How to Automate Time Logging Without Affecting Technician Reporting Integrity

[krzysztof_franczak]

Hi everyone,
I'm currently dealing with a challenge and would appreciate any advice.

We provide Managed Services for multiple clients. As you know, many tasks can be automated and run in the background thanks to tools and economies of scale. However, we still need to report back to clients based on pre-agreed time allocations. For example, we might contract with a client for 1 hour of IT environment monitoring per week. In practice, the process is fully automated, and if no alerts are raised, the technician may spend only 5 minutes—or even zero—just to confirm everything is working fine.
Despite that, we still need to report the full 1 hour in our service report.

Currently, I’m handling this via a Jira Work Management automation:
When a task is closed, it checks if the Time Logged is less than the Time Estimated. If so, it automatically logs the missing time under the user who closed the ticket.

This works for now, but it has a significant drawback:

1. Time is logged under the technician's name, which distorts reports about their actual daily activity and time usage.

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My questions are:

• Is there a better way to handle this time logging, ideally without impacting individual users’ worklogs?

• How can I report logged time to the client in this kind of scenario in a clean and transparent way?

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Additional challenge:

I'd also like to anonymize the names in worklog reports, replacing them with job roles like “admin” or “service desk”.
In such a case, I imagine time could be logged under a technical user like "Automation for Jira", but in the final report I could still reference the actual technician or display a job title instead of a name.

The challenge is: how to implement this technically?
Do you have any recommendations or proven approaches?

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @krzysztof_franczak 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

1. Time is logged under the technician's name, which distorts reports about their actual daily activity and time usage.

• Is there a better way to handle this time logging, ideally without impacting individual users’ worklogs?

For the rule that logs time, what have you specified as the Rule Actor? The time should be logged as work done by the user specified as the Rule Actor. If you don't want the time logged as the technician, then you can set the Rule Actor to "Automation for Jira". Then the logged time will not impact the technician's logged time.

• How can I report logged time to the client in this kind of scenario in a clean and transparent way?

How are you currently generating reports for the client about time worked for them?

I'd also like to anonymize the names in worklog reports, replacing them with job roles like “admin” or “service desk”.
In such a case, I imagine time could be logged under a technical user like "Automation for Jira", but in the final report I could still reference the actual technician or display a job title instead of a name.

Jira does not provide that sort of sophisticated time reporting natively. Are you willing to consider acquisition of a third party app to achieve your requirements?

[krzysztof_franczak]

Thank you for your response, Trudy!

For the rule that logs time, what have you specified as the Rule Actor? The time should be logged as work done by the user specified as the Rule Actor. If you don't want the time logged as the technician, then you can set the Rule Actor to "Automation for Jira". Then the logged time will not impact the technician's logged time.

In the current setup, the rule that logs time is configured to use the “User who triggered the event” as the actor. This means that when an agent transitions a task, the worklog is automatically recorded under their name.

I’m aware that I could change the Rule Actor to “Automation for Jira” to avoid impacting individual worklogs, but before doing that, I want to ensure I have a reliable reporting solution in place — one that still clearly reflects which technician performed the work, even if the time itself is logged under a technical user.

How are you currently generating reports for clients about the time worked for them?

Currently, I’m exporting data from the Worklogs time tracking app – it’s my main reporting source.

Jira does not provide that sort of sophisticated time reporting natively. Are you willing to consider acquisition of a third party app to achieve your requirements?

 As for third-party tools, I’ve tested several solutions like "Time Tracker" and "Timesheet", but unfortunately, none of them met our advanced reporting requirements — particularly when it comes to flexibility, role-based anonymization, and grouping worklogs by technician.

Would you happen to know of any tools that could better support these needs, or could you suggest an alternative approach for implementing a clean and scalable solution?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @krzysztof_franczak 

Let us walk through a specific example.

ABC-1 has a Time Logged value of 3 hours.

Technician 1 logs 15 minutes for the time spent starting an automated task to handle this issue.

The automated task completes, and Technician 2 logs 15 minutes of time when they review the logs to confirm the task completed successfully

Technician 2 closes the task.

The Automation Rule logs 2 hours and 30 minutes of time.

In the report you want to generate, ideally how would that data be reported?

[krzysztof_franczak]

Thanks, Trudy,

In the report I want to generate, my goal is to present a clear breakdown of effort per role, while still reflecting the full scope of work, including what was performed via automation.

Here’s how I’d ideally want the report to look:

Role, Time Logged
Service Desk Agent, 3h

Even if the time is technically logged under “Automation for Jira”, that’s completely fine - as long as the report attributes that time to the correct role, based on who was assigned to the issue at the moment the automation was triggered.

Additionally, in cases where multiple people with different roles (e.g., Service Desk Agent and Admin) contribute to the same ticket, I’d want the report to break down the time per role, like this:

Role, Time Logged
Service Desk Agent, 45m
Admin, 2h 15m

For client-facing reports, it’s important that:

Automation-related entries are grouped under the appropriate role, not shown as coming from a technical/system user.

Individual usernames are anonymized, and only functional roles (like “Service Desk Agent”, “Admin”, etc.) are visible.

The total time reflects both manual and automated contributions, but in a way that is transparent and understandable to the client.

Currently, I’m using the Worklogs app as my main reporting tool, but it doesn’t seem to support this level of flexibility, especially around role-based aggregation, automation attribution, and report anonymization.

Do you know of any tools or reporting approaches that would support this type of scenario?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @krzysztof_franczak 

Thank you for that additional information.

I don't specifically know of a tool that can generate the reports you describe because I have not had to work with the reporting requirements you describe.

I wonder if one of the tools that incorporates "billing" features might have features like you describe. Have you looked at this one?

Timesheets by Tempo - Jira Time Tracking 

[krzysztof_franczak]

Hi @Trudy Claspill

Thx for help. 

No, I didn't, mostly due to the potential cost of Timesheets - it is costly. 
However, I plan to check that shortly. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Good luck in your search!

If you find a solution it would be great if you post back here what you find. I'm sure that other community members would be interested in the solution.