Our Toggl Dashboard Reviewed
Why build a custom time tracking dashboard?
We hate timesheets, and have come to understand that most people do. They’re also boring, and not very accurate! Given that our clients always want transparency (one of our values), we knew we needed to use a system which was fun, accurate and simple to use.
A beautiful solution to the timesheet problem
When our Senior Developer Matt Matterson first joined 3B we set him straight to work on our new Toggl Dashboard tool so we can see who is working on what at any time. We’d never seen anything quite like what we had in our heads so it was a real “journey of discovery” as we made up what we wanted as we went along… and we couldn’t be happier with the results! Each member of staff has their own grid-square, which is black and white if they’re not currently tracking time.
Once they start tracking, their face comes into full colour. See below
It also helps other team members to see what one another is working on, without needing to disturb them (if they have their headphones in and are ‘in flow’, for example)
This simple tools shows us the following for each team member at any moment in time.
Client
Project
Task
Project estimate / actual time
Task estimate / actual time
Non / Billable - A pound symbol if it's billable
Time tracked so far
Time passed since tracking finished
Total today
Total billable
Identifiable client and project details have been blurred
Our dashboard then runs a query every two minutes to check if a user has begun/finished tracking within the last 5 minutes. If they have then the display will refresh. To make the page load as quickly as possible, the information loads into session variables before refreshing.
If the user has not tracked within 24 hours the information will simply display how many days/weeks/months have passed.
We have integrated Zendesk, JIRA and Toggl altogether with our proprietary client dashboard, which helps us to provide seamless ticket, time and priority-management tools for our clients. If you’d like to know how we can build or connect tools like this for your company or agency, do get in touch.
