7 reasons to look forward to Tempo 7

We are excited to tell you that we plan to release Tempo 7, packed with new features and improvements, simultaneously with the JIRA 5 release. The focus of Tempo 7 is to take full advantage of the new integration platform in JIRA 5. This includes exposing Tempo events in JIRA Activity Streams and a powerful database layer for our popular resource planning features for JIRA.

1. Tempo Activity Streams

Until now, it has often been difficult to monitor Tempo events in JIRA. With the new integration features of JIRA Activity Streams, we can finally deliver important events to users directly to their dashboards through activity streams. Tempo 7 will ship with support for all major administrative events, such as closure of periods, timesheet approval workflows, and opening of grace periods for users.

Setting up activity streams is super simple with the Activity Stream gadget. You simply select the Tempo provider from the configuration view and you are all set.

2. Issue Planning

One of the most popular feature request since we released high-level resource planning with Tempo 6.2 is the ability to plan time directly on issues. With Active Objects integration in JIRA 5, we are pleased to announce that Tempo 7 will support a full fledged issue planning feature.The issue page now includes a new panel named Collaborators, which shows all users that are scheduled to or have collaborated on the issue and their progress. We believe this to be a great solution to have multiple “soft”-assignees on an issue and per-user estimates. Planning time is as easy as clicking the plus button in the right corner of the Collaborators panel, or from the issue action menu.

Planned time on issues is also available in the timesheets and reports. The hours are aggregated to higher level entities, such as versions and projects, making it easy to have an overview of user or team schedules.

3. Weekly Approval Process

Another frequent request we receive is to be able to have users submit their hours weekly. JIRA 5 integration features have made it possible for us to deliver this feature with support for Activity Streams and reliable storage of historical data.

4. Tempo Calendar

Integrating planned time in timesheets and reports makes it easy to compare scheduled versus logged work. However, we feel that it is important to be able to view schedules in a manner more familiar to users. That is why we are adding a new calendar view that is available for users, teams, and projects.

5. Advanced Timesheet

Using filters in JIRA is a powerful way to set up your work context. We introduced support for filters in User Timesheet with Tempo 6.3 that allows users to append issues based on a search to their personal timesheet. With the new Agile Rapid Board in GreenHopper and with an increased adoption of filters for project management, we feel that it is important to support filters as a primary part of Tempo. The Advanced Timesheet in Tempo 7 supports any of your own or favorite filters, making it easy to track time if you are using kanban or other complex use cases that don’t fit in the traditional team or project scope. We will be adding JQL functions to enable users to construct searches based on Tempo specific data. The first one was added in Tempo 6.4 to search for issues based on a Tempo Team.

6. Big Account Changes

Accounts Overview

We are working on making Accounts more useful for managers. Tempo 6.3 introduced the ability to manage accounts in JIRA admin via the Account Manager. Tempo 7 adds a new section to JIRA called Accounts that makes it possible for Tempo administrators to access account information without going into JIRA admin. The Account page displays accounts by customer with high level account information.

Account Timesheet

It is now possible to view accounts based on customer or account lead in the Account Timesheet. It allows you to see workload over the period for each account with quick access to the account approval process.

7. Also Major Usability Overhaul

We have redesigned many of the major components of the Tempo UI to make it easier to find the timesheet you are looking for and jumping between views with a single click. The navigation menus now support searching so you can quickly find the report you are looking for. We added a new bar to quickly jump between timesheets and reports. The Top header has also been changed to take less space, putting the timesheet closer to the top of the browser.

This is only the start

This post is only the top of the iceberg. Tempo 7 is probably the biggest Tempo release yet and includes many more features and improvements. Stay tuned for more information on the release date and specific features. If you would like to receive early access to Tempo 7 that will be available in just a few days, please sign up for our Beta program.