Is there any way to delete time spent when it was copied from another work item?

Vicky Pagnaer (63●14) | asked Jul 27 '17, 8:43 a.m.

When you copy a work item, you can select to copy "Time Spent" to the new Work Item. Is there any way to remove this option or to block it for admins only (we really don't want our users to do this, but I don't see any way to force it).

If they have used it anyway, can this value be removed somehow from the copied work item? It now shows "Time spent = 3 hours" even though this is a new work item with a new estimate etc.

PS: This throws off our reporting, so we want to avoid this if at all possible...

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Nate Decker (378●1●28●58) | answered Jul 27 '17, 9:14 a.m.

In the Process Configuration of the project area, you can configure your work items so that the Time Spent attribute is always synchronized to th time sheet entries. No time sheet entries, no time spent.

Eclipse Instructions:

To configure this, open the project area's Process Configuration tab and drill down to:

Project Configuration > Configuration Data > Planning > Time Tracking

Check the box under "Time tracking" with the label "Synchronize Time Spent with Time Tracking".

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Vicky Pagnaer commented Jul 27 '17, 9:18 a.m.

Hi Mark,

This option is already checked with us. It is specific to when you copy work items and you select to copy "Time Spent" that this disconnect occurs. There are no time sheet entries on the new work item, but there is Time Spent...

Nate Decker commented Jul 27 '17, 9:21 a.m. | edited Jul 27 '17, 9:22 a.m.

Who is Mark?

The behavior you are describing sounds like a bug or something, but I could be misremembering how it works. In our environment, we didn't like the out-of-the-box "synchronize" behavior (it was buggy). So we wrote our own follow-up action which we called "Synchronize Time Spent". That might be why I can no longer remember how the out-of-the-box synchronization works. I can provide you with the code if you are interested in using it yourself, but deploying custom pre-conditions and follow-up actions is a little bit more advanced than what many users typically are willing to do so I didn't volunteer that solution out-of-the-gate.

Vicky Pagnaer commented Jul 27 '17, 9:28 a.m.

I apologize, Nate!

It does appear to be a bug, when you copy Time Spent - it should copy over the Time Tracked as well, no? So that this synchronization is still active... (at least, when this option is "on").

We haven't done any customizations yet, so I'll first try the configuration solution and see if it's still needed then. And now I know a workaround (which does not include deleting the work item and adding a new one :-) ).

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Nate Decker (378●1●28●58) | answered Jul 27 '17, 9:18 a.m.

It occurs to me that you may have decided in your process to allow users to directly modify the Time Spent attribute without requiring that they enter timesheet entries. In this scenario, one option would be to make the attribute read-only when the work item is in the Created state. You can do this by configuring the out-of-the-box operation behavior aptly named "Read-Only Attributes for Type and State".

If this pre-condition is enabled for all initial states, users will be forced to uncheck the box when copying a work item or the copy will fail. They will also be forced to advance a work item to the next state before they can update the Time Spent attribute.

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Vicky Pagnaer commented Jul 27 '17, 9:21 a.m.

Thank you, I will try this as well to prevent this in the future!

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Vicky Pagnaer (63●14) | answered Jul 27 '17, 9:20 a.m.

Update: I just tried adding an estimate & time tracking (your comment made me think of this) and afterwards removing the estimate and the time tracking and now the Time Spent / Progress has been reset. Very weird!

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Nate Decker commented Jul 27 '17, 9:24 a.m.

The Time Spent shouldn't be tied to the estimate, but it makes sense that removing the Time Tracking would reset the Time Spent. That was the behavior I would have expected to see.

It's all about the answers!

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