Current Everhour

Trial ended/payment failed [label type=”success”]new[/label]

Finally, we took the time to refactor our current mechanism of handling billing issues.

Previously, if the trial was ended, we were informing the user by email and in 5-10 days (in the case of negligence) his account was locked due to inactivity. If someone accidentally forgot to do so, he would have emailed us and the problem would have been solved in a couple of hours.

The same could happen in the case of constant payment errors. We were making 3 charge attempts within 2 weeks (after each we were sending an email), but if no luck, the account was considered inactive.

From now on we will show the user billing page in both cases, thus the user can solve the problem really quickly.

The only thing is that the billing page is available only to the team owner, ie the one who created an account. The regular member will see a message asking him to contact the owner (and his name). If for any reason, the current owner is not the one who should pay for the account down the road, just contact us and we will transfer ownership.

Basecamp3 [label type=”success”]new[/label] [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

First and foremost. Until today, Basecamp 3 integration has been available only in Chrome. We are glad to announce that now it also works in Safari and FF. Sadly, our extensions are still under review in both FF and Safari markets. Their process is far from ideal. We will keep you updated via Twitter.

Furthermore, in the previous version, we had a small bug that some tasks were showing “closed” status although they were “open”. We’ve fixed it.

And a small hack, if someone did not know. In Basecamp tool, if you mark a to-do as “closed”, we’ll automatically stop the timer on our side.

Input issues on tracking page [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

In the previous version when entering text in the input field, the cursor may jump to the existing text. It is very inconvenient. Also, some shortcuts were not working.

Fixed now!

GitHub render issues [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

We had a rendering issue with the latest version of the Chrome browser. Our embed timer / estimate placeholder within a GitHub issue may disappear after changing labels / milestones / assignee. It reappears only on page reload.

Fixed in the latest release! Kudos to Keiran R.

Everhour 2

Blog post about future of tags

Last month we wrote a detailed post about the future of tags in Everhour 2. Received a huge amount of feedback, questions, and suggestions.

Special thanks for the activity: Ralph S., Kim D., Joey B., Adam W., Robert S., Matthew O., Tyson C., Marilyn, Alice, Franklin S.

We did our best to react to every single message (in both the blog and private emails), and discuss various aspects of this change (please, except for the article itself, pay attention to the comments)

As of now, there are no major drawbacks. Extreme cases will be treated individually and solved on the way. We are keeping them in mind.

Blog post about teams, groups, and time isolation

The second important blog post was about teams, groups and time isolation in Everhour 2. As always, if someone has interesting ideas or suggestions – please leave your comments.

Frontend progress

Last time I have said that we are done with the design of our main pages and have started working on HTML.

Now I’d like to share how these pages look in different resolutions.

Backend progress

In addition to the layout adaptation, we have already completed API for the time tracking page, profile, onboarding, obtaining projects, and time.

Currently, we are finishing the layout and backend integration for the time tracking page. In the near future, we are going to start integration for the rest pages.

The post Progress Update (March) appeared first on Everhour Blog.

The first news for those who aren’t regularly checking our blog is that we are actively working on Everhour 2.

In the process, we are openly sharing thoughts focusing on key decisions we’ve made such as Whether or not to show time intervals and How we are going to control access in a new version and we have already received very good feedback. Thanks, everyone!

Who knows what’s going on, here is the progress update.

We have already completed the most important part of the upcoming release – fully automated sync and have prepared a new data structure. We are working simultaneously on all integrations, except Basecamp. Not sure when folks can provide with public API. Certainly can’t make huge progress without it.

Our current version works in Basecamp 3, but only in one browser, Chrome. A lot of our customers immediately switched to B3, and it was essential to make them track time as before.  We have come up with a temporary “unscalable” solution that just works, but it isn’t supported in all browsers.

Also, we’ve already prepared designs for the key pages and now we are working on their slicing and integration. There will be many cool ideas that you’ll appreciate, including responsiveness.

The other pleasant announcement is that we’ve been verified by GitHub and listed on their integrations page. They liked our product.

Historically, we are having very warm feelings about this integration, because it is the first one and basically this is how the whole idea of Everhour has been born. So, we are glad that more people will find out the possibility to time track issues right inside Github.

Finally, we have improved multiple areas which were out of our radar due to time constraints.

• A potential vulnerability during the signup process was squeezed. Previously, we were sending a user a randomly generated password that he/she could change in his profile. From now on, only a token is sent, and the user must create a password on his first login.
• Quick improvement to invoicing export format. We’ve been asked the invoice description to look like “{Day} – {Comment}”. We found it quite a useful idea and have released it just recently. Kudos goes to @Cary!
• Before now, we did not have the possibility to delete the account from the UI. Users had to contact our support and we did it manually.

“What???” you would think, but we had some good reasons.

Repeatedly, we encountered cases when the user had asked us to delete his account and confirmed that he understood the consequences, but then we were receiving an email like “Oh, we have lost the exported file, whether is it possible to recover the data?” or “John is no longer working with us and we can not find the data for last month,” and was very grateful that the account hadn’t been removed yet.

On the other hand, it’s user private data and it must be a way to delete it easily on a need basis. In addition, we were required to do so by our partners (integrations).

Last but not least. Previously, if the payment had failed for some reason, we were simply displaying the UI alert on the website. However, since users mostly have been reporting time from third-party apps, they could log in to their account very rarely – once in a few weeks – and so could easily miss the notice about the problem. Now we send an email each time the transaction isn’t successful, so the user can react in a timely manner.

That’s it for now. We will keep you informed about our progress.

The post Progress Update (February) appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Basecamp 3 [label type=”success”]new[/label]

Not so long ago Basecamp released their new version “v3”. Due to significant changes, it obviously stopped working on our side and we had to update priorities accordingly.

What has really made us sweat is that this new version doesn’t include any public API. According to the Basecamp 3 team, they’ll make it available only in a couple of months. Because we could not wait so long, we had to find a workaround.

But I think we did it great. You can check more details here.

Trello token expires [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

In the previous version, the Trello token could expire after 30 days. Which makes our synchronization stop. When that was happening, the timer button was no longer available under all new tasks, and of course, from this point, any changes made were not reflected on the reporting side.

From now on, the token will never expire unless you force it manually from your Trello account. Kudos to Cameron F.

Calendar [label type=”inverse”]deprecated[/label]

Starting today, our calendar functionality is no longer available to new users as well as those who have never used it before. Active users will have access, so no stress.

Unfortunately, we realized that mentioned functionality and the idea behind it was unclaimed. We feel sad deprecating any feature, but this is the way to focus on the other, more important stuff.

Multiple organizations [label type=”inverse”]deprecated[/label]

Previously, it was possible to create multiple organizations. The original idea was that one person may need to supervise multiple independent companies thus it’d make sense to completely split their members, projects, and time.

In fact, this functionality was misinterpreted which result in confusion and mistakes. Organizations were created by mistake, were lots of duplicates, sophisticated structures, and no data integrity.

Starting today it is possible to have only one organization (Team) per account. Those who already have multiple organizations won’t be affected. We will gradually help you to solve problems if any and normalize data.

Running timer locked [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

Admins can limit other colleagues from changing their timesheets after a certain period of time.
But, say a user has forgotten to stop a timer on Friday. On Monday he cannot do so if the limit was set to 3 days.

We’ve made it possible to stop such timers.

Stop sync for unpaid accounts [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

Previously, if the trial has expired, our system was still syncing connected projects regardless of whether the user simply forgot to update his payment method or skipped.

This in turn has created an additional load on our infrastructure and has a negative impact on other – active – users forcing them to wait longer.

From now on, synchronization will stop after the trial period expires.

Order projects by name [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

My Projects page shows all your projects. For many customers, this list is really long and keeps growing. Sometimes you could even use a browser search to locate the project.

Added sorting by name. Kudos to Tom J.

Trello name with spaces [label type=”warning”]fixed[/label]

A very tricky bug that we have managed to eliminate.

Creating a new project, you could make a mistake in the mentioned field (e.g. space character is not allowed). But, when this happens the Trello board (project) selection you did before is “silently” changed to the first item in the list. As the result, you’ll creat a project with the wrong assignment which you cannot even change.

Fixed now. Kudos to Marijn B.

New integration pages [label type=”success”]new[/label]

Designed new integration pages. A picture is worth a thousand words thus hopefully new users will get a better sense of Everhour basics right away.

Would be happy to hear your opinion on them.

New stuff badge [label type=”success”]new[/label]

Actually not something we did in this release, but I’ve decided to explain the purpose once again. As soon as we have some updates/news in our blog, you’ll see “New stuff” badge on the top menu which is a link to the article.

The post Progress Update (December) appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Today we’re excited to announce that we’ve pushed multiple new features that have been requested by many of you.

Export CSV, Excel

The title speaks for itself. In addition to the existing ability to export data into Google Drive, from now on you can do the same into a file (CSV and Excel).

Last 7 days instead of weekly

In our previous version, getting back to work on Monday and opening Everhour, you saw a blank tracking page. To verify the time spent last week, you had to open reports, then return back and make necessary corrections. In some cases, you had to switch back and forth multiple times, which is not very convenient. Not anymore!

From now on, our /track page shows the last 7 days. So you can easily verify the reported time at the beginning of each week.

Configure time format & rounding

Many of our customers asked for an opportunity to manage their time rounding settings.

Some people were saying that if they spent 2 hrs 46 minutes, they expect to see it as is, do not round this to 3 hrs. Others told us that they always round up and bill their clients by the quarter-hour. So, 2h 13m is actually 2h 15m

From now on, if you open your profile settings, you’ll notice a time rounding dropdown with 7 options {none, 5m, 10m, 15m, 20m, 30m, 1h}

In addition, we’ve decided to give you the ability to control the display format. You can choose of the following: 1:15, 1h 15 min or 1.25

Lock time edit for members

Everhour is a very simple yet flexible tool, but when it comes to teamwork, there are certain rules and procedures to respect. For this reason, we give admins the possibility to limit other colleagues in changing their timesheets after a certain period of time

Go to your organization settings and choose from one of the available options: {none, 3 days, 5 days, week, 2 weeks, month).

Say I’m a regular member in an organization with a “weekly” limit configured. In such a case, on Monday I was no longer able to change entries I made on the previous Monday and earlier.

This feature is optional and designed for those who really need it.

Reporting: show tasks with an estimate but without time

Until recently, a task shows up in reports only in case it has some time reported. But after we added estimates, this is not enough.

For instance, you can set estimates before starting a project and export initial project assessment. Or you can see a report of project remaining time, not only hours spent.

Right now you can filter your Task report to show all tasks, with just estimates or only with reported time.

Autocomplete in extension

Finally, we are pleased to inform you that our browser extension input now has all the same features (suggests, highlights) that we have on our website.

We hope you dig these new features, and as always, we’d love to hear your feedback!

The post Progress Update (October) appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Today we’d like to share with you some important news about Everhour.

Over the next few weeks, we’re introducing pricing for Everhour. All of the details including price packages and transitional information are below.

The post Introducing Price Packages appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Fast forward to today, we are unhappy to announce the discontinuation of the Podio integration. There are basically 2 reasons:

1) Podio has quite a specific structure compared to other tools like Basecamp, Trello, Asana, or Github. Which is hard to follow and embed.

2) In the past 6 months, we have had very poor traffic from Podio compared to other sources, thus we decided to focus on other tools. Receive tons of feedback/ideas daily and only a dozen of us. Have to be very careful with priorities.

And of course, we don’t want to sell a poor integration.

As the first step, we have already unlisted Everhour from Podio marketing pages. Next, we will remove “Podio Connect” button from the entire app and stop syncing existing projects.

Sorry to disappoint you 🙁

You’ll still be able to log in to your account, see past report and even track time, but without the possibility to refer tasks from Podio.

The post Removing Podio Integration appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Sorry friends for keeping you in the dark for so long. We’ve even started getting emails like “Are you guys still alive?”. We are! 🙂 Just super busy with ongoing work.

There are 2 major things we’d like to share with you today. The first is about our latest progress and the second is about our long-term plans.

So, what exactly have we done recently?

We were working hard on our browser extension. Asana users may have already noticed changes. Probably next week the same thing will be released for Trello and Basecamp, and one or two weeks later –  Github and Pivotal.

1. Estimates & the remaining time

From now on, every task could have an estimate. The remaining time is calculated automatically by the formula: “Estimate – Time Reported”. If reported time >  estimate, show overdue message.

You can manually update/override the Remaining field anytime. This way you can see the original estimate, reported time, and actual time left for completion.

Example. Lets say the Original estimate was 2h, Reported time – 3h 20m => Overdue = 1h 20m. But it says nothing about the actual remaining time. Fix that by updating the auto-calculated value:

Estimate value will also be listed in Report by Task.

2. Report time manually

You could have forgotten to report time yesterday or have started working on something earlier today and forgotten to start the timer. Now, you can manually report this time directly from Asana, without even visiting the Everhour website.

3. Time distribution

Click the “Reported time” label and in the pop-over, you’ll see who was working on the task and the amount of time he reported.

Now briefly about our long-term plans

We’ve decided to release the all-new Everhour later this year. No panic, please 🙂 It will be a completely separate code base and won’t affect you guys unless you agree to migrate.

We will gradually release new Everhour for best-in-class Asana, Basecamp, and Trello time tracking. Priorities are based on our user base and partnership agreements.

We want Everhour to provide the best, almost native time tracking experience for people who already use such great tools as Asana, Trello, Github, and Basecamp. And we spent a huge amount of time working on usability.

It also means that we will deprecate many customary features such as single-line time input, calendar, etc. All time tracking will happen only inside 3d party tools handled by our browser extension and only per task. Going forward, we will have an API and ask our partners to integrate with us on the web and mobile.

So, our key goals are:

• Fully automated sync. No need to create the same projects, and invite the same members on the Everhour side. The entire structure will be defined by integration;
• No more @mentions;
• Super easy signup for new teammates. Literally in 2 clicks;
• Simplified and, at the same time, more integration-narrowed reports;
• Summary reports by project/member;
• Improved invoicing & money analysis;
• Admin feature to manage/edit employees’ time;
• and more…

The first sneak peek previews are below:

The post Progress Update (May) appeared first on Everhour Blog.

The last year has been very busy and productive and to celebrate all the achievements of 2014, we’ve prepared very special infographics.

Stay healthy, optimistic and let your dreams come true throughout the new year!

Have Joyful Holidays!

۰̮̑●̮̑۰★⋰⋱☆⋰⋱★⋰⋱☆⋰⋱★⋰⋱☆⋰⋱★۰̮̑●̮̑۰

[divider type=”dashed” spacing=”10″]

The post Merry Xmas & Happy New Year! appeared first on Everhour Blog.

I know it’s been quite some time since the last extension update was released but it doesn’t mean we’ve been idling away. In fact, we’ve devoted so much time to communicating with the users, gathering tons of valuable feedback, and analyzing product stats. Thanks a lot to everyone who has engaged in discussions, it’s very appreciated!

At the moment, the main thing on our agenda is the Everhour extension. Besides further enhancing the current functionality, we’re going to finally fit the needs of Safari and Firefox users. On the whole, among other tweaks the coming updates will include:

1. An opportunity to set estimates within all supported third-party tools
2. Browser add-ons for Safari & Firefox
3. Of course, getting rid of any bugs
4. And suggestion logic implementation

Disclaimer: the described functionality is still under development and not available in the app so far.

In this very post, we’d like to focus mostly on the planned estimate feature and present our vision of how things are supposed to work. As usual, we’re doing this in advance to let you guys share any thoughts or improvement ideas, so feel free to speak your mind.

Task estimates

There is something Asana, Trello, Basecamp, GitHub have in common – none of the tools provide an opportunity for estimating tasks and afterward comparing actual time spent with the estimates. Pivotal Tracker does have story points but they still don’t fully solve the problem.

Our idea is to always display an estimate next to the number of tracked hours. Clicking an estimate will trigger a pop-over window allowing you to set or update estimates while staying right on the page of your project management system.

Initially, we considered adding a drop-down list of fixed values, e.g. the Fibonacci sequence but then decided to keep it really simple: you can enter 1 h or 15 min or any other number yourself.

Besides, we thought it might be very helpful to have some kind of a task progress indicator that can be implemented via an icon of a specific color:

• grey means there is no estimate set
• green means an estimate ≤ total time spent
• yellow means time spent/estimate ratio ≤ 1.2
• red means time spent/estimate ratio > 1.2

Guys, what do you think about this visualization concept?

The same functionality will be available on the task details page as well.

The timer button drop-down

You may have also noticed that the timer button looks a bit different – that’s because it’s going to be upgraded with a drop-down menu. It will allow to manually enter time to be added to the tracked hours.

For instance, if after working on a task for some time you realize the timer hasn’t been started, all you need to do is select this option, enter e.g. 15 min, and resume your timer from there.

Reports

Time estimates will also be included in reports which are now available only for Pivotal Tracker integration.

For example, in the Report by task below, the highlighted task has been estimated to take 6 hours. The team has spent 10 hours on it from August, 1 to August, 31 and 16 hours in total meaning that the work has been done beyond the chosen time period as well.

Total time details

There is one more thing we haven’t figured out yet and would be happy to discuss with you.

Let’s say when in Trello, one can see that 10 hours have been spent on a certain card. However, it’s not clear whether one person has tracked all this time or several team members have participated. If the latter is true, you still don’t know each member’s exact contribution. With a technical task, a developer may spend only 2 hours while 8 more hours may be distributed between design, QA, or PM activities.

So the question is: is it necessary to have time allocation details right on a task list page of a third-party tool, or would you rather go to Everhour reports when needed?

Please let us know your opinion since we want to make changes based on actual user needs, not assumptions. As always, we’re looking forward to both your comments and emails at mike.kulakov {at} everhour.com.

The post Estimates & More Extension Improvements Coming appeared first on Everhour Blog.

FreshBooks as well as Xero is one of the most popular accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. Since we first introduced Xero sync to test out the whole concept of invoicing integration, we’ve been getting too many requests to add FreshBooks, so many that we couldn’t simply neglect them.

By implementing the invoicing, we help you fight time-consuming and tiring copy-pasting. Instead of switching between Everhour/FreshBooks tabs to fill in an invoice, you can properly complete all the steps in Everhour right away: select the required time period, check filters, set data grouping, and choose your client. Voilà!

How the integration works

We’ve made the process as simple as it could be. Go to the Reports page and select Invoicing from the menu. After that you will need to log into Freshbooks: just enter your domain name and click Authorize.

Once it’s done, we’ll pull up a list of your clients so that you can pick the one you need.

Note: the rate and payment amount will be measured in generic units. You’ll have the necessary currency set in FreshBooks.

Choose a task type, customize the billing rate and select an option for grouping time entries (by project/member/week/each line separately/etc.). As soon as the necessary parameters are defined, ​​we’ll generate a real-time preview based on your selection.

Finally, clicking the Export button will generate a new draft invoice in FreshBooks.

You can either continue editing this very invoice or move on to exporting other ones from Everhour.

Everything is so crystal clear, isn’t it?

We’ve started with a very straightforward integration allowing for now to only export time spent. There is no opportunity for storing rates, discounts, currencies, or syncing invoices that have already been sent.

But of course, we understand there is a lot of room for improvement and we are open to discussing that – check a dedicated blog post on the matter. So if you feel like you have reasonable and realistic ideas in mind, go ahead and tell us why they are worth implementing. We are always happy to make the product better 🙂

The post Introducing FreshBooks Integration appeared first on Everhour Blog.