Time Log Admin

Manage time types

Create time types so time can be broken down for reporting and planning. Reach them from **Project settings → Extensions → Time Log Admin**.

Who can manage time types

The Time Log Admin page is open only to Project Administrators of the current project, and to members of a Time Log Administrators group (below) — everyone else sees a “Not authorised” panel instead of the admin UI. Membership is transitive, so Project Collection Administrators, and members of AAD / Entra ID / on-premises AD groups nested inside Project Administrators, are recognised too.

Members of a group named Time Log Administrators get the same access without being Project Administrators, for organisations that can’t give the people who manage Time Log Azure DevOps admin rights. To set it up:

1. A Project Administrator opens Project settings > Permissions (or, to cover every project, a Project Collection Administrator opens Organization settings > Permissions) and creates a new group called Time Log Administrators. The name must match, though case doesn’t matter.
2. Add the people who manage Time Log, or an AD / Entra group they belong to.
3. Leave all of the group’s permissions as Not set. It needs none, and membership adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, anyone’s Azure DevOps access (only an explicit Deny would).

Creating the group is what grants the access, so anyone who can create groups, or manage this group’s membership, can make someone a Time Log administrator: keep its membership locked down. At collection level that means anyone allowed to create collection-level groups can grant access to every project. A group in a project covers that project (provided Time Log can read the project’s team list); one at collection level covers every project. A team with that name does not count. Membership changes show after a page reload (as does a lookup that failed because Azure DevOps was briefly unavailable); for organisations that require per-user sign-in to the Time Log API, the API itself can take up to 10 minutes to agree. Members are treated as Project Administrators throughout Time Log, including the Summary’s team restriction and the Time Log web API’s admin-only endpoints.

Both checks read group memberships through Azure DevOps’ Identity Service, which needs the extension’s Identity (read) permission. Organisations that installed Time Log before v2.0.37 have to approve it: if Project Collection Administrators, members of nested groups or Time Log Administrators are refused the Admin page, an organisation administrator should open Organization settings > Extensions > Time Log and check that Identity (read) is listed, approving the updated permissions if Azure DevOps asks.

Within the page, each time type is managed by an administrator of its own project. The Time types list shows every project’s types, so on a row for a project you do not administer the Move entries, Edit and Delete actions are greyed out and inert, and the create / edit form’s Add / Update button is disabled with an explanatory message when the project you have selected is not one you administer. Organisation-wide (“All Projects”) types, and orphaned types whose owning project has been deleted or is not visible to you (shown as “Unknown project”), defer to the current project’s administrator. The check fails closed: while your permissions for a project are still being resolved the controls stay disabled.

Creating a type

Press New time type to add one. Each time type can be made available to All Projects, or to one project chosen from the Project menu. When logging time, you are offered that project’s own types plus every All Projects type.

Tick Project Default to have the type preselected when logging time. The default is taken from the work item’s own project, so logging against a work item in another project picks up that project’s default rather than the current page’s; if that project has no default, any type marked as a default is used.

The list of time types can then be amended as needed. Types are grouped by project — All Projects first, then each project by name — with a count of each group’s types. Each project’s default carries a Project default tag, a dot by each type’s name shows whether it is active (green) or disabled (red), with the word in its tooltip, and Edit and Delete sit at the end of the row. Type in Filter time types to find one by name, and untick Show disabled to hide retired types.

Disabling a time type

A type that is no longer in use can be retired without losing the history behind it: edit the type and tick Disabled. A default type cannot be disabled — clear Project Default first.

A disabled type still appears in the type dropdown when logging time, marked with a Blocked icon and sorted below the active types, but it cannot be chosen for a new entry. Existing entries keep their type: they are shown greyed on the work item’s Time Log tab, and can still be edited (with a warning that the type cannot be used for new logs) or deleted.

Move time log entries to another type

When a time type is disabled it can no longer be selected for new time logs, but existing entries still reference it. To tidy these up, each disabled type in the Time types list has a Move entries action.

Choose a replacement (active) type and every time log entry using the disabled type is reassigned to it, with a confirmation of how many entries were moved. For a type that belongs to a project, the Show replacement types from toggle filters the replacement list between that type’s own project and “All Projects” (organisation-level) types — it only changes which types you can pick, all of the disabled type’s entries are moved either way. An “All Projects” type offers organisation-level replacements only, so the toggle is not shown. Once a disabled type’s entries have been moved, the type can be safely deleted.

Weekly shortfall report

Spot users who logged less than their weekly target for any ISO week from a single page. Reach it via the **Weekly shortfall report** button on the Time Log Admin page.

• Defaults to the last completed week; navigate with Previous / Next / “This week”.
• Shows each user’s effective target (organisation default or personal override), logged time, and shortfall — sorted by largest deficit first. A personalised badge marks users on a per-user target.
• Scoped to active users only (those with at least one log in the previous four weeks), so leavers are not surfaced.
• Logged time is the user’s total across every project in the organisation for that week — the same figure as My Time Log. The team filter only chooses which users are listed; it never narrows what is logged for them.
• Hero cards summarise users below target, total shortfall across the organisation, and average shortfall per user.
• Download CSV exports the table for further analysis.