How to your time

Goals

Time tracking is required by the MSE program, but you will also benefit from doing it right. Knowing your resources and capabilities will enable better planning and give you more control over your life. You will also have access to your teammates' reports, which provides you with invaluable information to detect social loafers and overachievers.

Scope

These instructions cover only web interface of Toggl and do not touch the smartphone application. App interface is different, but pretty intuitive, on all platforms, and no student so far was unable to understand it.

Prerequisites

You will need a computer or smartphone with Internet access to use Toggl. An Internet connection is not required to track your time with a smartphone, but you will need it to synchronize data. Since you've managed to enter the MSE program, we assume you're smart and capable enough to operate a computer and a web browser, or to install a smartphone application.

Duration

This instruction will teach you how to use Toggl time tracker in the MSE program. It will take about 5 minutes to read and comprehend, but you will need some practice to make your time tracking consistent. There are just 7 simple steps to start tracking your time.

Warning:

Your life will never be the same after you start tracking your time! Quantitative management is highly addictive, but it is not subject to ATF regulations. Please, be careful.

This is a very informal set of instructions made by students and for students. It does not represent official position of the University. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published under Creative Commons license.

Table of Contents

1. Registration32. Workspaces how to join your team53. Adding projects64. Time tracking standard75. Tracking your time through the Toggl web interface86. Building reports107. How to know your progress12Objectives achieved13

1. Registration

Warning: If you already have a personal Toggl account, just tell your Studio Manager your email address and skip to the next step.

This step will guide you through the Toggl interface to create a new account. Unfortunately, registration is required to track your time records and not combine it with someone else's data.

There are three possible ways to register a new account:

- Invitation

- Website

- Smartphone app

Register by invitation

Perhaps the Studio Manager has already invited you to join your team. In this case you have an invitation email similar to the one in Figure 1.1. Click on the link marked with the arrow and proceed to the Web Signup page. In this case, Toggl will automatically collect your email and add you to the team.

Figure 1.1 Invitation email

Web Signup

If you didn't get an invitation from the Studio Manager, open this link: https://www.toggl.com/signup . You will see a registration form similar to Figure 1.2. Fill in your email address and your desired password or sign up with your Google account.

Figure 1.2 Toggl Signup page.

After a successful registration, you will get a welcome email from Toggl. It might also ask you to confirm your email address by opening a link in the message. Figure 1.3 Toggl welcome email

Now, when you have Toggl account, you can proceed to Step 2 and join your team workspace.

2. Workspaces how to join your team

Workspaces are isolated groups for activities each with its own sharing settings. You can share some activities with your teammates, but not with co-workers, and vice versa. You can also keep some activities in your personal workspace and not share them with anyone.

In the SE program, we use workspaces to organize teams. This way, you, your mentor and teammates have access to team reports. You can track your personal time and team effort spent on project. Your mentors also can control how much workload you have in your core courses. If your team is overloaded, you can sit together and do some analysis based on data rather than guesstimates. Team reports are invaluable information sources for all of you.

There are two ways to join a team workspace: sign up by link from an invitation email and connect through your existing account.

Invitation email

If you signed up by the link from an invitation email (Section 1, Register by invitation), you should already have access to your team workspace, but you still don't have a personal one. We highly recommend you create it, so stay tuned. On the Toggl website, open dropdown with your user name at top right corner, and select Workspaces (marked with the arrow in Figure 2.1). Then, click the create new workspace link at the bottom of the page (circled), name it, and you're all done! Now you are ready to proceed to the Step 3, Adding projects.Figure 2.1 Creating a workspace

Connecting through your existing account

First, tell the Studio Manager your Toggl email and team name so he can add you. You will get an email with an invitation, which you can completely ignore. Now log in to the Toggl, and you will see a message at top of the page right below the menu bar (see Figure 2.2). Click Join (marked with the circle). Now, you have access to the team workspace! You're ready to proceed to Step 3 and add some projects.Figure 2.2 Joining team from your existing account

3. Adding projects

Projects are categories for time tracking activities within a workspace. If you use Toggl to track time for work, Toggl projects represent real projects. You cannot assign more than one project to a time record, but you can have time records without any associated project.

In the SE program, we use projects to track courses. The Studio Manager should add all your courses to the team workspace, so if you don't see one, let him know. You can soon find that you can add projects by yourself, but it is better to ask Studio Manager. Course names should be consistent across all teams to collect stats. All unknown courses/projects will be counted as electives. If you misspell a project name it will be counted as an elective.

Now, when you have a general idea about projects (i.e., courses), let's find how to add one.

Core courses

Rule of thumb don't add core courses by yourself; rather, ask the Studio Manager.

Electives

You can add electives on your own, though. An elective will not be counted in the email at the start of semester, telling how many students selected some course, but you can live with it.

Click Projects at the top menu bar (Figure 3.1 , circle 1), hit the Create Project button (circle 2), enter project name, and hit another Create Project button (circle 3). That's it, you just added a project!Figure 3.1 Adding project

Personal activities

Personal activities are added exactly the same way as your elective courses, but you need to select a personal workspace first (see Figure 3.2). Click on you personal workspace name, make sure it is underlined, and you're free to go. Adding projects to a personal workspace is exactly the same as adding to the team's workspace.

Figure 3.2 selecting personal workspace

Now when you have all you courses in Toggl, you can start time tracking.

4. Time tracking standard

It is important to track time consistently across all teams. This section contains five simple commandments that aim to ensure your one hour of time is roughly the same as any other students'. If you don't follow these rules, your time tracking isn't worth the effort, so please do it right.

First commandment Thou shall not add personal activities to the team workspace.

Otherwise, your team stats will be skewed.Second commandment Thou shall log time spent in classes.

This time also counts, and you always can see delinquents by average effort of less than an hour on Communication.Third commandment Remember the Monday deadline to log time for the past week. Weekly reports are built on Tuesday morning, so if you don't... you didn't do anything last week.Fourth commandment - Honor projects created by the Studio Manager. Otherwise, your time spent on a core course might be counted as an elective or not counted at all.Fifth commandment Don't lie to yourself. If you intended to work three hours on a project but watched cat videos instead, it is not a time spent on project. Only focused work counts.

Figure 4.1 Tony looks at time logging delinquents

5. Tracking your time through the Toggl web interface

Before reading this section, please consider looking at the Toggl tutorial with a lot of nice videos and pictures http://support.toggl.com/tracking-time/So far we've covered a lot of ground, but we didn't start tracking your time. It is pretty simple, and you even have two options. You can use timer - yes, just like a sport timer - and track in real time. Or, you can add time entries manually, e.g., if you track time in other system, just transfer records once a week.

Tracking with a timer

Go to the Toggl website, click the Timer at the top menu bar, enter the task name, select a project, and click the Start button to start the timer (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Starting the timer

When you're done, click Stop or Discard (see Figure 5.2)

Figure 5.2 Stopping timer

Adding time records manually

Go to the Toggl website and click the Timer in the top menu bar. In the top right corner, click the Add manually link. The Interface will switch into manual mode, so you can specify the start and end of each task (see Figure 5.3)

Figure 5.3 adding time records manually

That's it. Now you can add time records in your team workspace, so it's time to go to the next step and build some reports.

6. Building reports

Before reading this section, you should know Toggl has a tutorial on how to build reports. I hope you watched their time tracking tutorial and understand how much better it is compared to this manual.http://support.toggl.com/category/reporting/As mentioned at the beginning of this manual, team reports are one of the main reasons to do time tracking. This section will provide a quick walkthrough of the basic report functions: select report type, select time range and filter by team member(s).Select report typeGo to Toggl website, click Reports in the top menu bar, select report type (see Figure 6.1). Yes, it's that easy.

Figure 6.1 Selecting report typeChange time rangeIn the top right corner, click on the time range (e.g., This week). Select the new time range, it will be applied automatically (see Figure 6.2).Figure 6.2 selecting report time rangeFilter by team memberRight below the report type, there are three filter controls: Team, Client and Project. Open the dropdown, select a filter (e.g., single team member), and hit Apply (see Figure 6.3). That's it!Figure 6.3 filtering report by team member

Congratulations, now you know how to use team reports!

7. How to know your progressSigns something is wrong with your time tracking

- Your time entries overlap

- Your team average effort is 2 times higher than any other team's

- You (or any of your teammates ) logged 14+ hours a single day

- You (or any of your teammates) logged 80+ hours a single week

- Your 12-unit course takes less than 4 hours a week

- You start tracking visits to bathroom

- Coffee doesn't help anymore

Signs you're doing it right- You know how much time it takes to read one page

- You know how many real hours of focused work are in your week

- You can plan your schedule two weeks ahead by looking at the syllabus

- You didn't have overnights this semester

- You were never caught asleep in a lecture

Objectives achieved

After reading this manual you have completed four tasks:

- Created your Toggl account

- Joined a team workspace

- Learned how to track your time correctly

- Learned how to view your team reports

Happy time tracking and...May the force be with you!13