Improved Timesheet Interface
To encourage users to estimate their workload, the Daily Timesheets were changed in August 2004 to include columns for updating the “target date” and the “hours left” on each activity. On activities that had no estimates the extra input fields were blank and sometimes users accidentally input the daily hours in those columns instead of placing them in the “Today’s Hours” column. Since activities that are marked as “Do not forecast” seldom use estimates, the system has been changed to prevent a user from typing into the estimate columns on those activities. This should greatly reduce the chance that someone will type their daily hours in the estimate columns by mistake. If someone wishes to place estimates on an activity and yet flag it as “Do not forecast”, they can still do so by editing the activity.
Another benefit of this change will be to highlight those activities that are not being forecasted. When a user adds a new activity to the timesheet, if it defaults to “Do not forecast”, the user will be aware of this immediately and can correct it by editing the activity. Previous to this change, the user might type estimates into the timesheet and never realize they had not activated the forecasting option on the activity.