Faster Time: Interface Changes

This video will cover the new Faster Time interface and highlight changes that have been made.  For an overview of how Faster Time works in general, please see the video entitled “Using Faster Time”.

If we open the Faster Time work report by going to New > Activity Tracking, we’ll notice that the interface looks quite a bit different. We no longer have tabs for different types of entries, and there are a couple of new panels. If you’d like to resize the panels for easier viewing, you can hover over the vertical line in the middle of the window and click to drag left and right.

On the left, we’ll see a panel that looks somewhat familiar.  This is the Activity Panel where we’ll see a list of all of the activities that Faster Time has tracked.  We no longer have the columns that display how long each activity took, but we can still view this information by hovering over an activity.

You’ll also notice that entries are organized first by the time they were started, then by matter.  This way you can easily see activities that took place in the same time period, regardless of what matter they’re related to.  We still have the option to filter the entries in this panel using the funnel icons at the top of each column.

The bottom right panel is our Batch Panel where we will be able to easily view all of the entries that we’re batching together into a time entry.  If we select one or more activities in the Activity Panel by clicking on them, we’ll see them show up in the Batch Panel.  We can then click the drop-down next to each activity to choose whether to use the minimum or recommended time for that entry.  Clicking an activity again or clicking the blue arrow icon will remove it from the current batch, and clicking the “Delete Items in Batch” button will permanently remove all selected entries from the work report.  When we’re ready to create our time entry, we can click the “Bill Items in Batch” button to open up a time entry window just like before.

If you’re having trouble viewing entries in the Activity Panel, you can use the Settings Panel in the top right to sort and filter your activity list.

First let’s look at filtering.  The check-boxes at the top of the Settings Panel replace the tabs in the previous interface.  This way, we can choose to view time and expense entries together in the same window instead of having to switch back and forth between tabs.  If we want to view only time entries, or only entries that have been assigned to matters, we can just select the appropriate boxes to filter our list.

We can also filter the Activity Panel by selecting the start date for displayed activities.  This selection will show you only activities that were started on the selected date.  Faster Time always combines multiple entries for the same activity into one, so if you open a document at different times on different days, there will still be only one entry organized by the date and time it was originally started.  Once we’ve filtered by date, we can filter the activities further by selecting a minimum duration.

If we’d like to sort the Activity Panel a certain way, we can use the last two settings.  First, we have the option to sort activities by date then matter, or by matter then date.  Date then matter will group activities into time intervals and show what matters you worked on in a specific interval, and matter then date will show you each matter and what activities took place in specific intervals for that matter.  Next, we can customize the interval that Faster Time uses to sort activities with the drop-down at the bottom of the Settings Panel.

Once we’re finished saving our time, we can click the red X in the top right to exit Faster Time.