Do Your Teams Track Worked Time?
Before configuring this setting, check how your organization already works with time tracking.
Some teams use ActivityTimeline mainly for planning and forecasting, without logging worked time. Other teams regularly log time and use worklogs to compare planned work with actual effort.
This setting should match your real process, because it affects how ActivityTimeline calculates workload for past, current, and future dates.
Time Tracking Modes
There are two common scenarios:
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your team does not track worked time and uses ActivityTimeline mainly for planning;
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your team tracks worked time and uses worklogs to record actual effort.
You can change this configuration at any time in Configurations → Time Tracking Mode.
1. Users do not log worked time
Choose this mode if your team uses ActivityTimeline primarily for planning and does not regularly log time spent on tasks.
In this mode, the estimate of the task will be distributed for the whole duration of the task, irrespectively, if that’s a past, current, or future period, plans are stable and the estimates don’t require any adjustments. You can also generate Workload reports not only for future dates but also for the past weeks/months.
This is the recommended mode if you:
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use ActivityTimeline for planning and forecasting,
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do not track actual worked time,
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or plan using Story Points or Daily Estimate only.
2. Users log worked time (default)
Choose this mode if your team regularly logs time against Jira issues.
Once work is logged, ActivityTimeline assumes that worklogs represent the actual effort. Instead of continuing to display planned workload for past days, it replaces it with the recorded worklogs.
As a result:
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Past days show actual logged time.
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Current and future days continue to show planned workload.
To see the worklogs on the Planner, make sure you have enabled Worklogs & Workload mode.
IMPORTANT
Planning with Story Points? Here’s what you need to know:
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Story Points represent the total estimated effort for a task and do not decrease when time is logged.
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To ensure accurate workload distribution, always enable the setting: ‘Users do not log worked time’.
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This setting spreads the effort evenly across the entire task duration, giving you a stable and realistic view of capacity.
Check the video example here: Video Example: Time Tracking modes in ActivityTimeline
What Happens Next
If your team tracks worked time, we recommend reviewing ActivityTimeline as a Time Tracking Provider next.