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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
VladimirG
Community Manager

Hi Tomislav,

 

Thanks for following up. Please stop tracking time and restart the app by going to Settings > Advanced. Let me know if you're still not seeing the Message icon afterwards.

tprukija
Community Member

Thanks for you help, Messages Feature in Advanced settings was disabled, don't know how that happened...it's ok now, works fine.

wlyonsatl
Community Member

C'mon, Upwork, when you upgrade something, it is supposed to be an  improvement.

 

As a user, I do not see any improvement. Since the most recent "upgrade" to TimeTracker, the app:

 

1) No longer tracks time for the current sanction.

 2) No longer appears when I double-click the Upwork icon on my Windows desktop. Instead, I am taken right to the message list of one of my current Upwork clients. I then have to close that useless window and double-click the Upwork icon again, which actually opens TimeTracker.

 

Please improve us back to the old version.

 

Thank you.

 

 

wlyonsatl
Community Member

Make that "No longer tracks time for the current session."

blakemitchell55
Community Member

Help! This is what I scream a lot, these days. That lousy rotten excuse for a time tracker has done it again! Today, I worked from 11:59 AM to 2:30 pm, but only got credit for 1 hour and 50 minutes. The tracker apparently "blew it's brains out" at 2:06 PM and failed to track anything after that!!!!! Has the Titanic completely sunk now?!?!?!?

AveryO
Community Manager

Hi Blake, 


I'll ask the Customer Support Team to get in touch with you so that they can request for your Upwork Desktop App logs, and this can be investigated further. 

mrnolan
Community Member

No, that's not the way it is working.  If you stop at 10 minutes on the clock, the app will only show 4 bars and the client will think you are shorting them.  If you wait for the screen shot, the app will complete the first 10 minute bars, but show 4 bars on the next 10 minutes.  To avoid charging the client another 10 minutes while only working 2 or 3, you will have to delete the time and lose 2 or 3 minutes of your own time.   This is not how work timers are supposed to work.  It's just plain idiotic.

AveryO
Community Manager

Hi Martin, 

I'm not sure what you meant by bars, but if you're referring to your Work Diary, the row of green blocks that you're seeing on your diary is the Activity Meter. It shows the number of minutes out of a 10-minute billing segment that had activity. And it shows how active you've been in that time segment in terms of mouse clicks, scroll actions, and keystrokes (activity) per segment. 

As an example, if you've been reading a website and had minimal "activity" on a certain 10-minute block, the green bars will only be less. Otherwise, if you've been active, there will be more green bars on your Work Diary. You can click on the meter for a detailed view, including minute-by-minute activity counts.

brevon
Community Member

@Martin N wrote:

 If you wait for the screen shot, the app will complete the first 10 minute bars, but show 4 bars on the next 10 minutes.  To avoid charging the client another 10 minutes while only working 2 or 3, you will have to delete the time and lose 2 or 3 minutes of your own time. 


 Hello Avery, Martin,

 

I may be wrong but I think that there are two things to be distinguished when it comes to activity recorded. One thing is the activity (green) bars that monitor the activity in a given ten-minute window and the other thing is the fact that it is not until the screenshot is taken when the activity that preceded it is recorded in the minute-by-minute overview (for which the time frame is not the 10-minute slot but snapshot-to-snapshot slot).

 

So for example, if one wants to work for a full hour and the last (6th) screenshot is taken in the 51st minute, there are still 9 minutes to go. These 9 minutes will get reflected (provided we keep working, indeed) in the Work Diary in the form of green bars (1 minute in which we were active = 1 bar). And if we stop exactly at the 60th minute, we will have 6 full slots in WD. (@Martin, this is, IMO, all we need to worry about)

 

That said, the counts of mouse clicks and keystrokes etc of those last post-screenshot minutes (i.e. for the 52nd–59th minute of our work) will not show/get recorded on the minute-by-minute Snapshot details overview. This can happen anywhere between the 60th and 69th minute. But if we later delete the extra (7th)  slot, the overview of those last 9 minutes of the previous (6th) slot will get deleted with it, because these snapshot overviews are linked to the 10-minute slots.

 

Just wanted to share my two cents but I don't find it an issue really, as it is not me, the contractor, who needs those minute-by-minute details of the last minutes of my work. I am fine as long as the green bars properly reflect my activity and so far, it seems that the app is doing its job, well, at least in this respect. I still have some reservations regarding the last so-called "upgrade".

AveryO
Community Manager

Hi Abul, 


A member of the Customer Support Team will reach out to you to assist you further.