Does GitHub have time tracking?
GitHub (as well as Jira) is one of the main working platforms for programmers. It provides software developers with a variety of useful code and project management instruments. What GitHub is missing is a detailed time tracking tool.
So why use GitHub for project management then you may ask? It’s pretty simple. Developers love it. And it has some fantastic features already built into it: tags, milestones, multi-assignments, commenting, markdown, project boards, etc. Some features are even conspicuously absent from other popular project management tools.
Everhour allows you to supplement GitHub with everything you need, instead of looking for an alternative just because of the lack of native time tracking.
Why track time in GitHub at all?
If you are a development/consulting firm, your clients want to have an idea of the total time and cost of the project or yet another iteration before they sign a contract. The next big thing is to stay within the agreed estimates and keep your client up-to-date with your progress.
Productivity metrics, insights, and time tracking automatically generated from your programming activity is good, but not something your client expects and understands well. Automatic tracking is great for controlling personal productivity and helps to discover how to better optimize time, but this type of software usually does little to aid in setting better estimates for tasks, working with billing rates and charges, and monitoring budgets and wages. And Everhour solves all the above perfectly!
How to track time in GitHub with Everhour
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Step 1: Create your Everhour account
Sign up for free and install our browser extension. This is how we embed controls into the GitHub interface. We support all popular browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge.
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Step 2: Connect Everhour and GitHub
When you sign up, Everhour will automatically sync issues from your repositories. Sync happens periodically so all new issues that you create in GitHub will be visible in Everhour reports. Everhour also updates the names of issues or repositories if they were renamed in GitHub. This way Everhour reports will always show you the freshest data.
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Step 3: Invite your team
You need to invite your team to join Everhour. They will also need to connect their GitHub accounts and install our browser extension. Only those you invite into Everhour will be able to track time and see time progress (not necessarily all GitHub users). Your clients will not see anything in GitHub unless you invite them.
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Step 4: Track time inside GitHub
After successful integration, you can track time using the timer or log time manually. You’ll see the time reported by each employee and its progress.
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Step 5: Track time via the Everhour browser extension
You don't necessarily need to open GitHub or Everhour websites. By clicking on the timer icon in the browser toolbar you can quickly start the timer, add time to any task, edit time or estimate, and more.
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Step 6: Make custom reports with GitHub data
There are a number of columns that show specific data coming from GitHub. Open a report builder and select any of the columns to display the data in your report. For example, group tasks by milestone showing members, reported time and original estimates. Or you can build a report with the total involvement of a specific department. Use this data to keep your customer informed and to make sure that your team moves according to your original estimates. By increasing transparency in the development process, you will increase the number of your satisfied customers.
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Step 7: Find out more...
Everhour’s time tracker for GitHub provides detailed statistics on working time. Use the Timers page to find out what your team is working on right now. Meanwhile, the Timesheet page will give you an overall view of the time your team members were spending during a week. The Timecards tab shows when each of your employees started their workday, what time did they take breaks, and when they finished working. The Timeoff page includes the data on all vacations, sick leaves, and other PTO types.
