Time Cockpit Blog

In nearly every time cockpit implementation project, we have to integrate time cockpit with upstream and downstream systems like CRM, accounting, billing, etc. Additionally, customers want to automate workflows like handling working time violations or vacation requests. In the past, we typically used Azure WebJobs for that. Recently, Microsoft announced an improved successor: Azure Functions. In this blog article we introduce Azure Functions and show how they can be used with time cockpit.  Read more ...

Piece by piece we bring time cockpit's full client features to our HTML5 web client. This month we added support for field-level permissions. This step has been requested by multiple customers as the missing support blocked them from using the new web client. In addition to field-level permissions, we plugged in a brand new Office 365 module into the time cockpit calendar: Office 365 Planner Tasks.  Read more ...

In our time cockpit implementation projects, we get in touch with very different company cultures. However, we have to deal with two critical topics in most customer projects we do in Western Europe countries like Germany and Austria: Data security and working time regulations. Typically, a large fraction of the customizing effort is invested in these two aspects of time cockpit. Does it have to be like that? Are there successful examples of completely different approaches?  Read more ...

In business life, managers usually want to know upfront how long a project will take and how much it will cost. Essentially, they ask us to predict the future. However, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans. Nevertheless, agile must not mean chaos and blind flight, though. At time cockpit, we have developed best practices for keeping track of time and costs in agile projects. . In this blog article I summarize the most important aspects.  Read more ...

In the new version we have focused on two topics. First, we have improved the working time report by adding overtime and remaining vacation entitlement. Second, we have extended the Office 365 integration with the HTML5 time sheet calendar by sent emails.  Read more ...

In time cockpit version March 2016 we have enhanced the default time report. Among other improvements we added the remaining vacation entitlement and actual overtime to the report. In this article we will explain the updates and extensions in detail.  Read more ...

Office 365 is a very successful cloud service from Microsoft. Millions of people all over the globe use it for emails, document management, communication, etc. This month, we added an out-of-the-box integration with Office 365 to time cockpit's HTML5 timesheet calendar. See all your Outlook appointments in time cockpit and turn them into timesheet records with a simple double-click.  Read more ...

In January, we finally migrated all our production databases in Microsoft Azure from the old web/business-edition-model to new v12 database servers. Additionally, we now manage all our database clusters in Azure Database Pools. Although this change will not influence you as a time cockpit user directly, you indirectly have some important benefits.  Read more ...

Although software is intangible, it ages. As a consequence, every software company will at some point need to make significant investments to redesign and modernize existing applications. In such projects, costs and available resources are important for design decisions. Without a design-to-cost approach, redesign projects often are stopped before they are finished. Frankenstein software is the result. Read more about how to use the design-to-cost approach to protect against Frankenstein.  Read more ...

This month our main focus was adding responsive design to our HTML5 client. Our goal is to make time cockpit's web client usable on phone, tablets and in desktop browsers. We have not reached our final goal yet but we have made significant progress this month. Try it and tell us what you think.  Read more ...