Create Late Time Entry View

A Project Service client recently came to me asking  for help making sure their team recorded their Time Entries within their two week reporting period. This got me thinking how handy it would be to have a view that displayed everyone who was behind on their Time sheets. The Late Time Entry view turned out to be such a simple and useful feature that I wanted to share it to help everyone manage their organization’s Time Entries using only light customization.

Step 1: Create the Field

Create a new date field on the Project Service entity Bookable Resource called Last Time Submission.

Step 2: Create the View

Name your view something like Resources with Late Time Entry, add desired columns and add the following filter criteria:

• Last Time Submission > Older Than X Weeks > 2
  • This filters out resources who have submitted time in the last 2 weeks
• Resource Type > Equals > User
  • This filters out irrelevant resources like “Equipment” or “Generic” resources that will never submit time
• Status > Equals > Active
  • This filters out deactivated resources that would otherwise be stuck in the view forever

If you also want the view to include Bookable Resources who have never submitted time, you can add an Or clause for Last Time Submission > Does Not Contain Data. However, since this causes the view to include new Bookable Resources or Bookable Resources who don’t need to submit time, I prefer to keep it off.

Step 3: Create the Workflow to Populate the Field

The field can be populated by a simple background Workflow or Flow. To keep it simple, this example uses the familiar workflow engine. Name your workflow and select the Time Entry entity.

Be sure to set your Scope to Organization and update the Start When condition to only Record fields change on Entry Status. It is not necessary to trigger on Record is created because the Time Entry is always created with an Entry Status of Draft.

The first workflow step is a Check Condition set on Time Entry > Entry Status > Equals > Submitted. This ensures that the workflow does not fire when previously approved Time Entries are Approved or Returned.

The next, and final, workflow step is an Update Record step on Bookable Resource. Set Properties here to update the Last Time Submission field with Process Execution Time

Your complete workflow should look like this:

And you are ready to go! You now have a Last Time Submission field populated on every Bookable Resource record as well as a View that uses the new field to recognize when someone is late in entering their time. This view can be added to Project Service dashboards, pinned as a default view or used in Advanced Finds as necessary. However, remember that the view will initially be empty until at least two weeks after resources first submit their time.

If you have any questions or ideas to enhance the view, please leave a comment!

Sam Stern

Sam is a Senior Consultant in RSM's Dynamics practice. He has experience working with many aspects of Dynamics CE as well as integration technologies like Scribe and SmartConnect.