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Requested design updates to the Upwork Desktop App

lenaellis
Community Member

We’ve made several improvements to the Upwork Desktop app to help you stay organized and provide more insight into the Time Tracker’s processes by displaying more notifications about what the app is doing on the backend. Let us know if you have any questions on the updates below.

 

Time Tracker Layout and Settings-

 

  • “Time today” - shows billable time tracked in your local time zone, not in UTC. However, “Time this week” still shows the weekly billable time in UTC because our weekly billing is calculated in the UTC time zone.
  • There is a connection status above the ON/OFF toggle informing you if the Time Tracker is online or offline.
  • We removed the elapsed timer which increased each minute, and replaced it with a timer which increases in 10 minute intervals after a screen capture is taken and the time is registered as billable.

TImetracker2.png

  • At top of the time tracker, we are now showing the contract name, contact person and client company.
  • Because your time tracked is now showing in your local time on the main page, when a new billing week is approaching (in UTC) and after a new billing week has started, we are showing a notification to avoid confusion.

TImetracker3.png

 

Improvements in offline tracking:

 

  • If the app loses connection with the server, the app will now display a notification on the screen until you dismiss it or until the connection is back.

Timetracker4.png

Timetracker5.png

  • When you’re approaching the caching limit, you will see a notification.

Timetracker7.png

  • And once the app is back online, we show a notification and start uploading the cached screen captures.

Timetracker8.png



111 Comments
AveryO
Community Manager

Hi Holli, 


You should be able to view that by going to your Work Diary (My Jobs > Work Diary), and choosing the specific contract, day, and the description below the screenshots for each logged segement that you want to view. On the app, you can also click on the "View work diary" link just below the image on the "Last screen capture."

david_mac
Community Member

OSX Sierra

My Upwork app auto updated today and that's when the problems started. Even though I am online it says it cannot connect, it says it is offline but still tracking, yet it hasn't updated the hours worked since starting, and hasn't taken a screenshot for over three hours. Then, as I was writing this, it took a screenshot which I didn't want on my project but clicking the delete button in the popup did nothing, and I had to go into work diary to delete it.

 

So right now, I am completely unimpressed but windows opening in the same position, something that almost all other apps do by default, I would just like this app to track my time, you know, what it is supposed to do and did before it updated itself.

 

Anyone else having issues?

petra_r
Community Member

Well, now I've seen it I hate it.

 

It is causing all sorts of trouble in the team I am managing because it no longer shows current session and we require certain tracking behaviour which is now really hard to access for the freelancers.

 

It's universally hated in my team and creating issues.

 

I assume you didn't ask your biggest Enterprise clients what they thought of this, did you?

 

Why do you guys break stuff that was working and not fix stuff that is broken instead?

 

keep-calm-if-it-ain-t-broken-don-t-fix-it

 

 

 

researchediting
Community Member

"We removed the elapsed timer which increased each minute, and replaced it with a timer which increases in 10 minute intervals after a screen capture is taken and the time is registered as billable."

 

Um, no. No. No. No. No.

So now I have to keep the timer displaying constantly, and be constantly calibrating it against a clock.

 

That is not how I work. That is not how timers work.

How about we have Upwork staff be required to use the timer to get paid?

researchediting
Community Member

@Holli M wrote:

Hi Avery-

 

I'm trying to find out if there is a way to see the amount of time I have been tracking the task I am working on at that given time and have turned on the tracker for, and not a total for the day.

 

Before the latest update, in addition to the information shown the in the screenshot attached it showed how long the tracker had been turned on for the current job/task you were working on. 

The answer is no. Upwork's latest "improvement" to the timer was to kill its ability to function as a timer.

hollijmuth
Community Member

Bummer what a pain, thanks for confirming though!

lee98
Community Member

I really liked the elapsed timer as I would make it a point to work through a 10 minute block of time. This way, I don't know if I'm two minutes into my next 10 minute block or nine minutes in. 

 

Please put the elapsed timer back! Thanks!!!

kr_bs_ba
Community Member

I submitted a question through the Help page earlier this week about the updated Desktop App and have not seen an answer in my email yet.

 

I was completely accustomed to interpreting the timer in terms of UTC time, (despite the occasional complications), which currently is 4 hours ahead of my local time. Now the timer appears to be showing "Time Today" in terms of local time, (e.g., if I work until 1:15 AM, then when I resume the following evening it will say, "Time Today: 1H 10M", or "20M" depending on the randomization), instead of showing the time worked since midnight UTC.

 

My question was, is this a "real" or "virtual" change, especially with regard to Sunday evenings? If I log hours on a Sunday evening after 8:00 PM local time, will they be counted towards Sunday under local time or still become part of Monday because it is after midnight UTC?

brevon
Community Member
 
 

After using the new version for several days now, I can conclude that whatever has been improved on the app got beaten by the numerous downsides that come with it.

The time tracker is less useful than before and it became confusing and impractical in various ways. This is not about getting used to new design. These changes simply make things more difficult for us, period.

  1. Why is cursor so unintuitive when we go to switch codes? It changes in a way that confuses me every single time, also the layout of previous memos and codes to choose is somewhat awkward and unintuitive.
  2. Why do we need to see time today in local time if we still need to "think in UTC" for everything else? It is indeed confusing no matter how many well-meant warnings will pop up.
  3. Why was elapsed time taken away? How is this improvement? Many of us have limitations such as that we cannot bill less than a full hour. Any other means to make sure we do so are just making things more difficult for us. I don't really care I can go to the work diary to see how many minutes I have been working on a specific task. There was a simple way to check elapsed time in a session and my teammates and I would very much appreciate if this feature is back, thanks.
petra_r
Community Member

@Lee M wrote:

I really liked the elapsed timer as I would make it a point to work through a 10 minute block of time. This way, I don't know if I'm two minutes into my next 10 minute block or nine minutes in.


 No Lee, the segments are always the same: XX.00 to XX.10, XX.10 to XX.20, XX.20 to XX.30, XX.30 to XX.40, XX.40 to XX.50, XX.50 to XX.00

 

So for that you just need a clock as you are 4 minutes into the 6.20 to 6.30 am block when it is 6.24, for example.