How do you break projects into parts in Tempo?

[Nathan Funk]

We are running some large projects that need to be broken down into parts for accounting purposes. For example, we have one project which includes the development of four training courses. Each course needs to have its labour costs tracked separately. But because there is significant overlap between the courses, it is inconvenient to put each into a separate project.

In addition we are working on integrating Jira with Quickbooks by exporting the tracked time through the Jira API.

The solution we have come up with temporarily is using Epics. We assign issues to Epics and have developed our own custom reports we run on our database to determine how much time was tracked to issues in specific Epics. But there are a few problems with this:

1 - It is difficult to assign an issue to an Epic after it has been closed

2 - Tempo has no concept of Epics, nor does the Jira API, so it is difficult to build a tool to export hours into Quickbooks.

I am looking at using Versions instead of Epics because they appear more native to Jira, are accessible through Agile boards and appear to have some representation in Tempo as well. It feels like that would be abusing the Versions feature though.

Has anybody faced the same problem? How do you deal with breaking projects down in parts for labour hours accounting when necessary?

[Susanne Götz [Tempo] · Accepted solution]

Hi Nathan,

using the Accounts feature as Francis suggests might help you with this. You can then view and export the worklogs for issues connected to each Acoount in the Accounts timesheet.

If you are using JIRA Agile, you can also use the Agile Timesheet. This is still a Labs feature and can be accessed via the JIRA Agile Board (using the "View in Tempo", Time Tracking). This Timehseet can be filtered by Epics and you can display Issues or Worklogs (see also https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO079/Agile+Timesheet).

It is not possible yet to export the Agile Timesheet. If you need to export this data, you will need to create a JIRA filter and use it in the Advanced Timesheet.

Hope this helps,

regards,

Susanne

[francis]

We would love to have a tempo report based on epics. Until now, we are using the account feature of tempo. Configuring it is straightforward, but it requires an admin to do it.

https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO/Account+Manager

[Susanne Götz [Tempo]]

I think that Accounts gives you the best "out of the box" solution, but it might not cover all your needs.
You can add a Project to several Accounts and link Issues within the Project to one of these accounts. The Account information can also be included in the XML export of the worklogs (see https://tempoplugin.jira.com/wiki/display/TEMPO079/Tempo+Servlet+Manual).

You should take a look at this feature, but if your current solution gives you the information you need and integrates well with the way you work, it might be the better solution.

[Nathan Funk]

Thanks for the recommendations Francis and Susanne. So, just to confirm, Accounts (which I just learned about yesterday) is the top Tempo recommended way of accomplishing what we're doing?

I had tried the Tempo Agile feature, but I've had more luck with our own custom SQL queries.

Are there any other recommendations?

By the way, this is the SQL query we use to get a report of work logged per Epic per Project together with the total work logged to each Project.

(
select p.pname as ProjectName
, epic.id as EpicID
, epic.summary as Epic
, round(sum(w.timeworked)/3600) as Hours
from worklog w, jiraissue i, project p, jiraissue epic, issuelink l
where w.issueid = i.id
 and i.project = p.ID
 and i.id = l.destination
 and epic.id = l.source
 and epic.issuetype = 6
group by ProjectName, EpicID
)

UNION ALL

(
select p.pname as ProjectName
, "TOTAL" as EpicID
, "TOTAL" as Epic
, round(sum(w.timeworked)/3600) as Hours
from worklog w, jiraissue i, project p
where w.issueid = i.id
 and i.project = p.ID
group by ProjectName, EpicID
)
order by ProjectName, EpicID;