Setting up Time Tracking

Setting up Time Tracking

Time management is essential, more so in the context of delivering quality customer service to your end users. When a ticket is received, the customer in question would want it to get resolved at the earliest time possible. Similarly, as a support manager, you want to track the overall time spent on moving tickets from “Open” to “Solved." The Time Tracking feature in Zoho Desk makes both living up to your customer expectations and managing your team’s performance easier.

Advantages of Time Tracking 
  • Monitor how much time your agents spend on customer tickets and activities. It gives an idea of how long it takes for a ticket to be received, analyzed and eventually resolved.
  • Time added to tickets and activities can be exported to create invoices and bill customers.
  • Get detailed insights from built-in dashboards for time tracking.
  • Capture the cost of providing support even if you don’t charge your customers for your agents time.

Note:
  • The Time Tracking feature is available to all customers on the Professional and Enterprise plans.

Time Tracking for Tickets and Activities
Before you start, make sure you read the different tracking methods and associated settings listed below.
For Tickets 
You can track the time spent on tickets in one of the following ways:
  • Manual 
  • Auto



The manual tracking option allows your agents to control when the timer starts and stops manually. They can play and pause the timer on the ticket details page. The auto-tracking option logs the total time spent, the second your agent performs a predefined action on a ticket. For example, on replying to a ticket or leaving a comment in it. You can choose one of the above types while setting up time tracking in your Zoho Desk.

Some additional settings that you can configure on enabling automatic time tracking for tickets are described below:

Actions to be timed
Zoho Desk gives you the ability to track the time spent on all or specific activities on tickets so that you can monitor just about anything your agents do. You can choose to track the following ticket actions:
  • Reply
    It tracks the time spent on performing a reply, reply all or forward action on a ticket. This option is selected by default, and you cannot deselect it.
  • Manual Draft
    It tracks the time spent on drafting a response for a ticket. Agents must click "Save Draft" within the editor to submit their time.
  • Field Update
    It tracks the time spent on updating a field without editing the ticket.
  • Approvals
    It tracks the time spent on creating, editing and deleting an approval request.
  • Comment
    It tracks the time spent on adding and editing a comment from the ticket's detail page.
  • Resolution
    It tracks the time spent on adding, editing and deleting a resolution on the ticket's detail page.
  • Attachment
    It tracks the time spent on adding and deleting files under the Attachment sub-tab on a ticket.

Auto-pause timer
This option can be enabled to automatically pause the timer when the agent stays idle for 30 seconds. The timer resumes automatically when the agent navigates back to the ticket. It comes handy to avoid miscalculation of actual time spent on tickets.

Hiding timer from agents
When a ticket is opened, the timer is displayed at the top of the page allowing your agents to pause or reset it. You can choose to hide this timer from all agents, while Zoho Desk still tracks their time. Agents can, however, view a log of time spent on their tickets under the Time Entry tab.

Agents can edit their time spent
On completing a predefined ticket action, the timer saves and auto-submits the spent time. When you enable this setting, a pop-up window appears with the choice to submit or ignore the spent time. Agents will have 10 seconds to review their time before it gets auto-submitted. This setting can be enabled only when you've displayed the timer for agents.

For Activities 
You can track how much time your agents spend on their activities. Activities like tasks and events require your agents to control when the timer starts and stops manually. On the other hand, the time spent on each call is automatically tracked and added to the respective call and its associated ticket.

Also, since agents can work on multiple activities, you can determine whether they can run timers on them concurrently or just one at a time.

Editing Time Tracking 
By default, manual time tracking is enabled for both tickets and activities in all of your departments. You can edit the settings to switch to automatic tracking at any time.
To edit time tracking:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. Click Time Tracking under the Customization menu.
  3. On the Time Tracking page, select the department at the top of the page. 
  4. Select Automatic, to automatically run the timer for tickets.
    When you select     Automatic, edit the additional settings as described above.
  5. For activities, you may choose to run the timer for one activity at a time.
  6. When you finish making the edits, refresh your browser for the changes to take effect.

Note:
  • When you switch from manual to automatic tracking, you must either add or discard the active timers run by your agents on their tickets.
  • Similar is the case when you disable manual tracking for tasks and events or automatic tracking for calls.
  • The same should be handled while changing the activity preference from concurrent tracking.

Disabling Time Tracking 
Disabling time tracking is simply a matter of toggling it off in Zoho Desk.
To disable tracking:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. Click Time Tracking under the Customization menu.
  3. On the Time Tracking page, select the department for which you want to disable tracking.
  4. Toggle off Time Tracking to disable at the top of the page.
  5. When you finish disabling, refresh your browser for the changes to take effect.

Setting up Billing Preferences
Creating billable time entries is essential if you're going to charge your customers on the basis of time. Zoho Desk offers the ability to not only track time but also apply the correct billing rate in the time entries. All you need to do is set hourly billing rates by agent, by profile, or by ticket. The billable value for the time entries is then calculated based on the chosen hourly rates.



To set billing preference:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. Click Time Tracking under the Customization menu.
  3. On the Time Tracking page, select the department at the top of the page. 
  4. Toggle the Billing Preferences option to ON.
  5. In the Bill based on field select one of the following options:
    • Fixed Cost for Agents: To add a flat hourly rate that applies to all of your agents.
    • Specific Cost per Agent: To add hourly rates for each Zoho Desk agent.
    • Specific Cost per Profile: To add hourly rates for individual user profiles.
    • Fixed Cost for Tickets: To add a flat hourly rate that applies to all tickets.
  6. Enter the Cost per hour in the corresponding field.
    If you select specific cost, click the Add icon (  ) to enter the rates specific to each agent or profile.
  7. Click Save.

Note:
  • Only the very first time entry will register the fixed cost for a ticket. All subsequent entries indicate the value as 0.0.

Billing History 
Want to see when you added the cost for an agent? Need to know when and who last updated your billing preferences? Zoho Desk provides a complete history of all actions performed under billing preferences, from the time it was first enabled.



To view billing history:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) in the top bar.
  2. Click Time Tracking under the Customization menu.
  3. On the Time Tracking page, select the department at the top of the page.
  4. Click the Billing History link at the bottom of the page.
You can view all activities related to billing on the window that slides open on the right side of the interface.


Also Read:          Track Time Spent

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