This is part 4 of the series blogs about the Dynamics Apps for Windows 8. This time I will review the Timesheet features.
The initial release of AX2012 shipped functionality for Timesheets which was available in the client as well as the Employee Self Service portal. The new Timesheet app is a simple user-friendly application for entering your timesheets. When you start the App, you will have an overview of your open timesheets.
You can also view the timesheets ordered by date.
You can look into the details of the already entered timesheets and depending on the approval state, you can make corrections. It is also possible to delete the Timesheet. How to make the correction is included in the section below. Only Timesheets with a status draft or returned can be edited by a user.
Creating new timesheets
To create a new expense report, simply click on the ‘New timesheet‘ tile.
You now have a new charm at the right part of your screen where you can select the Timesheet period. It is defaulted on the current week. Click create to finish this task.
You will start with an empty sheet. You can start writing time by clicking on the ‘Add’ symbol per day or use the Add button on the App bar.
As said in my previous review of the Expense Managemet App the lookup fields are not suitable for large numbers of records. In this case the Category and Activity can be used for searching because they are not using a number sequence like the project. If you start typing in the field, the value will be selected by the first matching characters. Click the Create button to add the entry to your timesheet.
When writing the time, the overview is attractive. You can check the number of hours entered very easily. When you click on the entered time, you can edit or delete the time entry in case of errors in the charm.
So far so good… There are some scenarios where this timewriting is not suitable. Some businesses do write their time in units of 15 or even 6 minutes. Think about e.g. lawyers who have many cases and spend per case only a few minutes to handle for that day. Look at the next picture on Wednesday and Thursday.
Already when writing time for just 1 hour the project description is not visible. The time entries for 15 minutes (0.25 hour) are very small. If you need to enter about 20 times 15 minutes you get lost in the small blocks. What was entered and what is still missing? This becomes even worse. Not only you will see a lot of small blocks, but also the size is causing a false display of the hours. Ten time the 6 minutes looks graphically like two hours instead of one hour. Luckily they can access the AX client or the Employee Self Service portal for writing time.
For many companies it certainly will work as they write time in larger blocks.
If you have created a timesheet and found out that you filled the hours in the current week instead of last week…. (I have made this mistake myself quite a lot 😉 ) you can right click a timesheet and on the App bar you will find a button for deleting the selected timesheet. It is possible to select more than one timesheet at once and delete them.
Submit expense report for approval
If you entered your time correctly, you can submit the timesheet for approval from the App bar. A windows charm will appear where you can review the totals per Project. Again this is not suitable for a large number of projects within one week.
You can provide additional notes for the approval. This is not mandatory.
Click the button Submit to finalize your timesheet. The timesheet will now have the status ‘In review’.
Conclusion
The Timesheet App for Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 is a good example how to make time writing easy and intuitive. Thanks to this design it is suitable for many time writers. Unfortunately it is not suitable when you have to deal with large number of projects or smaller time units. The ‘Favorites’ feature as available in the other user experiences of AX is not possible in this app as it defaults row and you then have to complete the time per day. But a copy function could be welcome when you have similar timesheets every week. Unfortunately this one is not available.
That’s all for now. Till next time!
