Toggl Button (for tome tracking) now available in Zammad

[ecomsilio]

Hi,

we have added Zammad as a supported app for the Toggl time tracking Button.

The repository is available here: https://github.com/ecomsilio/toggl-button-ecomsilio

We will update it with some refinements in the next few days. Stay tuned. When all is working fine, we will submit a pull request to the original Toggl Button repository so that you can install the Chrome add on from the Chrome Web Store.

https://github.com/ecomsilio/toggl-button-ecomsilio

How does it work?

Installation

First clone the repository: git clone git@github.com:toggl/toggl-button.git

Then depending on your browser, continue with the following steps.

On Chrome:

1. Navigate to chrome://extensions/ and enable “Developer Mode”.
2. Choose “Load unpacked extension…”
3. Open the src directory in the toggl-button directory you just cloned and follow the prompts to install.

On Firefox:

1. Rename the manifest.json file to manifest_chrome.json
2. Rename the manifest_ff.json file to manifest.json (note: switch them around again if you want to use Chrome)
3. Navigate to about:debugging
4. Choose Load Temporary Add-on
5. Open the src directory and select the manifest.json file

Note that in Firefox the add-on needs to be manually loaded again when the browser restarts.

Settings

Press extension icon in the browser bar and press the gear icon to open the setting.
Navigation to the 3rd tab Permissions

For zammad.com hosted installations

• Scroll down in the list with service and select the checkbox for zammad.com

For zammad.org self-hosting

• Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and define your custom domain there. Just type in the domain name without http(s) in format “mydomain.com” or “support.mydomain.com” (if you use a subdomain) and select Zammad from dropdown and press Add.

Using the Button

1. Log in to your Toggl account from the extension popup.
2. Navigate to your Zammad installation, open a ticket and start your Toggl timer there
   (or start entry from the extension icon menu.)

To edit the running time entry

• Edit entry details from the post start popup that is shown right after you click the “Start timer” button
• Edit entry details from the extension icon menu by clicking the running time entry name

To stop the current running timer:

• Press the button again
• Stop the entry from the extension icon menu
• Start another time entry inside your account.

Toggl Project

Per default the add-on passes the ticket number and the title as a toggl project. The ticket number is in square brackets. For example

[12345] Here is my ticket title

If the project is not available in toggl, then the value will be ignored and you can select your own project.

Screenshots

Issues

Currently we are not happy with the position of the button. First we added the button at the top of a ticket, next to the marking wrench.

The problem here is, that as soon as you scroll down, a sticky header is being displayed which has different classes and which makes the button disappear. We can’t include the button twice on the side, so this was no good option. Especially since we discovered a small glitch in Chrome.

Glitch details

When you open a ticket which has only a small part of content and where there is no need to scroll, the page still display a scroll bar and shows the sticky header at the top. In order to make the sticky header to disappear, you will habe to scroll up.

Chrome 67.0.3396.99 on Mac OS 10.13.5

We have then decided to put the button in the sidebar. The problem here is, that the button will only show one time. As soon as you open another ticket, somehow the sidebar is not reloaded completely and therefore doesn’t show the toggl button again. You will have to reload the page completely to make the button appear again.

We will try to put the button in the footer next to the “Update ticket” button.
Maybe @thorsteneckel has some idea or can tell us which part of the ticket detail view would be best to put the button at.

Let us know your feedback or improvement and have fun using the toggl button.

Thanks,
Gijs

[thorsteneckel]

Hi @ecomsilio - sweet! I really like it. So cool that it might get merged into the main repo. Regarding your question: I like your idea of having it next to the update button in the action row. Let me know if we can answer any questions

[ecomsilio]

We have updated the repository.

Changelog

• The button is now displayed at the top the sidebar
• The button will display in each ticket and will submit the correct title and/or project for the specific ticket

Issues

• In some cases the button isn’t displayed when you open Zammad while a time tracking is already active.
• When opening another ticket or after refreshing the page, the button says “Start timer” although a timer is already active.

Both issues also happen to other services like Podio, Trello etc. This seems to be a global issue.

In use

I have made a short video on how it looks.

[cxgl]

@ecomsilio, that looks great! Have you considered trying to get it to work with clockify.me? It’s a free alternative to toggl.

[SunnyTeater]

@thorsteneckel
Can we get that in Hammad as default?

@ecomsilio sadly the repo is offline

That’s exactly what’s missing in the “Time Accounting” Feature.

[thorsteneckel]

While I like that and the work you put in it we won’t have that as a default. It would be like a vendor lock in. I can imaging having a selection of different time tracking providers baked in. However, this will take some time to accomplish. We currently have other priorities that are relevant for 80% of our user base.

[ecomsilio]

Hi @SunnyTeater

The add-on needed some tweaks due to some updates toggl made. We have update the add-on and entered a merge-request for it. This will make sure that the Zammad add-on is available for everyone that uses this toggle add-on.

Since it only is a “Start/Stop Tracking Button” there is no need to build in directly in Zammad per default. It only make sense, when clients and projects are synchronized between Zammad and toggl. So a complete toggl integration is a bit more work as only the button.

I would love to see this integration but for the moment, I would put more effort in for example Webhooks as more people will be able to use it and eventuell build their own time tracking integration with other tracking-solutions.

[SunnyTeater]

Mmh, ok. I can deal with this decision