Are you in need of adding time tracking in your app? Receiving an error? Give the following a try:
What is time tracking?
Time tracking gives you the capability to log time spent on a project or job while quickly converting the clocked time (time value) to a decimal format.
Where do I set up time tracking?
Time tracking is a functionality of mathematical formulas but its performance is influenced by your virtual columns in your data structure and expressions. Weโll be primarily focused on the formula portion of time tracking. You can learn more about expressions by reviewing this article and virtual columns in your data structure here.
- To find the portion of your data where youโll need to make adjustments for time tracking, open your app editor by selecting the app youโd like to work on.
- The navigation bar on the left side displays a tab titled โData." Click this tab.
- Once youโre in the data tab youโll find a navigation bar along the top of your editor. The second tab is the โColumnsโ section. Click this tab.
- Once youโre in this tab youโll see a list of tables. Select the table you would like to have associated with time tracking. App Creators typically name this table โtime trackingโ or โemployee clock-insโ but you can select whichever works best for your needs.
- From here you can add formulas and a virtual column to convert the time values into numerical values the app can understand and obtain your decimal. Please see image below.
Important notes
- Formulas can be tough to understand, especially when youโre first getting started. Donโt be afraid to post questions in our community if youโre having difficulty determining what type of formula you need. If you want to work with time in a different capacity, hereโs a link to a few other suggestions working with time functions and formulas.
- To see time tracking in action, hereโs a sample app to review. The linked sample app also demonstrates how to better structure your data when wanting to implement time tracking.
- For those comfortable with formulas, hereโs the steps for time tracking:
-For the Total Hours column, we subtracted the time in from the time out
-For the Total Wages column, we multiplied the Total Hours by the hourly wage
-Next, you need to add a virtual column so that the app will be able to make the correct calculations of the above formulas. To do this, youโll need to create a virtual column that can run calculations that arenโt shown in the app and will require the conversion of all of our time values into a decimal format. For the Number of Hours column, we used the following formulas to do this:
HOUR([Total Hours])
([Minutes]/60)+([Seconds]/3600)+[Hours]
Try adding this feature to your app now and let us know how time tracking works for you.
Happy app building!