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Time Tracking

Introduced in GitLab 8.14.

Time Tracking allows you to track estimates and time spent on issues and merge requests within GitLab.

Overview

Time Tracking allows you to:

  • Record the time spent working on an issue or a merge request.
  • Add an estimate of the amount of time needed to complete an issue or a merge request.
  • View a breakdown of time spent working on an issue or a merge request.

You don't have to indicate an estimate to enter the time spent, and vice versa.

Data about time tracking is shown on the issue/merge request sidebar, as shown below.

Time tracking in the sidebar

How to enter data

Time Tracking uses two quick actions: /spend and /estimate.

If you use either quick action more than once in a single comment, only the last occurrence is applied.

Below is an example of how you can use those new quick actions inside a comment.

Time tracking example in a comment

Adding time entries (time spent or estimates) is limited to project members with Reporter and higher permission levels.

Estimates

To enter an estimate, write /estimate, followed by the time. For example, if you need to enter an estimate of 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days, 4 hours and 5 minutes, write /estimate 1mo 2w 3d 4h 5m. Check the time units you can use.

Every time you enter a new time estimate, any previous time estimates are overridden by this new value. There should only be one valid estimate in an issue or a merge request.

To remove an estimation entirely, use /remove_estimate.

Time spent

To enter time spent, write /spend, followed by the time. For example, if you need to log 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days, 4 hours and 5 minutes, you would write /spend 1mo 2w 3d 4h 5m. Time units that we support are listed at the bottom of this help page.

Every new time spent entry is added to the current total time spent for the issue or the merge request.

You can remove time by entering a negative amount: for example, /spend -3d removes three days from the total time spent. You can't go below 0 minutes of time spent, so GitLab automatically resets the time spent if you remove a larger amount of time compared to the time that was entered already.

You can log time in the past by providing a date after the time. For example, if you want to log 1 hour of time spent on the 31 January 2021, you would write /spend 1h 2021-01-31. If you supply a date in the future, the command fails and no time is logged.

To remove all the time spent at once, use /remove_time_spent.

View a time tracking report

Introduced in GitLab 13.12.

You can view a breakdown of time spent on an issue or merge request.

To view a time tracking report, go to an issue or a merge request and select Time tracking report in the right sidebar.

Time tracking report

The breakdown of spent time is limited to a maximum of 100 entries.

Configuration

The following time units are available:

  • Months (mo)
  • Weeks (w)
  • Days (d)
  • Hours (h)
  • Minutes (m)

Default conversion rates are 1mo = 4w, 1w = 5d and 1d = 8h.

Limit displayed units to hours (FREE SELF)

Introduced in GitLab 12.1.

In GitLab self-managed instances, the display of time units can be limited to hours through the option in Admin Area > Settings > Preferences under Localization.

With this option enabled, 75h is displayed instead of 1w 4d 3h.

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