See where the time on a work item actually went, on a refreshed progress bar

Version 2.0.46 · All release notes

The bar at the top of a work item’s Time Log tab tells you how far through the estimate it is. It has never told you where that time went. This release adds a time breakdown behind a new button beside it — by time type, by person and by day. The bar itself has been redrawn in the Azure DevOps idiom, so it finally follows your theme. There is nothing to switch on.

At a glance

• 📊 By time type — development, testing, rework, at a glance
• 👤 By person — one person’s work, or the whole team’s
• 📅 By day — when the work actually happened
• 🎨 A redrawn progress bar — in your Azure DevOps theme, light or dark

📊 Where the time went

Open any work item’s Time Log tab and you will find a small chart button next to the progress bar. It opens a breakdown of the time logged against that item: a bar and a table by time type, the same by person, and a chart of the days the work happened. Three figures sit above them — the total logged and how many entries make it up, how much of the estimate that represents, and what remains with the forecast total it implies.

It answers the questions the entry table underneath cannot answer quickly: did this item go mostly on development or mostly on rework, was it one person’s work or the team’s, and was it steady or a scramble at the end. The information was always there — every entry is listed below — but reading it meant reading the whole table.

🎨 A progress bar that follows your theme

The bar the breakdown button now sits beside has been redrawn. It used to be a tall pill in a terracotta that belongs to no Azure DevOps palette, over a fixed pale track — so on a dark or high-contrast theme it stayed stubbornly light while everything around it changed. It is now the same slim bar My Time Log already uses for your weekly target, drawn entirely in Azure DevOps’ own colours, so it follows light, dark and high contrast.

The percentage has moved out of the fill and sits beside the bar, where it stays readable on a barely-started item that used to clip it away entirely. And the bar now carries the same three-way reading as your weekly target: blue while the work is in progress, green when it is done, and amber when the item has gone over its estimate — the fill stops at 100% and the figure beside it tells you by how much. Screen readers are told it is a progress bar, which they never were before.

⏰ Two refinements to the timer

Where a project offers a single time type, the timer now just starts. Asking which type to use is only worth doing when there is a choice, so the dropdown is no longer shown and, on My Time Log, the ▶ starts timing on the click instead of opening a picker containing one option.

And a timer running on another work item now says so plainly. It used to appear on every work item’s tab with the same green, pulsing treatment as a timer running on the item you were actually looking at, with only a work item number to tell them apart. Green now means one thing — this work item is on the clock — and a timer running elsewhere is drawn quietly, named outright, with its elapsed time labelled by the item it belongs to. The twelve-hour warning for a forgotten timer still shows either way, and nothing about how the timer behaves has changed.

✓ Nothing to set up

There is no new setting and no new permission. The breakdown is built from the entries the tab has already loaded, so opening it is instant and costs nothing extra. The button only appears when there is time logged against the work item — so on a brand new item there is simply nothing new to see. Colours match the Analytics Dashboard, so a time type reads the same wherever you meet it.

Full change list

2.0.46

Time Log: add a time breakdown to the work item’s Time Log tab, answering where the time on an item actually went. The progress bar still shows how far through the estimate the work item is, and a new chart button beside it opens a dialog breaking the logged time down three ways: by time type, by person, and by day. Each of the first two shows a stacked bar over a table of hours and share, so a glance says whether an item went mostly on development or mostly on rework, and whether it was one person’s work or a team’s; the day chart shows the days time was actually logged rather than a continuous calendar, so an item picked up months after it was last touched does not render as a row of empty columns. Three figures sit above them: total logged with the number of entries behind it, how much of the estimate that represents, and what remains with the forecast total it implies. The information was always there — the table below the panel lists every entry — but reading it meant reading the whole table. The button only appears when there is time logged against the work item, so it never opens onto an empty dialog, and it reuses the entries the tab has already loaded, so opening the breakdown costs no extra requests and needs no new permissions. Colours match the Analytics Dashboard, so a time type reads the same on both. Time Log: restyle the progress bar on the work item’s Time Log tab in the Azure DevOps idiom. It was a tall terracotta pill in a colour belonging to no Azure DevOps palette, over a fixed light track that ignored the host theme — so it stayed stubbornly pale in dark and high-contrast themes. It is now the same slim bar My Time Log already uses for the weekly target, drawn entirely in Azure DevOps’ own theme colours, so it follows light, dark and high contrast. The percentage moves out of the fill and sits beside the bar, where it stays legible on a barely-started item that previously clipped it away altogether, and the bar takes on the same three-way reading My Time Log gives the weekly target: blue while in progress, green at completion, and amber when the item is over its estimate — the fill caps at 100% and the figure beside it carries the true overrun. The bar is also announced to screen readers as a progress bar, which it previously was not. Time Log: start the timer straight away when a project offers a single time type — asking which type to use is only worth doing when there is a choice, so the dropdown is no longer shown and, on My Time Log, the ▶ starts timing on the click rather than opening a picker containing one option. Time Log: say plainly when the running timer is on another work item. A timer running elsewhere was drawn on a work item’s Time Log tab with the same signals as one running on the item being viewed — the filled, pulsing green dot and green edge — with only a work item number in the title to tell them apart. The green treatment is now reserved for “this work item is on the clock”; a timer running elsewhere gets a hollow ring, a neutral edge, a title that says so outright, and its elapsed time captioned with the work item it belongs to, so the figure cannot be read as time accrued here. The twelve-hour stale warning still overrides both, and nothing about the behaviour changes. Also removes the New badge from My Time Log, Weekly shortfall report and View Dashboard, which have all been available for several releases.