Web TimeSheet Reporting Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Replicon Web TimeSheet report showcase video. The intent of this video is to demonstrate the flexibility and ease of use of the Replicon reporting tool. Replicon has created the Web TimeSheet report engine from the ground up, to provide customers with a powerful reporting platform. For a larger version of this video please visit www. replicon.com/videos.

In today's video we are going to cover the following: We're going to look at an overview of the reporting screens and where we can find all the information. We're going to look at the different types of reports that are available within the system- everything from pivot reports like excel, standard row and column reports, and even the graphical reports that are in the system. We're going to look into doing some ground up report creation, and that is going to happen through a couple of different scenarios. One is a billing type scenario, where customer needs billing information, and the other one is a project status type scenario, where you are a project leader and you need to understand where your projects are at from a costing perspective. After that we will look at getting the data out of Web TimeSheet, because you are going to want to move that data to a billing system, or maybe its even just a PDF to managers on a regular basis via email.

Let's get started.

This is how the reports screen will look to you after you've clicked the reports menu button in the top navigation bar. You'll notice to the left that there are several reporting groups that are collapsable and expandable as you wish. This groups together similar reports in the system. At the very top of this left hand navigation menu you'll see the management options that let you list the reports as a whole in the main frame, add, manage and schedule reports to be sent out at timed intervals. The main frame of the reporting screen by default shows you a listing of all the reports in the system, and again these sections are collapsable to only show the relevant sections to your end users.

There are 3 main types of reports within the Replicon reporting module. Pivot reports, standard row and column reports and graphical reports. Now Pivot reports present and excel like interface, in that it gives you a drag and drop capability to add or remove fields to a given graphical report. Not only does pivot reporting cover time off items, as we see here with total days allowed and days remaining, there are also pivot reports for other key business aspects, such as project costing. Here we brought up the project status hours pivot report to look at project actuals vs project estimates. We also have the ability to bring up simple timesheet data and compare billable vs non-billable hours as we are seeing here. The second type of report that we are going to look at are the standard reports. These are standard row column reports that allow for grouping and detail options to display data in a traditional format. The screen layout of our standard report output has some common features throughout each. At the very top of each report screen you will see a list of filters. You’ll then have an option to consolidate the view that you are seeing, or leave it in a more detailed format.

Below that are a row of functionality buttons. Each of these buttons will allow us to modify the report output, and/or print, email and export the data to other applications. The output portion of the report consists of a listing at the very top, a header containing the information about the filter selected to contain this data, and then of course below that all of the detail related to the report as you run it.

Now in this situation we’re looking at timesheet data, and you may or may not need this level of detail. For example, maybe you’re not interested in the exact entry date the user was making their time entries. Modifications are very simple- it’s just a matter of going to settings. Looking at the fields that are on the report, unchecking the entry date checkbox, saving and re-running the report. You’ll see that almost instantly that report now has the entry date column removed. It makes the data a lot easier to manage. Now if you wanted to add some grouping levels to this report, we can look at grouping by user name, to again reduce the amount of data that we are seeing. This is a simple change again. By going to the grouping tab, choosing to group by user name, saving and running the report, we can now see that all of the entries are grouped based on user. In addition to using the settings button to modify report output you have the ability to both email and PDF your report, and/or export to excel. The third type of report that we’re going to look at today are the graphical reports within Web TimeSheet. These graphical reports are identified on the left hand menu with a small graph beside their name. You’ll see that the graphical reports are represented in a 3-d graphical format. You can actually drill down into any of the items on these reports to see more detail relating to the values. You can easily return back to the graphical report by clicking the link above, and continue to drill down into other items.

Now we’re going to look at creating a report from the ground up. The first scenario we’re going to look at is a situation where a customer has called you, they need to understand what you are going to be billing them at the end of the month, and they’d like an update, and to know where is their billing at to date so far.

This is very easy to achieve, even with the canned reports in Web TimeSheet, but we are going to do this from scratch. So the first thing we are going to do is just choose to add a report name. The report name we’re going to say is ABC (Client Name) Billing to Date for October. The folder we are going to store this in is the actual billing reports folder so that it is easy for us to find later. The access level we are going to give for this report is to Administrators, or anybody that has the all reports permission. We’re going to base this report on one of our billing reports- the Timesheet Billing report. You’ll see once we choose the template, we then have several fields, grouping option and column order that we can use to format the default data that we see on this report. These tabs actually mimic the tabs that you would see after clicking the settings button once the report is generated. I’m going to leave the defaults for now and we’ll look at modifying these after the fact. Clicking the save button will save the settings I’ve entered, and create an entry under the billing reports on the left hand navigation menu. By clicking our ABC Billing To date for October report, we will bring up our report that we saved.

Now here we can see all the user’s billable hours for the entire durations of the projects, and this is for all clients and all projects. We actually want to reduce that just to ABC, so we are going to select specific clients here in the client filter and then rerun the report. Now you can see that I’m only seeing ABC Inc’s projects, and a full summary at the bottom of all the billable hours to date, and the billable amount.

Now, the customer isn’t concerned with this level of detail, they would just simply like to know what their total billable hours and amounts are for the month. So we are going to go ahead and choose the consolidated view to reduce the amount of data a little more. Now we can see the breakdown for each project with a full amount summary for ABC Inc as the last line.

Now, I’d like to forward this information on to the customer, so in this case I’m going to go ahead and email it to them. I can enter the email of choice, and I’m going to choose to send it in excel format. And one of the benefits of sending it in excel format, and we’ll see that same benefit here, is that we actually use XML to form our xl exports. The difference from a CSV is that these excel files actually contain formatting information, which here you can see the bolding. We’re also going to be able to maintain currency data types, so that even though these fields have currency symbols, they are still completely calculable within the excel interface.

The second scenario that I want to cover is one that a project manager might use when accessing Web TimeSheet. In this scenario the project manager would like to have a detailed view of the projects on his watch and make sure tha they are not running over budget and they are on track.

For this, I would look at adding a report here, again simply by adding a name, project Status For Me, I’m going to put this in the project report section which makes sense. I’m going to say that only project a manager can access this report, and the administrator. I’m going to base this report on one of the project reports we have in the system now. That is the project task progress report.

Here by default the project name is going to display task name with a period. We’re also going to add some items her, such as the actual hours, used hours and remaining hours. Save this report, and we’ll scroll down to the project reports. You can view the report by clicking the report name in the report listing. By default this is bringing up all the projects that I am the project leader for. This is bring up the task, in this case the project name, the time period and the actual hours that were entered, as well as the percentage of hours used and the remaining hours percentage. So these are calculated fields based on the estimated hours that I’ve put into each of these projects. I’m able to see that half of my hours have been used in this week alone on the project. I still have half of them left, so we can make adjustments as I need to on the resources on the projects, based on the information that Web TimeSheet is giving me.

This concludes the Report Showcase video.

Just to recap, we looked at an overview of the reporting screens, we looked at the different reporting types that are available in Web TimeSheet, including pivot, standard and graphical. We looked at how easy it is to modify those reports within Web TimeSheet, and how we can do that on the fly. We’ve looked at taking data out of the product, through email and PDF’ing reports to managers and clients, as well as excel and modifying that data outside of the application to meet any of your needs. We’ve looked at a couple of real world scenarios that allowed us to create reports form the ground up. Without any canned usage at all, we were able to develop these reports in a very short time.

I’d like to thank you for your time today, and if you guys have any issues or concerns, please feel free to take atest drive of the fully functional version of Web TimeSheet from our website. You can also watch one of the quicktours that are available, or attend a webinar and see a live interactive demonstration of the product. Additionally, you can contact us at any of the numbers you see below.

Thanks, and have a great day!