How to report zero hours in Tempo Timesheets?

[Markus Aittola]

When user (an employee) tries to log zero hours in Tempo Timesheets Log Work dialog, it's prevented with an error: Hours worked must be larger than 0.

Is there a way to configure Tempo, to allow reporting zero hours?

Background for the question: We have a flexible working time, and collected plus hours can be used by taking a day off. Reporting a full day of hours in "Day off" issue is not an option, because it would further top up the hour balance. Because Tempo does not allow reporting zero hours, the employees just don't report anything for the day off. This causes problems at timesheet approval, because it seems that there's an empty day which may be day off, or the employee just forgot to report.

If an employee was able to report zero hours and such a work log would be visible at the Timesheet, it would immediately tell the Approver (or anyone with Approve timesheet permission) that the employee has reported the hours of the day and just not forgot to report. This would save a lot of unnecessary questions and everyone's time.

[Viðar Svansson [Tempo]]

Actually you can disable Browse Issue access to the internal project and simply have Work on Issue so users can log work via Tempo but can't access the issue in JIRA. It is standard setup of Tempo :)

[Markus Aittola]

Thanks for pointing this out. However, configuring permissions of internal issues is a bit off-topic here. Logging work on Internal issues does not solve the original question: "How to report zero hours". Enabling zeros (perhaps allowing negative values too) would enable many ways to use Tempo with flexible working time. May I ask, are there major challenges with Tempo or JIRA architecture to remove the "Hours worked must be larger than 0." restriction, or is it just a matter of form validation?

[Viðar Svansson [Tempo]]

There is a technical limitation of using JIRA worklogs that forbids zero values. Maybe I don't fully understand why you need to report zero hours. Can you perhaps elaborate on what possibilities it would create for you? I am positive that there are other solutions that we can recommend.

[tomc]

Hi Viðar, I can give you one use case example for logging zero hours.

We could be using worklog attribute overtime-hours, for overtime logging purpose. Overtime is such hours, which is paid overtime and would not need to sum to total hours.

This is why it would be nice to log 0 hours work and add for example 4 hours as overtime-hours, in worklog attribute.

[Atwix]

Another example - API. There's no possibility to sync deleted worklogs somehow. Zero worklogs is a good workaround in this case

[Viðar Svansson [Tempo]]

Hi, 

You can use Internal Issues to capture "Day off". 

Cheers,
Vidar 

[Markus Aittola]

Thanks for suggestion. Using common Internal Issues is not an option for us, because work logged in Internal issues is visible to everyone. Due to the privacy requirements, we have chosen to let everyone to create separate issues in a special leave project and report their leaves there. Visibility to such issues is limited using an Issue Security Scheme of the project. But using the Activity planning together with the issues might help, looking next into that alternative.

[Susanne Götz [Tempo]]

Hi Markus,

This is not supported in the current Tempo Timesheets version, but it has been requested in (https://tempoplugin.jira.com/browse/TT-1128). This is also not possible when logging in work in JIRA.

We value feedback and comments on how we can make Tempo better, so if you'd like to contribute to this request, please vote on it and add a comment that will help Tempo developers to implement this request.

Kind regards,

Susanne