Set up CtrlTime

By the end of this section someone can open the week portal in the M-Files client, book time against a project, and send the week for approval.

Time: half a day, assuming CtrlPortals is already installed and working. Most of it is the vault structure for employees, time entries and weeks.

Who you need: someone with administrative access to the vault through M-Files Admin. Nothing outside the vault is involved.

Before you start

• CtrlPortals installed, licensed and working. CtrlTime’s screens are CtrlPortals dashboards, so nothing here works without it.
• A vault where CtrlPortals has had its first dashboard proven, so a problem later is a CtrlTime problem rather than a CtrlPortals one.
• The CtrlTime .mfappx file and its .lic licence file.
• An agreed window for a vault restart.
• A decision about what time is booked against — projects, customers, cases — and whether the vault already has employee, time or week objects to reuse.

Steps

1. Install the application and its licence.

   Follow Install a vault application, then Install a vault application licence.

   Check: CtrlTime appears under the vault’s Applications node and the vault has been restarted.

2. Create the vault structure.

   CtrlTime needs an employee object, a time object and a week object, each with particular properties and data types. Existing objects can be reused if they match. See Vault structure.

   Check: exactly one employee object points at each user account, and the time object’s start and end properties are timestamps rather than dates.

3. Configure CtrlTime.

   Point CtrlTime at the object types, classes and properties created in the previous step.

   Check: the application status in M-Files Admin reports no configuration error.

4. Add the week portal and the dashboards.

   The week portal, the calendar dashboard and the reporting dashboard are CtrlPortals dashboards. Add the ones the customer needs and give the right user groups access. See Examples for what each one does and how it is built.

   Check: a user who is not a vault administrator can open the week portal.

5. Book time end to end.

   As a normal user, book an entry against a project, check it appears in the right week, and move the week into the approval state.

   Check: the time entry moved states along with its week, and appears on the reporting dashboard.

Migrating existing time records

A vault that already records time can keep its objects, but the data types have to match: timestamps for start and end, a real number for hours. Week objects are the part most vaults do not already have, and time entries have to be grouped into them for the week portal to work.

If something goes wrong

See CtrlPortals troubleshooting. CtrlTime’s screens are CtrlPortals dashboards, so a dashboard that does not open is a CtrlPortals problem, and the application status in M-Files Admin is the first thing to read either way.