Hi Scott. I’ve been given a heads up on a potential upcoming internal ask, but I’m stuck not even sure how to approach it. So I’m looking for design approach / advice.

Summary:

• Each customer account to have a pre-determined # of hours which resets every month
• Max # of hours per account may change, they won’t always be static, but they will vary by account
• Individual account team members can enter time against those hours, thereby reducing the current balance of hours (I thought this could be done via Timeline but concerned it may pollute the Timeline view for those who are not interested)
• Should be able to report on max # of hours, hours consumed per user, for current and past months

Hi @justo.casablanca !  Sorry you weren’t able to join today . . . hopefully you can join on Thursday and we can vet it out a little bit.

I think Timeline is probably the easiest way to go -- you can add a number field named “Hours” and add it to ALL the Timeline Type layouts, and ALSO create a timeline type called “Time Entry”.  That way, if they are writing up a call or email, etc., they can just put the hours on that Timeline type -- but if they are just popping in for a 3-word “time sheet” type entry, they can use the Type you add and others can filter that type out to reduce the noise.

Separately, you’ll add 2 fields to the Company object -- “Allocated Hours for Month” and “Hours Remaining for Month” which you can update with Rules Engine.

Then the FINAL item is to decide where to put the history -- path of least resistance is to add a new Custom Object called “Time Tracker” and each night, using the same rule that updates the “Hours Remaining” field on Company, you can update a record for that month and then on the first day of the new month, it creates a new row for the current month - the rest of your historical entries just stay there for reporting.

The potential “gotcha” on all this is there’s really no way to update in real time.  You can have the rule run every 2 hours, but you can imagine on the last day of the month, multiple team members could be trying to get a few final entries in and they aren’t seeing the running total.

That could be addressed by a report added to the C360 -- maybe a widget -- that totals up Timeline Hours for that current month.

Hopefully that gets you pointed toward a potential solution, or at least you can start a pros/cons list to the approach before we talk next!

Best,

Scott