• Quick Search
• Search Locations (file search only)

There is a properties menu that allows you to set properties in TimeVu

All of these data screens are resident on the Task Bar menu that sits in the task bar when TimeVu is running;

So that it can be easily found.  By Right-clicking on this icon you can bring up the Task Bar Menu.

An Administration menu [only usable by the administrator]  allows setting information such as:

TimeVu Timesheets has been designed to create, edit, and review timesheet entries with as much ease as possible.  To help people organise and record the way they spend their time during a working day. TimeVu allows the user to quickly do these record their day to day work. The application is small enough to leave running all the time, and it conveniently sits minimised in the Windows system tray when not in use.

Creating and editing projects is done in a separate application (TimeVu Manager), which provides functions such as import / export with other applications such as Microsoft Project

The main window allows a user to mark up their day’s activity graphically, from a palette of their active projects.

The information is stored in a central database along with other users timesheets.

TimeVu can be run in 2 modes, either 15 min,30 min, 1 hour selection, or 6 min, 12 min, 30 min e.g.;

You can view more or less of the grid by reducing orincreasing the grid size - used the buttons on the menu

4.1.2. 6-Minute mode;

If you set up your TimeVu to use 6-minute minimum entry size for your timesheets you can add time-sheets in 6-minute increments

The TimeVu application is used to create the timesheet entries. A Timesheet Entry is the smallest definable recording of work in the TimeVu Manager.

A Timesheet Entry records a number of things:

•  Project
•  Order for that Project
•  Task for that Project
•  Team Member for that Project
•  Time spent
•  Description of activity

The first four of these items need to be defined in TimeVu Manager by a project manager (see the TimeVu Manager Manual). In TimeVu you select these items from pick lists or combo boxes.

The user adds the time spent and description each time a timesheet entry is made. The area on the grid defines the time spent, and the comment is typed in.

In this example, we can see that the area on the grid (from 9:30 to 12:30) is for Project “IntranetApp”, Order “Default Order Code",  Task “Prepare proposal and print", and work type "Design". These values have all been previously defined when setting up the project.

The comment that has been added is “Looking at current technologies for online reporting” and is unique to this timesheet entry. Further information is provided in the status bar, such as the mouse position , the current date and time, and the active database.

It is easy to create a new timesheet entry using the mouse:

1. Select a project by changing the active project in the project palette.
2. Place the mouse pointer on the grid at the start of the time you want to mark and press the left mouse button.
3. Hold the left mouse button down and move the mouse pointer to the end of the time that you want to mark. You can’t go over other coloured blocks, and you cant go outside the current grid view.
4. Release the mouse button.

A dialog pops up that lets you set timesheet entry properties [You can set a property to not have this dialog appear]

You can quickly create a new timesheet entry by double clicking an empty block of the grid. 

This creates a new timesheet entry for the current project with a start and stop time to match the clicked grid section. So if the grid was set to a 30 minute interval, and you double clicked between 14:30 and 15:00, a timesheet entry will be created with those start and stop times.

As before, the Save Times dialog pops up so that you can select settings and type a comment.

Select Right Mouse Click |New in the grid achieves the same effect

You can quickly create a new timesheet entry using the "Add Block Now" Menu item

block of time. You can add multiple entries with the same time.

You can quickly create a new timesheet entry by copying an existing entry.
1.       Click on the timesheet entry you wish to copy.
2.       Select Right Mouse Click | Copy.
3.       Change the project if required.
4.       Move the mouse to the grid position where you wish to copy it to      Right Mouse Click | Paste

If you have changed the project then the Save Times dialog pops up,  allowing you to choose the task/order etc for the pasted timesheet.

Click on any timesheet entry on the grid to see its properties appear on the details part of the main form.

When the mouse pointer is inside a timesheet entry block, the entry will be highlighted with a hashed pattern. It is possible to change the start or finish times of the entry in this state, or to use the Right Click Menu options.

Use the calendar control to pick the day you want to review. Set the time interval to a scale that allows you to see the whole working day clearly, or increase the vertical size of the timesheet dialog to show more of the day.

All the text on the main screen is read only. It is shown with a grey background to indicate this. If you want to edit the information, then Double Click the timesheet entry. The Save Times dialog pops up to allow you to change settings.

Alternatively select Right Mouse Click |Edit

Highlight a timesheet entry and select Right Mouse Click |Delete. Or press {Delete}.

The project can be changed in the Save Times dialog as well. When the project is changed, the order and task are reset as well to those matching the new project.

You should first check in Summary information for the project  to see if you are a team member for the project.

Even if you are a team member, you will also have to check in the Tfor other causes such as.
· Is the project active?
· Is your team member allocation still active?
· Does the project have valid order cover?

This is a feature of the software to ensure that time is only booked against valid, active projects and tasks.

You can't add projects or any project related items in TimeVu.

6.3. Overlapping Bookings

You can overlap timesheet entries - however if someone books time to someone else's timesheets at the same time - there can be some confusion.   Refresh the timesheets to make sure you are seeing the most up-to-date representation.

Reviewing provides totals of times by project, day, and week

7.1. Review

Not only can you review your own timesheet, but you can review other users

To view hours worked within a date range use the date picker controls to select the range of dates you wish to view.

Press Review to recalculate the grid of data
Or select an interval and press Review

You can narrow your focus to review a particular project. Select a project via the project selection control. Press Review to refresh the grid of data showing only that selection.

The Export | Excel menu item automatically opens excel and inserts the current review data. This lets you analyse or graph your timesheet information in any way you want to; or email it on to others perhaps

There are two formats to export to Excel, a day-by-day format, or a review format,

This brings up the following form. The form has an "Explorer" style section on the left where you select a company, and a "Details" style section on the right to show contact people for that business.

Companies can be viewed as a alphabetically sorted list, or grouped in your own definable business types;

TIP: To navigate quickly to a name, select the first entry in the list and type the letters of the company name you are looking for.

Note : Companies can have more than one business type .

You can email a contact, or jump to a web page for them from the right click menu of a contact.

Company details can be modified through TimeVu . Click on the company summary tab and you can change this information.  Make sure you press "Update" before you leave this page.

You can view the people of the company and modifiy these entries.

You can add comments here for the business- in the comments tab.

You can also use this form to select multiple business types for a company (you can only select a single business type when you add a contact).

You can also attach links to a contact.  These links can be jumped to directly by double clicking the entry in the dialog or clicking on "Open" in the right-hand menu.

The menu also lists the  "Add" and 'Edit" methods to add new links or edit existing company links

Detailed comments for the company can be placed with the Comment tab.

Comments items can be created for either a project or a contact. 

Comments have a category; To-do, Done, FAQ, Bad, Good, Info.

To-do items are just like an action list in a diary, or a collection of post-its on the side of your PC. They are comments that we place in the database concerning projects or companies that we flag as requiring action by a certain date. There are three ways of getting to the Project to-do list; either via the "My Stuff" area

or by selecting viewing the Comments Tab in the  Project area or contacts area, e.g.;

Or by opening the Comments Dialog;

Changing the status of a To-do item to Done sets a actioned date.  You can do this from the right-hand mouse menu

Right Click Menu | View Right Click Menu | Edit

The comments edit item dialog looks like this:

You can click through the items using this dialog by pressing the << or >> buttons.  If you change any information make sure to press the "Update" button before continuing or the data will be lost.

The employee name, company name / project, and comment are required fields.

Right Click Menu | Done
"Done" button in the Comment Edit dialog.

The items displayed can be filtered from the right hand menu:

The filter can be changed by selecting the right-hand menu in the appropriate column e.g. selecting the  Company view.

Comments associated with a company can be queried directly from the Contacts  e.g.

The comments themselves can be filtered, on the right mouse click in the list control you will see a entry

The "Filter " entry changes depending on which column you are clicking in, for instance, filter by the status:

or filter on the reference:

Change Requests are changes logged against a project. A change request can have many items and each item have many actions.

Project Change Request list of items can be viewed via the "My Stuff"Dummary view,

or by selecting viewing the Change Requests Tab in the Project Information dialog, e.g.

The Change request dialog is similar to the Task dialog, and explorer view with the projects listed in the tree and items in the list control e.g.

Right Click Menu | Add

The add Change Request item dialog looks like this:

You can fill out information on ;

• Where the change request has come from and by whom (company and contact)

• Give the request a reference which will help you to identify it later

• Add a file reference if you have one

• Select the team who will be working on the request

• and fill out the items that are necessary to understand the request;

you can add multiple items to a request.

Each one is entered in the "Enter Item" control.  press the "+" to add the item.  If you make a mistake you can double click the lower control and re-add a changed item.

Selecting an entry in the lower control and pressing "-" removes the item.

When you are happy with your entry press the "Add" button.

Each item is added in as a separate entry into the change request repository.  Thus each item can have work undertaken.  Each item entered in one set will have the same reference, file ref, team, and  authority, as well as the same entry date

.

For instance the  "ref test" requests was  added with 2 items and are shown as 2 change requests.

Right Click Menu | View, or Double click on a change request item in the list control

Viewing a change request allows you to add actions and details to each one.
As well as changing the status
Each Change request can have multiple actions. Add actions  by typing into the "Action" box and pressing the "+" button - just as items were added.
If you make a mistake, select the lower entry "Actions added" entry and press the "-" button.

When change requests are finished, you can remove them from the general view by ticking the Completed box in the status tab

. The completed Change Request items can be seen again by changing the status of the filter selection on the top of the screen

Another way of filtering the view is by using the filter on the right hand mouse menu, which shows a different filter for the  column you click.

So, if you were trying to find Change Requests that have been assigned to Brian B under any you may use the following filter;

Note that you can setup notification email to those that are using TimeVu to monitor their change requests - you  find this in the properties dialog :

There are two way of searching the data in TimeVu - use either the Quick Search or the Project Location Search.

The search occurs across  all the information that has been entered - comments, change requests, contacts, timesheets, invoices.  Its the quickest way to find something - just pop open the QuickSearch either on the menu of the dialog or on the task menu

Type in a search term, and press enter.  This will search over the data that you have selected using the tick boxes.

The results are shown, each in there own search page tab - e.g. for contacts, comments, and change requests you could get up to 3 results panes.

The number of results is shown on the tab header.

Double click on the results will bring up a screen that you can use to read the data in more detail.

By viewing the right-hand menu can see some more options for viewing the data

The Location search feature searches file base locations added in the location tab.

The upper view shows the file to be searched and the lower view the output - showing the filename and the position the search word is found.

If you undertake a large search you can view how it is going in the "View Output" area.

13. Customising TimeVu

TimeVu can be customised to suit an individual user's requirements.

13.1. TaskBar| Properties or Menu | Properties

The properties menu item brings up a Properties Dialog for the user to customise settings. The settings are stored in the Current User Registry area, so they are individual to a particular user profile.

Some of the information that you can set includes;

• Which Dialog to automatically open on start up (Start with open window)
• How fast you want your scrolling to work.
• How wide to have the grab area around your time sheet entries
• Default sizes to size the timesheet dialog to
• Information on what to do on start-up such as: 
• what day to start with.
• what default time increment to start with.
• Default settings for the review dialog.
• Which database connection to start with.
• When to stop auto logging (usually your going home time). 
• Command entry by keyboard 

The following lists the property forms

13.1.1. General Properties

 

 

From this page you can set;

• Which Dialog is automatically started on starting TimeVu - this is also the dialog that is started when you single-click the task icon
• whether you want to see contacts, comments, change requests - by removing these checks these options are removed off the menu
• What your default project is - so that when starting up dialogs will automatically select this project

13.1.2. Database Connection

 

 To allow you to change which database your connected to

13.1.3. Timesheet functionality

You can select;

• Scroll speed - how fast the scroll buttons will work on the timesheet entry page

• how easy it is to grab the edges of the timesheet entries

• whether you want the quick-toolbar to be shown

• sizes for the min and default menu items to jump to when it resizes

• whether you want to run the "save times dialog" window when you add and entry

• whether you want the task selections, orders etch to be remembered for further timesheet entries

how you would like the tick marks on the timesheet entry window to be shown.

13.1.4. Applications

 

Sets file locations to find these application usually they are as shown above.

13.1.5. Auto Timer

properties

Auto-timing properties allow you to set;

• What time you want the logging to stop automatically
• How you want the auto-logger to operate - particularly when the timing event is closed before a full timed period (15 or 6 minutes) is created.  And also how to act when a timed event butts up against and existing entry.

13.1.6. Change Requests

Sets properties on auto-emailing, setting timesheet entries with respect to change requests

13.1.7. Comments

Sets the default comment Type.

13.1.8. Financials

Lets you set information that affects the way costs are kept and invoices are created.

13.1.9. Review

Sets properties for how the review operates

13.1.10. Search

Limits the number of items the search returns

13.1.11. Tasks

Sets on or off an auto refresh.  The auto refresh may take some time when entering the task screen if you have many task items for that project

13.1.12. External project info

Set these items if are interacting with Visual Source Safe or Microsoft Outlook (this is not yet implemented in this version)

13.1.13. Keyboard commands

Allows TimeVu Timesheets to be operated with key commands
 

14. Working with TimeVu timesheets

TimeVu is started by using the start bar to open the program menu and navigating to the TimeVu application. It can run in conjunction with other applications, so does not need to be closed. An icon appear in the System Tray for easy access to the application.

14.1. Selectors

14.1.1. System Tray

14.1.2. Menus

Menus are available in TimeVu from Right Click menu, or the menu bar of the application.

Choose the Close menu item to close TimeVu permanently - this closes down all the open non-modal dialogs too.
You can change the default user by selecting the Set User option. Whenever you change this, all the open dialogs are closed, so that when you reopen them you start with this new user.

The AutoTiming option allows you to automatically log time to a selected project. While in this mode the timesheet dialog is set to read only, and you will not be able to change the data on your timesheet. After selecting Start Timing , you will need to choose a project using the selection dialog

And a task to book to

And then press "Go", to get the logging started

 

 

The timesheet begins to automatically log timesheet entries of 15/6 minute interval beginning at an interval truncated to the time you started logging at. The logging will end at the time selected in the auto logging properties dialog or at 24:00 for that day. Auto logging only logs on the current day, and for the selected user.

While auto logging continues, you can browse your timesheets for other days but you cannot make any changes.
You can follow the logged time by either looking at the timesheet entry in the time sheet dialog or by examining the tool-tip on the task bar. Alternatively, keep the logging dialog on top via the Options menu.

 

To stop auto logging - press the stop button on the auto-timing dialog

 

 

The Project Palette shows the projects that the current user is allowed to book time to.

 

 

The active project is the one with the dark border  and bold print.(Support Project in this case). The active project is the one that you create new timesheet entries for on the grid. Change the active selection by using the mouse to click on the box or project name. 
As you move your mouse across the names they are highlighted.

 

Double clicking any project name or coloured box , or select from the task menu, will bring up the project information tabbed dialog.
 

14.1.3. Calendar

 

The calendar control allows easy selection of dates in the current month. Select another month or year from the pull down lists to show a different month.

 

TIP: If you click on one of the grey shaded dates in the previous month (28, 29, 30, 31 in this view) or next month (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) then the calendar changes to that month.

 

14.1.4. Buttons

This button is always associated with a display of information (eg task or date). Pressing the button opens a small pop up dialog to help select this information.

Omega Technology Ltd 2010