Timesheet reports and reporting

[ptc-4551206]

We are using integrity for software project management and have the timetracking function setup for recording the tasks that someone can work with. We now need to do some reporting and it seems that all timesheet reporting is focused on the time entered against an item, so I have to look at all items to determine what time was entered when.

Does any know have any report recipes or know of any way of reporting on time sheets in other ways' for example, show the time that was entered per day, who entered it and what item they were working on (maybe with an ability to pick the date?). Or show all the timesheets related to a project (even if the time was entered several relationships down from the project). Or Show all timesheets by person? I know I can extract this from the DB directly if I need to, and it will take me some time to make new report recipes myself, I was just wondering if anyone had any thing they would be willing to share.

[matt_giltaji]

Hi James,

Unfortunately the time entry reporting out of the box was a bit lackluster for our needs, especially compared to the rest of the Workflow and Documents reporting, so we don't use report recipes for our time entry reporting.

What we do instead is a combination of custom triggers, custom jsp reports, as well as more complex reports out of the database backend.

The custom triggers basically run against a query of items standing in for real users or groups of users, looks up the time entries using API calls, then emails the users or their managers when they have not entered time properly according to business rules.

The custom jsp report provides a timecard-like view so that managers can enter a date range and select the users and get back a grid view of how much time is entered per item per user per day. Since it's custom, it rolls up 1 or 2 levels to meet our requirements, but you could make a similar jsp report recursive all the way to the project.

The custom jsp report was based off some example time entry jsp reports that MKS provided to us, but it was back before the merger and I can't find any link in the knowledgebase. They were based on the 2009 version, so I am not sure if the examples have been updated for version 10.

You may be able to get them through a support case. I'd also be happy to upload the examples here if a PTC rep will give the ok.

The database backend reporting is the bulk of how our time entry data is used. Our BI reporting team extracts it and does their magic to generate the specific reports that management is looking for.

Back to your original question, I'd say that the jsp reports can be more useful for the kind of reports you are talking about, especially since you can add buttons for picking date ranges, specific users, or projects and you can pretty much customize it to exactly what you need.

The downside is that the jsp reports can take longer to build, don't come with all the built in security features that the built in reporting will have (such as hiding items based on user permissions, authentication,etc), and can bomb out based on how much data you are pulling back. Depending on how it is coded, a JSP report may not be as reusable as a report recipe, but that can be a benefit if you want to make sure the users are pulling the report in a standard way.

The backend database will give you the most flexibility for your reporting but you seem to already be aware of the challenges there .

Another option you do have is to use the CLI or Java API to pull the time entry data directly (the jsp reporting uses the java api under the hood) if that makes more sense in your environment, but I'd recommend either sticking with JSP so that you have buttons and an html output formatted to your needs or going directly to the database for the raw data and doing some excel reports based on that.

Hope that helps,

Matt