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Life After 190 Standard Reports - Or, How I Learned to Love Timesheet Alerts

Update

Based on your feedback we added a new alert to send reminder emails to users with unsubmitted/not overdue timesheets. See Late-Breaking Timesheet Alert Features for more information.

Overview

The goals for new timesheet alerts and approvals functionality was to reduce the amount of manual effort required by customers to manage time users. New capabilities help automate weekly repetitive tasks and also provide a mechanism to send one-off reminders to end users.

The Innotas 190 Standard report allows you to manually generate a report that displays the resource name, timesheet period start and end date, and timesheet status for a set of resources determined by a resource filter, for a specified date range. Once the report is generated, you can send an email to all resources listed in the report, all resources that have not started or submitted timesheets, or all resources that need to approve submitted timesheets that are awaiting approval.

We are retiring the 190 report because we now provide automated and more flexible ways to communicate with users about their timesheets, including:

  • scheduled (automated) timesheet alerts
  • event-based alerts
  • the Timesheet Approval interface w/email feature

In addition, you can build a custom report that replicates 190 standard report data, and can optionally augment it with the fields Total Hours, Note – Timesheet. and Last Modified. Note that this custom report can be exported to Excel.

Each technique is described below.

Scheduled Timesheet Alerts

(see https://help.innotas.com/help/Ihelp.html#Alert/timesheet/configuring_timesheet_alerts.htm)

The new timesheet alerts (Admin/Organization/Timesheet Alerts) allow you to set up automated email alerts governed by day/time and timesheet status. Alert recipients can be determined by resource filters, and there is a convenient list of CC recipients that you can use to configure any alert.

You can configure alerts that:

  • Automatically alert PM/Final approvers when timesheets are submitted and awaiting approval
  • Automatically alert PM/Final approvers when timesheets are overdue for approval
  • Automatically alert resources whose timesheets are overdue for submission, which includes resources who have timesheet statuses of “not started,” “in progress,” and “rejected”

Note: Final Approver is the value in the standard field Final Timesheet Approver on a resource's record; PM approver is the value in the standard field Project Owner.

If an alert is scheduledto be sent at a specific time, recipients will receive a single email that lists the relevant timesheets, rather than one email for each timesheet. The recipient can click a link and go directly to the timesheet(s) in question. The example screenshot below shows the configuration screen for a scheduled alert for overdue final approval:

And here is an example of the alert:

Timesheet Approval Interface

(see https://help.innotas.com/help/Ihelp.html#Timesheet/working_with_timesheet_approvals.htm)

This interface (Home/Timesheet Approvals) helps you manage resources for whom you are project or final approver (or alternate approver). The interface automatically sorts the resources into the following tabbed categories, and all of the tabs include the ability to email some or all of the resources:

  • My Final Approvals tab – lists timesheets awaiting your final approval, can email timesheet owners
  • My PM Approvals tab – lists timesheets awaiting your PM approval, can email timesheet owners
  • At PM Approval tab – lists timesheets awaiting approval from a PM other than yourself for which you are Final Approver (can send email reminder to PM approver)
  • Unsubmitted tab – lists unsubmitted timesheets (not started, in progress, rejected) for which you are Final Approver. Overdue timesheets have an additional indicator (can email timesheet owners)

You can sort the lists in each tab by status, resource, start date, or overdue indicator, to help identify resources that you would like to email. 

Example: send reminder email to all resources with timesheets that are not started but are not overdue.

  1. Navigate to Home/Timesheet Approvals and click the Unsubmitted tab.
  2. Sort by the Timesheet State.
  3. Sort by the Overdue column (the timesheet state then becomes the secondary sort criteria).

  4. Select the records that are not overdue. You can use Shift+click to select a continuous range of timesheets or Ctrl+click to select a range of non-contiguous timesheets.
  5. Click the Send Reminder button located at the top-right of the timesheet. 
  6. The Send Reminder to Resources dialog appears. Use the default message, or write one of your own.
  7. Click Send Reminder.

Custom Report

You can create a custom report that replicates the 190 report data

  1. Navigate to the Reports tab.
  2. Click New.
  3. Configure Target = Organization, Category = Time
  4. Double-click the report source All Timesheets, or select it and click New.
  5. Enter a Title for the report, or use the default.

t


  1. Click the Output Options tab and select the List output type from the drop list

  1. Use the Related Resource folder to get the resource's name Last, First.


  1. You can get the remaining fields from the primary entity's folder:
    • Start Date
    • End Date
    • Approval State
    • Awaiting Approval By

  1. (Optional) Configure a drilldown link by selecting Start Date and choose "Entity" from the Drilldown Target droplist.
  2. Click the Sorting tab.
  3. Sort by Resource Name:Last, First, then Start Date.

     
  4. Click Save and Run.
  5. In the Set Filters dialog, you can specify a date range for which to return report data, as shown below. The Relative Date field supports a wide range options for pinpointing the exact timeframe.
     

Running this report gives you the similar report that the 190 gives you, plus a drill down field. Note also that the custom report can be exported to Excel.

Example Custom Report Results

Retired 190 Report