Summary
For Service Delivery, there is a tenant admin setting, data model permissions (for Time Entry and Timesheet) and a Workflow Module permission ("Timesheets")
The Time Entry and Timesheet models enable you to track time spent on individual projects/customers, and then group User time for approval each week
In the "Timesheets" Home feature, Users can view/create Time Entries and submit Timesheets
You configure "Time Tracking" settings to (1) specify which models (e.g. Projects, Tasks or Companies) Time Entries can be associated with (i.e. that you can track time on), and (2) which Time Entry properties show as columns in the "Timesheets" Home feature
"Utilization" is a Table Widget specifically designed for analyzing utilization/capacity for individual Users and overall Teams
Who is this article for?
All Planhat Users who work in Service Delivery
This article is about Service Delivery functionality. If you don't have access to Service Delivery features and would like to add them, please speak with your CSM.
Series
We have a series of articles on Service Delivery:
Service Delivery - specialist technical features ⬅️ You are here
Data models:
Time tracking from the perspective of different personas:
Article contents
Introduction
The Planhat platform can be used for a wide variety of applications. Because it has a great range of features, and can be customized in numerous ways, it solves many different business needs.
One of the use cases where Planhat can help is in Service Delivery (e.g. Professional Services). You can use Planhat for project/task management, time tracking, and much more.
Many features of Planhat's "core" platform are great for Service Delivery - Workflows, Calendar, Dashboards, Field Rules, and so on.
In this article, we will focus on additional technical elements in Planhat that have been specially designed for Service Delivery. We'll give you an overview of this extra functionality, with links to more in-depth articles for further details.
Permissions
There are 3 types of permissions that need to be enabled to give access to all the features specific to Service Delivery. All of these permissions are configured within the "Settings" Global Tool. Permissions can be customized for different types of Users within your tenant, via Roles.
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Firstly, within "Admin Settings" (accessible only by "Super Admins", i.e. Planhat staff; shown in the bottom left of the screenshot above), a feature flag for Service Delivery features needs to be toggled on
If you do not have Service Delivery as part of your Planhat package but would like to add it, please discuss this with your CSM
The next two types of permissions can then be enabled/disabled by you (Planhat admins) when configuring Roles - you can read more about Roles here. If you can't see any of these permissions available to select in your Roles, please reach out to your CSM - the permissions need to be enabled on a tenant level (by Planhat "Super Admins" (staff)) before you can enable them in Roles.
There are sets of data model permissions for both "Time Entry" and "Timesheet", which are the two additional data models specifically for Service Delivery, as described in the next section of this article
As with other data model permissions, you have a lot of granular control, as you can separately configure Create/View/Update/Remove/Export permissions for each data model for each Role, and you can click on each model to list all their respective properties/fields and configure the permissions for those separately too (see Tip box below)
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Within the "Workflow" tab within Roles, you'll find "Time Tracking" listed at the bottom of the Module permissions, just before the "Features" section
This is a simple toggle switch - ensure it's turned on for relevant Roles
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🚀 Tip
Although in some cases you may simply want to turn on all permissions for everyone, there are some circumstances where it's best that some Roles don't have everything enabled.
For example, you may choose to restrict Update permissions for the Timesheet "Status" field as part of your approval flow, so only Managers can approve Timesheets (read more here and here); example screenshot below. Similarly, you may only want certain Roles to be able to export Timesheets.
With Planhat's granular permissions structure, it's easy for you to configure Service Delivery permissions to suit your specific business needs.
Data models: Time Entry and Timesheet
In Planhat, data is structured in data models, similar to the concept of objects you may be familiar with from other tools. Examples of Planhat models are Company, End User, Opportunity, License, Asset, Conversation, and more. For further information about Planhat models, check out our separate article here.
There are two data models specifically designed for time tracking in Service Delivery.
Time Entry - each Time Entry record is an individual time log, representing time worked by a specific Planhat User on a specific day, optionally associated with a specific record of another model (e.g. a particular Project)
Timesheet - each Timesheet record is a collection of Time Entries submitted by a specific User for a specific week
Like other Planhat models, both of these can have custom fields, Field Rules, Previews (concise Profiles), be visualized in Pages (such as Data Tables) and Data Explorer, have records bulk imported, and so on.
As with other models, you manage fields, Field Rules and Profiles/Previews within the "Data" Global Tool for admins, as pictured below.
📌 Definitions
Planhat "data models" are equivalent to the "objects" you may be familiar with in other tools
You can think of them as like the sheets/columns of a spreadsheet
Examples of Planhat models are Company, End User, License and Opportunity
"Records" are data inside a model
They are equivalent to the rows within a spreadsheet
For example, within the Company model, records could be "Apple", "Microsoft" and "Google"
📚 Further reading
"Time Tracking" settings
Within the "Settings" Global Tool, there is a specific section for "Time Tracking".
There are two elements to the "Time Tracking" settings:
At the top, you choose which data models you would like to be able to associate Time Entries with, such as Tasks, Workflows or Companies
Use case: this is vital setup for work with Time Entries, and means you can e.g. log that you spent 2 hours on Project X, or 5 hours on Task Y, and so on
Instructions:
Click "+ Add object" to add another model
Click the trash can (dustbin) icon to remove a model from the list
📌 Important to note
There are actually two types of Projects in Planhat, so ensure you select the correct one for your needs:
(1) "Project" is a type of Workflow (an automated series of steps, typically Tasks); the other type of Workflow is Sequence
(2) "Project" is separately a data model in Planhat, which can have associated time-series data (Metrics)
Underneath in these settings, you can configure which properties/fields are shown as columns in the "Timesheets" Home feature, described in the next part of this article
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"Timesheets" Home feature
Although the Home of each User can be personalized via different Sections and Pages, there are a series of features that are available for all Users, provided they have the required permissions. Each User can pin up to 3 of these Home features for speedy access, accessing the others via "... More". One of these Home features, specific to Service Delivery, is called "Timesheets" (not to be confused with the Timesheet data model).
The "Timesheets" Home feature is used by Users (of Planhat - i.e. you and your colleagues) for time tracking. Specifically, it enables you to:
View the time you have logged (as Time Entries) on each day, organized by week
Add Time Entries in bulk (noting that you can also create Time Entries in other ways too)
Submit each week's Timesheet
Here's an example of what the "Timesheets" Home feature can look like:
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🚀 Tip
The "Timesheets" Home feature can look a bit "empty" (just showing date/time columns) if column/table preferences haven't been configured in your tenant.
Make sure you choose the columns (properties) via the "Time Tracking" section of the Settings Global Tool - as we just described in this article.
📚 Further reading
To learn more about the "Timesheets" Home feature - including instructions for how to bulk-create Time Entries and how to submit Timesheets - see our separate in-depth article here.
"Utilization" Table Widget
As well as the wide range of Widgets (chart types) available as standard in Planhat for use in Dashboards and Presentations, there is also a Widget specific to Service Delivery: the Utilization Table.
Utilization Tables display, in percentages, how much time your Users have logged compared to their available hours, so you can identify under- and over-utilization. Automatic color-coding makes it really easy to spot potential issues to address. For example, as a Manager, you can see who within your Team has capacity to take on a new project, or determine whether you need an additional Team Member.
Here's an example Utilization Table:
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When you're designing a Page, you can find "Utilization" in the "Table Widgets" category.
Utilization Tables are also included in the "Utilization and Staffing" Page Template, which you can access when adding a Page or in the Content Explorer - see here for further details.
📌 Important to note
Utilization Table calculations use a specialist system field on the User model called "Weekly Capacity" to compare logged time to available time.
📚 Further reading
To learn more about Utilization Tables, including detailed instructions on how to set them up, you can refer to our separate article here.