Activity types are used to further classify the work you are doing in a structured way, they should represent typical categories of work in your company. By representing typical types of work, they also might be used as base to define different rates (prices) for work within a project (see Project Team Price Lists).
Create Activity Type
By default, ictime requires that a user chooses an activity types when logging work. You can deactivate this feature, see below.
You can define as many activity types as you need.
Go to
ictime - Administration - Activity Types
to create, edit or delete activity types.
To create a new activity type, click on the button "Create activity ytpe".
| Field | Description | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Name for the activity type. Will be displayed in dropdowns, reports etc. | Mandatory. |
| Description | Optional description for the activity type. Only used here. | |
| Mapping ID | Optional external mapping ID, e.g. to map activity types to a respective entity in an external system (like an ERP system). | Currently not used. |
| Mapping ID Description | Optional name or description for the external mapping ID. | Currently not used. |
| Rounding Rule | Optional select a Rounding Rule to be applied, if project settings define usage of activity type specific rounding rules | Optional |
We recommend to use activity types like "specification", "design", "implementation", "testing", "project management" etc. for reporting purposes. This gives additional information on the distribution of time to the different typical activities required to resolve your tasks/do your projects and you can also use such categories to differentiate prices.
On project level, you can decide not to use all but just selected activity types or to deactivate activity types for this project (see Project Activity Types).
Edit Activity Types
You can edit name and description of an activity type at any time by clicking on the edit icon.
To avoid confusion, you should never change the meaning of the name of an activity type that has already been used. There is no versioning for the name, so the change would affect all existing work logs that have not been charged yet.
Delete Activity Types
You can only delete activity types
- if the have not yet been used for a work log
- if they are not specifically assigned to a project (see Project Activity Types)
by clicking on the delete icon.
If an activity type is already used in work logs or is specifically assigned to a project, you will receive the following message when trying to delete:
Deactivate Activity Type Functionality (Globally)
You can check the checkbox "Do not use activity types" if you do not want to use this feature. In this case, ictime won't expect activity types any longer and you do not need to create activity types. You can also do this later on, it does not matter if you already have defined and used activity types. Historic data won't be affected. You can also change back at any time.
This is a global configuration setting, it is applied to all projects. If you want to use activity types, but not for certain projects, this is can be configured here: Project Activity Types.
If have already used activity types and now decide to no longer use them, work logs with activity type assigment won't change; i.e. the activity type will still be part of the ictime extended work log information and will be displayed in all lists, reports etc. However, if you edit such a work log, the activity type will be deleted and replaced by "none" when you save.
Rounding Rules based on Activity Types
Go to
ictime - Administration - Configure Project - Rounding Rule
Activity Types are globally defined and globally used. If you are using activty type based rounding rules and Activity Types are enabled for the project, the rounding rule defined for a specific activity type will be applied every time the activity type is used. The rounding rule defined for a specific Activity Type will be inherited down to every project.
You are allowed to set the Default Rounding Rule to "No Rounding". If this setting is made in combination with rounding rules based on Activity Types, the system will first check, if there is a valid definition of a rounding rule for the specific Activty Type you are logging. If it finds one, it will be used, if it finds none, it will fall back to the Project Default Rounding Rule, which can be "No rounding" also.
This setting can be archived by using the option "Use rounding rules from activity types".
