• The bar at the top of a work item’s Time Log tab tells you how far through the estimate it is. It has never told you where that time went. This release adds a time breakdown behind a new button beside it — by time type, by person and by day.

    The bar itself is unchanged, and there is nothing to switch on.

    📊  By time type — development, testing, rework, at a glance 👤  By person — one person’s work, or the whole team’s 📅  By day — when the work actually happened

    📊  Where the time went

    New in v2.0.46

    Open any work item’s Time Log tab and you will find a small chart button next to the progress bar. It opens a breakdown of the time logged against that item: a bar and a table by time type, the same by person, and a chart of the days the work happened. Three figures sit above them — the total logged and how many entries make it up, how much of the estimate that represents, and what remains with the forecast total it implies. It answers the questions the entry table underneath cannot answer quickly: did this item go mostly on development or mostly on rework, was it one person’s work or the team’s, and was it steady or a scramble at the end. The information was always there — every entry is listed below — but reading it meant reading the whole table.

    ✓  Nothing to set up

    New in v2.0.46

    There is no new setting and no new permission. The breakdown is built from the entries the tab has already loaded, so opening it is instant and costs nothing extra. The progress bar is exactly as it was, and the button only appears when there is time logged against the work item — so on a brand new item there is simply nothing new to see. Colours match the Analytics Dashboard, so a time type reads the same wherever you meet it.

  • ‍‍Until now Time Log has asked people to remember how long something took. This release adds a start/stop timer, so time can be recorded as it is spent — on My Time Log and on the work item itself. It is switched off until an administrator turns it on, so nothing changes for your organisation until you decide it should.

    ⏱  A timer on My Time Log — start one from today’s column and watch it run above the grid 📋  A timer on the work item — at the top of its Time Log tab 🔒  Off by default — one admin setting turns the whole thing on

    ⏱  A timer on My Time Log

    New in v2.0.45

    Each of today’s cells on the My Time Log grid now has a ▶ next to the familiar +. Click it, pick a time type, and that work item starts timing. A bar above the grid shows what is running, for how long, and when it started, and the work item’s own cell shows the clock ticking in place of the ▶.

    ‍‍On My Time Log, stopping opens the Add dialog. The timer running there may be for a work item that isn’t on screen, so the ordinary Add Time Log dialog opens with the elapsed time and the type already filled in, and you can check the details and write a comment before saving. Every rule your administrator has set still applies — minimum comment length, the lock date, no logging to closed work items — and the work item’s Completed and Remaining update exactly as they do for a typed entry. Cancel the dialog and the timer simply keeps running; there is a separate Discard if you want to throw the time away, and it asks first.

    📋  A timer on the work item

    New in v2.0.45

    For people who work from the work item rather than the weekly grid, the timer sits at the top of its Time Log tab: pick a type, press Start timer, and stop it from the same place when you’re done. Stopping there just logs the time — the timer already knows the work item, the type, the day and how long it ran, so there is nothing to fill in and no Add to press. If your administrator has set a minimum comment length, the Add Time Log dialog opens pre-filled instead, ready for the comment that is required — and cancelling it leaves the timer running rather than losing the time. Nothing to install or configure: the tab is already there.

    ‍‍It is the same timer in both places. Only one runs per person, and it is stored against your Azure DevOps account rather than in the browser — so it survives a reload, follows you to another machine, and shows the same elapsed time whether you look at it on the grid or on the work item. Starting a second timer asks first — and by default logs the running one’s time against its own work item before the new timer starts, so switching tasks never quietly throws work away. Discarding it instead is still offered, just never the default. And a timer left running for more than twelve hours is flagged with a gentle “did you forget to stop it?” — it is never stopped for you.

    🔒  Off until you turn it on

    New in v2.0.45

    The whole feature sits behind a single admin option, Enable the time log timer, in Project Settings › Extensions › Time Log Admin. It defaults to off: until it is ticked, no timer appears anywhere and no timer data is read or written, so organisations that are happy entering time the way they always have see no change at all.

  • A small addition to the Time Log Summary for teams whose work is organised by area rather than by project: Area path joins the list of grouping levels. There’s nothing you need to do — it’s there the next time you open the page.

    🗺  Group the Summary by Area path

    New in v2.0.44

    ‍‍Area path is now one of the levels you can tick and drag into your Summary grouping, alongside User, Project, Parent, Work Item, Type and Iteration. It suits organisations that split their work by team or product area, where the area says more about who did the work than the project does.

    Area path rows show the area without the project in front of it — Project is a level of its own, so there’s no need to repeat it — and the whole area is shown rather than just its last part, so two teams with a similarly named area stay clearly apart. Rows follow the area itself rather than its name, so an area that is renamed or moved part-way through the period you’re looking at still adds up to a single row.