the work log comment, especially the number of the request.
For that, I'm using:
- Team Reports > Timesheet
- with a date range
- for additional fields, I'm adding "Work Description" so I can make sure I'm seeing the correct comments
- for JQL Issue FIlter I'm using worklogComment ~ "QA-2029"

Sadly, the results do not contain only work log comments that contain the text QA-2029, it kind of shows me everything that was logged in the data range.
I've also tried using the worklogComment ~ "\"QA-2029\"" JQL to force the exact wording and I got the same results.
I've tried using just "2029" and I get no results. Adding the hyphen or minus sign starts again to show a lot of results including the ones that I need.
I've tried other syntaxes, or searching for the feature name that is usually also included, but still mixed results, not the exact work log comments that I needed.

Is this something that can be done, or I'm losing my time? If it's possible, what am I not using right?

[Svitlana Samotis _Reliex_]

Hi Paul,

I read your query and comments about the challenges you're facing with Jira's work log comments. I think ActivityTimeline, an add-on for Resource Planning and Time Tracking, could be the solution you're looking for.

ActivityTimeline allows you to group work logs by comments in both the Timeline and Detailed Timesheet reports.

This way, you can easily categorize and analyze time spent on specific requests like "QA-2029" without getting lost in a sea of unrelated work logs.

You'll also have the flexibility to see both the total time spent by comments and the individual work logs for more granular insights. And, if you ever need to dive deeper into the data, you can export these reports to Excel for further analysis.

Feel free to start a free trial and check it out for yourself. 

Regards, 

Svitlana, ActivityTimeline team 

[Wojciech Wardaszko]

Hi @paul_oiegas

Welcome to the Community!

As others have said, timesheet reporting is not provided by native Jira, and what you are looking for can (at least for now) only be achieved with an add-on.

I work for HeroCoders, a team behind Clockwork Free. I believe its Timesheet view would suit your needs perfectly. Here's what it looks like:

With this, you can easily choose your time range, filtering, and breakdown options to see the data you need within seconds.

If you'd like a live demo or to learn more, feel free to reach out to us via our service portal or just take a look at our documentation.

Cheers!

[paul_oiegas]

Thanks, and thanks for the suggestion! Sadly, I'm not sure it would help in my case.
Let me shed some light to understand why. We are working with 2 different Jira instances, one internal and one from the client. The internal one is for logging daily worked time, while client Jira holds the actual tasks on which the team members are working and in which we are not logging any worked hours.

The internal Jira does not have a clone of the client tasks but only general tasks that are named based on a specific area of the project. Each team member logs time on the area task on which they worked, by mentioning the client task on which they have worked.

That's why I need to only show the hours based on a specific word from the work log comment, cause that comment will contain the correspondent task from client Jira on that area.

[Wojciech Wardaszko]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for sharing your business case, it makes perfect sense.

In this case, I could recommend going for Clockwork Pro and using the custom worklog attributes instead of the comments to store which issue was worked on.

This way you would be able to use that attribute as a filter/breakdown parameter in a timesheet like the one I posted above.

Clockwork Pro currently supports three types of custom attributes:

• Checkboxes, for example to track whether the time logged was billable or not),
• Single select lists, for example to indicate what type of work was done or for which client, and I believe this would work nicely in your case - you could store the client's issue key in an attribute of this type
• multiple select lists - for example, to indicate what components were worked on.

I hope you find this interesting.

Cheers!

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@paul_oiegas -

Can you clarify what do you mean by "Timesheet Report"?  Are you referring to a third party add-on that provide you with the report?

On the JQL side, there is a field "Time Spent" where you can include in your JQL results as a column.  You can also use "timespent" in your JQL.  It is not a recommended to search comments in general in your JQL setup.

Hope this helps.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Technology Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[paul_oiegas]

Hi Joseph! No, I'm not using any third-party add-ons as far as I know.
In Jira Cloud, you select from your project from the left sidebar Reports > Other > Team Reports, and when you are redirected to Team Reports, you select "Timesheet" from the dropdown on the top left.

Thanks for your suggestions, however, I don't think "timeSpent" syntax would help in my case. As far as I understand it, you can only check on which issues a specific amount of time was logged.

In my case, is one single task that contains multiple work logs each day with time spent on random request numbers. The task itself is only closed after 6 months, so I need a syntax that works with the Timesheet report, and which would search in the worklog comments and show just the comments that have a specific request ID number in the text. The timesheet report will automatically add up the logged time corresponding to each comment afterward.

Right now, I open the task and use "ctrl+f" in the "work log" tab to search for the specific request number and add up the hours logged manually. Sometimes that's a pain when you have a lot of separate logs for the same request, so I want to automate it somehow.

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@paul_oiegas -

The out of the box, there is no Time Spent report available.  Thus, I believe your report is provided via a third party add-on.

Please check with your system admin to determine if there is an add-on installed in your system.

Best, Joseph 

[paul_oiegas]

You are correct! I've discussed it with our Jira admin, and it is indeed an add-on/plugin named Tempo Base.

I've dug a bit on the internet, and I think I have found why the "worklogComment" syntax is not properly working with the Tempo Timesheet report. There is a suggestion logged (AUTO-281) that mentions that "worklog.comment" returns "time-tracking" instead of the actual comment. 

Unless there's an alternative, which I doubt, I think I'm stuck...

Thanks for helping me to find the root cause! At least I won't lose any more time to try and figure out a workaround.