As we start a new year, it’s a good time to take a moment to reflect on the past and plan for the future. đ With that in mind, this article will be a short review of what we were able to accomplish with Dovico Timesheet over the past year as well as our plans for 2025.
To start, let’s take a look at what happened in 2024.
2024 in Review
Quarterly Releases
We’ve made some changes to our tooling and processes that allow us to increase our release cadence from once every year or two to once a quarter.
In Canada, we have four seasons so we’ve named the quarterly releases based on the season they fall within. You can now expect to see these four releases every year:
- Winter Release in February
- Spring Release in May
- Summer Release in August
- Fall Release in November
Because of a shorter timeline, we’re using an agile approach where, if the improvements or new features are large, we’ll release the changes incrementally. For large features, every release will include improvements that add value as-is but will build upon the previous releases towards an end goal. An example of this is our commitment to supporting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that I’ll go over later in this article.
As always, any bugs found will be fixed and released as soon as they’re ready.
Accessibility
Over the past couple of years we’ve been reworking Timesheetâs architecture to make moving forward easier. With things like framesets now removed from the product, we started looking at where Timesheet stands when it comes to accessibility. We discovered that improvements are needed around accessibility so we came up with a plan of action. We posted the following article that outlines our plans to support the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 level AA if you’d like to learn more: https://timesheet.dovico.com/blog/2024/07/19/accessibility-with-dovico/
Our Dovico team started training on the WCAG guidelines and performed some testing to identify accessibility issues using tools like axe DevTools and the NVDA screen reader. We also did some manual testing to see how Timesheet stacks up when it comes to keyboard support.
We started adding improved WCAG support with our Summer Release and have included even more support in the Fall Release. The following image illustrates some of the accessibility improvements that were part of the Fall Release around keyboard navigation.
New Billing View
As shown in the following image, a Billing view has been added to help manage bills and invoices with ease from within Timesheet.
If you’d like to learn more about this view, check out the following article: timesheet.dovico.com/blog/2024/03/25/dovico-timesheet-billing-view
Menu Bar
Over the past year, a number of changes were made to the menu bar including:
- A hamburger menu is now displayed if your browser’s size isn’t wide enough to see all the menu items
- The white bar that was under the menu has been removed
- An exception to this is if multicurrency is enabled. In this case, three views show a currency dropdown that uses the white bar in those views.
- The Job Scheduler and Report Permissions menu items were moved under the Reporting menu
- The Job Scheduler menu was renamed to Report & Notification Scheduler
- If you have permission to access the Menu Configuration view, a puzzle piece icon will now show on the menu bar allowing you to quickly jump to the view to turn features on or off.
In addition to the items just mentioned, we made some architecture changes that allowed us to finally remove the back button. Now, Timesheet works correctly when you use the browser’s back and forward buttons.
Unicode Support
Unicode is a text encoding standard designed to support the use of text in all of the world’s writing systems (definition from Wikipedia). Beyond the characters for different languages, Unicode also includes many emojis.
It’s now possible to include Unicode characters for the names and descriptions of Projects, Tasks, Task Templates, and Groups. Unicode allows for different language characters (e.g. áş, Đ) or symbols (e.g. đ´,â, âď¸) that make a item’s name and purpose stand out as shown in the following image.
API Expansion
The Timesheet API was originally created as a minimum viable product (MVP) that we added to as needs arose.
One of our goals for 2024 was to start expanding out the API so that you can do everything with it that you can do in Timesheet itself.
Over the past year we were able to add endpoints for the retrieval of Invoices (Billing) and the creation, edit, and deletion of Task Template data.
The API documentation can be found here if you’d like to learn more about what the API can do: timesheet.dovico.com/developer/API_doc/index.htm#t=Welcome.html
Dovico Timesheet Mobile
A rewrite of our original Android and iOS apps was undertaken a few years ago and continuous improvements are deployed often. The goal was feature parity initially and then to improve the mobile experience.
Over the past year, improvements have been made around creating and updating projects as well as adding employees to tasks.
With parity reached this past year, the original Android app has been replaced with the new mobile app.
Also, with this app, logging in to Timesheet using your mobile browser will give you the mobile experience by default but you can switch to desktop mode at the login screen if you wish.
For more information, or for links to the mobile app, click here: timesheet.dovico.com/apps/mobile
Now that you know what we’ve been up to in 2024, let’s take a look at some of our plans for 2025.
Plans for 2025
Accessibility Improvements Continued
With our Winter Release coming in February, we will be close to being WCAG 2.1 A compliant.
With every release, we will continue to work towards becoming at least WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.
Menu Bar
We made a lot of improvements to the menu bar recently but there are still improvements that we’d like to make.
One improvement that’s coming is a change in the color used for the menu. Dark blue is used by the views to highlight information like column headers. With the menu also using the same dark blue, it pulls your attention away from the view and can lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed. The following is an image of the menu bar that we’re planning for with the release in February:
Also, as part of our WCAG improvements, the notifications and username menus will now be accessible when navigating with only a keyboard.
Another improvement that we’re considering for a future release is around the hamburger menu. Currently, if your browser’s size drops below a certain width, the menu items are hidden and the hamburger menu is displayed all at once. We’d like to adjust it so that the menu items are added to a hamburger menu gradually as the browser’s width shrinks. This would also be useful if you’re on a device with a bit more space, like a tablet or small monitor, but not quite enough space for the full menu.
Unicode Support
With every release, we plan to add more Unicode support.
Based on our current plans, all areas of Timesheet should have Unicode support by the end of 2025.
Document Attachments
Document attachments is a feature that has been on the wish list of several people at Dovico for over a decade now.
We are planning to add this feature in a couple of steps, with the initial release able to include links.
Then, in a later release, we would add in the ability to upload files. For the upload, our current vision for this is to provide a way for you to specify where you’d like the files uploaded to so that your files are always in your control. Target locations could be SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, and others.
Machine Learning, AI, and Automations
In last year’s article, I mentioned that we’ve been working with a local university to come up with a way to use machine learning and AI to make your lives easier in Timesheet. So far, we’re not satisfied with the accuracy of the predictions but we’re continuing to work on this and hope to have something available to you this year.
We’re also looking into the possibility of automations. For example, we now have a proof-of-concept internally where an employee can import their calendar tasks into Timesheet as a way to jump-start their time entries. Because it’s being imported into your timesheet, you can adjust the values if need be and, if an item shouldn’t be there, you can just delete it before submitting your time.
We hope to have the calendar import automation available by the Spring Release.
Task Management
Tracking your time is important for things like billing and costing so doing so consistently and accurately helps your company stay profitable. At the same time, however, this is extra work for the employee who’s already under pressure to meet deadlines and tracking their time doesn’t help them get their tasks done.
We are currently planning on adding in some task management features so that employees have tools to help get their work done and managers have a way to monitor progress. Some of the things we’re planning to include is being able to indicate the status of a task, flag if a task is complete, as well as the ability for employees to see who’s working on the project or task with them.
We’re also evaluating the possibility of taking task management further with the development of new views like a List view and Kanban board.
If any of you are interested in discussing this with us, we would really appreciate your input so please feel free to reach out: timesheet.dovico.com/contact
API Expansion
We plan to continue improving the API with the goal of eventually being able to do everything with it that you can do in Timesheet.
We are also looking into making improvements to the documentation.
Dovico Timesheet Mobile
Now that the new mobile version of Timesheet has reached parity and replaced the original apps, we’re working on extending what the apps can do.
Some of the features planned for this year include the ability to create projects, add tasks, and delete tasks. The reporting experience will also be improved with the addition of graphical reports.
In Conclusion
2024 was a good year and 2025 is shaping up to be an even bigger year for Timesheet! We have more items planned than what was mentioned and we’re validating other ideas. Stay tuned because I’ll update you as more information becomes available.
We value your input. If there is something you’d like to see in Timesheet, or something you feel could be improved, let us know: timesheet.dovico.com/contact
You can also reach out to our support team if you have any questions or concerns: timesheet.dovico.com/support
If you’re not yet using Timesheet, check out our pricing page where you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to see if Timesheet is right for you: timesheet.dovico.com/pricing
Gerard Gallant,
CIO of Dovico Software
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