ProjectLoad Blog

In the upper right corner of the ProjectLoad pages you’ll now see a new “Timer” tab. Clicking on this will open a small window that can be used to track your time throughout the day and automatically post it to your timesheet as time elapses. If you do a majority of your work at your desk, the activity timer is an excellent way to log your time during the day to keep your timesheet accurate and up-to-date.

At the top of the timer window is a drop-down list containing all of your open activities. At the very top of this list are the most recent activities used within the timer. Below are all of the open actitivities grouped by project and phase. Beside this list is a “Reload” button that can be used to refresh it if you add activities during the day. To begin logging time for an activity, just select the appropriate one from the list. You timesheet will be updated every few minutes by the timer.

In the middle of the window are a series of buttons to let you stop the currently running activity and restart or delete the selected activities in the body of the window. On the right is a “Switch View” button that lets you toggle back and forth between a collapsed view of the activities showing just total times for the day and an expanded view detailing the start and stop times for each timer entry.

The body of the window contains the activities that have been logged by the timer. The currently running activity is listed in bold text and the currently selected activity has a gray background. When an activity is selected, details can be viewed and edited at the bottom of the window. While in the expanded activity view, you can change the start and stop times of the selected activity. If you have notes enabled for your team, you can also view and edit notes here as well.

While the timer is logging time, your daily timesheet for the current day will be disabled. To modify time manually in the timesheet, stop the timer first and then go to the daily timesheet. Any changes in times entered into the timesheet will be preserved by the timer.

If you close and reopen the timer during the day, you will be asked if you want to restart the last running activity. When you open up the timer for the first time the next day, you will be asked if you want to start the first activity that was logged the previous day.

A new administrator control is now available from the “Admin” tab. A link appears at the top entitled “Maintain Front Page Message". Displayed within this page is a basic editor pane on the left and a preview pane on the right. Just type your message within the editor and then click the “Preview” button at the bottom of the page to see what the message will look like. You can add basic formatting like headings, lists, bold and italics using simple Wiki-like markup. Also, web and e-mail addresses are automatically converted into links. When your message is ready, click the “Save” button and the text will be displayed on the logon page.

If you’d like your company logo to appear on the logon page, just drop us a note at contact@projectload.com and include the image you’d like displayed.

Due to popular demand, the notes editor interface has been expanded to allow a wider range of notes to be viewed without running a notes report. By default, all notes will be displayed for the current entity level and lower across all people and dates. Filtering capabilities are present in the notes editor to specify by level (project, phase, activity and timesheet), category, person and date range which notes are displayed. This change will allow quicker access to view and edit notes.

Every date field within the system has been enhanced to make date selection easier. Simply move your mouse over a date input, and a calendar icon will appear within the right side of the field. Then click on that icon to open a small monthly calendar. Within this calendar you can change months and years until you find the date you’re looking for. Simply click on that date to close the calendar and enter the selected date into the field.