Timesheet Approvals
SpiraPlan includes a powerful time tracking system that lets users submit their time spent against assigned tasks and incidents. The latest version adds the functionality that allows timesheet managers to be able to review and approve timesheets as needed.
To use this new feature, you will need to first enable timesheet approval management (which is disabled by default):
Once that is enabled, SpiraPlan provides a new Enterprise-level screen for timesheet managers to view the submitted timesheets from members of the organization:
The timesheet managers can easily click on any of the rows in the grid, which will then display the details of the timesheet for them to review. From here they can either Approve or Reject the timesheet based on what the user submitted.
For example, the submitter may have accidentally submitted more hours per day than is allowed by company policies, or submitted time against a non-working day. The timesheet manager can reject the timesheet with a comment to explain it has been rejected:
Once the timesheet has been corrected, the end user can resubmit the timesheet for approval, and the timesheet manager can mark it as approved.
Once approved, the timesheet can no longer be edited and is now part of the audit trail of the system for a time management and billing standpoint.
History Difference Viewing
The new version of Spira introduces a new artifact history difference highlighting capability that makes it easy to see what words were changed in a text field between two versions of a requirement, test case, risk or other product artifact:
Previously, Spira would only have shown the old and new text values as simple text with no way to easily see what had changed at a glance.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
This new release includes the following other enhancements and bug fixes:
- Allow users to view history detail records that happened prior to an artifact being deleted [IN:10215]
- Convert adding an artifact to the timesheet from a 2 step process to a 1 step process, by immediately creating the row when it is selected from the dropdown [IN:10317]
- Fix system admins, who are not also timesheet managers, from being able to update other users' timesheets via the API [IN:10545]
- Fix the API to retrieve an individual timesheet throwing an error when requesting a timesheet that does not exist [IN:10507]
- Fix the label under the My Timesheet grid to always show and to be called "Last Update" [IN:10572]
- Fix the my timesheet grid to properly updated the disabled state of timesheet rows, after you switch timesheets using the calendar control [IN:10436]
- Fix timesheets not being fully editable or able to be deleted when timesheet approvals are disabled, regardless of the timesheet's status [IN:10410]
- Improve performance when refreshing the test case parameters hierarchy (by an estimated 45%) [IN:10306]
- Improve the performance of inserting a new requirement [IN:7974]
- Improve the SpiraApp reloadGrid function to allow it to refresh the full artifact list grid [IN:10565]
- Log the initial database version in the installer's log file when performing any upgrade task [IN:10387]
- Prevent drag and drop mouse operations on time inputs on my timesheet, to ensure times are always correctly recorded [IN:10424]
- Return the user's MFA status in v7 API calls that return user information, to provide this useful extra information to API end users [IN:10396]
Where Can I Learn More?
- For more details on all of the new features, enhancements and bug-fixes in Spira v8.7, please refer to the release notes.
- For comprehensive documentation on the new Timesheet functionality, please refer to the Timesheet section of SpiraDocs.