todo.vu’s Calendar and time views
todo.vu’s calendar makes it easy to visualize and manage your work, meet your deadlines, and bill accurately for your services.
Developed to support agile workflows, the calendar can be used to quickly record billable (and non-billable) time at specified hourly rates, set reminders and due dates, create new to-dos on the fly, and see at a glance where all your time is spent.
Here’s everything you need to know about todo.vu’s calendar.
Why use todo.vu’s calendar?
Tasks and time tracking, and how these two functionalities interact, have always been a key and unique element of todo.vu. Time tracked must be connected to – that is, either tracked in real-time or logged manually on – specific tasks in todo.vu, in order for that data to appear in a user’s billing and activity reports.
This method provides clarity to owners and customers alike; business managers can clearly see how much time their teams spent on certain tasks, and their clients can clearly see what they’re being charged for.
For example, in this animated GIF below, time is being tracked in real time on a specific task, that task titled: ‘New Support Request’. Then, in the screenshot below our animated GIF, that time appears accurately in todo.vu’s billing reports, calculated as per a User-set billing rate.
todo.vu’s calendar time view brings more support to the time-focussed, rather than task-focussed, workflow.
This means that users can more easily track, log and manage their time without having to lose focus on creating task, project and client details first.
Billable time, due dates, reminders and more can now be marked on todo.vu’s calendar with a click of the button, and workflows and deadlines understood at a glance.
Quick todo.vu glossary
Here’s a quick overview of how your data is organised in todo.vu. For more, check out this support article.
Client – a client in todo.vu typically represents the person or organisation using your services. Tasks and projects must be associated with a client unless they are in-house tasks or projects.
Project – a project in todo.vu represents a grouping of todo.vu tasks. Projects must be associated with a client unless they are an in-house project or a project template.
Task: A todo.vu task is an action item or idea created by a todo.vu user. Tasks show up in todo.vu as individual units sorted by workflow status (Snoozed, To-do, Done), and can house attributes such as descriptions, checklists, file uploads, labels, comments and more. Every activity you undertake can be a task in todo.vu.
Time entry – A time entry is a detailed record of time that has been logged in todo.vu; either tracked in real time by a user with todo.vu’s timer, or recorded manually before or after the fact. Time entries recorded on tasks contribute to accurate and transparent billing and business reporting.
Assignee – an assignee is a task attribute, denoting the user in charge of that particular task. There can only ever be one assignee on a task. When a user creates a task, they automatically become its assignee, but admin users can change a task’s assignee at any time.
Follower – a follower is a task attribute, denoting a user following that particular task. There can be any number of followers on any task. Followers receive push and email notifications about updates on their followed tasks; they can also interact with tasks, such as to leave comments, upload files and more.
Calendar entry – An entry on todo.vu’s calendar can be an actual time entry, billed time entry, predictive time entry, due date, or reminder.
Time modal – The Time modal appears when a user creates or modifies a time entry on todo.vu’s calendar. The Time modal allows users to update the time entry duration.
Tasks modal – the Tasks modal appears from within the Time modal, allowing users to select a task on which the time entry is to be recorded. A user can create a new or search for an existing task from the Tasks modal.
Calendar views
To navigate to todo.vu’s calendar, head to your Time Dashboard by selecting the clock icon on the left-hand side of your Workspace, or by simply heading to the link todo.vu/login?/#/time when you’re already logged in to your account.
On this page, you will see a daily (1-, 3-, 5-, 7- or 9-day) calendar view depending on your device’s screen width, with the current day appearing in the middle of the screen and the preceding and subsequent days on either side. Hours are displayed in half-hour increments on the left-hand side of the calendar, with the real time appearing as a horizontal yellow line across the current day.
If you are an Admin user, you will see a hamburger icon at the top left corner of the calendar. When you select this icon, a side menu will expand, where you can select and view individual team member’s calendars.
Depending on your (or your team member’s, if you’re looking at their calendar) activity in todo.vu, you might also see a variety of coloured blocks on the calendar. Some of these are what we refer to as time entries, some are due dates, and some are task reminders. We explain what each of these mean in more detail below.
You can change your calendar view by using the symbols at the top right-hand side of your Workspace. Your current view is indicated by a red symbol.
todo.vu’s Calendar view options are:
1/3/5/7/9 days rolling view: Indicated by the ‘1,3, 5, 7, 9’. Depending on your device’s screen width, you will see any one of these calendar views at a time. It displays your current day in the middle of the screen with the preceding and subsequent one, two, three or four days on either side.
Week view: Indicated by the ‘W’. This displays a 7-day calendar view which is fixed to show a Sunday to Saturday view of each week.
Month view: Indicated by the ‘M’. This view displays all days of a month on a Sunday to Saturday calendar.
Year view: Indicated by the ‘Y’. This view displays all days of a year divided by months. The current date range, month or year will appear at the top centre of every calendar view for quick reference.
Agenda view: Indicated by the ‘A’. This view displays either one day or three consecutive days, depending on your screen width.
The Agenda view is unique because it captures and displays all time entries logged on a particular day in a single vertical list, without time increments. This is helpful if you are an Admin user in todo.vu, and have many staff tracking and logging their time simultaneously.
Time totals
You can see the total time tracked and logged in todo.vu at a glance on the calendar. If you’re an admin user, you can see this information for any todo.vu user, too, while on their calendar.
You can see time totals:
For an entire year: This total will appear at the top of the calendar, next to the current year, in the yearly calendar view.
For an entire month: This total will appear at the top of the calendar, next to the current month, in the monthly calendar view.
For any day: Daily totals are displayed in all weekly calendar views at the top right-hand corner of each day’s column.
Admin users can see this information for any user by clicking on the hamburger menu to the left of the calendar, and selecting the relevant user from the drop-down list of avatars.
Quick toggle
To quickly navigate backwards or forwards through days, weeks, months or years in different calendar views, simply click on the arrows at the top left of the calendar. Clicking the dot in the middle of the arrows will take you back to the current day of the calendar view you’re currently using.
Tip: Use a right mouse click on a day in the monthly or yearly views to quickly navigate to that day.
Digital calendar sync
You can sync your todo.vu calendar with any external digital calendar that supports iCal feeds.
This way, you can easily see past and upcoming activities and due dates combined with the events of whichever calendar you want. Simply hit the three-dot menu next to your calendar view symbols on the top right-hand side of your calendar.
Select ‘Sync with an external calendar app’ and then ‘Generate’ in the pop-up window to generate an iCal URL. You will have to follow the instructions and advice from your desired calendar app to complete the integration.
Calendar entries
Depending on your activity in todo.vu, you might see a variety of coloured blocks on your calendar. Some of these are what we refer to as time entries, some are due dates and some are task reminders.
Here’s more about what these different blocks, what we refer to as calendar entries, mean:
Blue: Indicates a time entry. Not to be confused with a todo.vu task, a time entry in blue indicates the actual time recorded on a task when that time has not yet been billed.
Purple: A time entry in purple indicates the actual time recorded on a task when that time has been marked as unbillable.
Red: A time entry in red indicates the actual time recorded on a task when that time has been added to a Draft billing report.
Green: Indicates a time entry. A time entry in green indicates the actual time recorded on a task when that time has been billed.
Green time entries are uneditable, and can link a user to its corresponding task or billing report when selected.
Green striped: Indicates time being tracked in real time; that is, when a user’s timer is running. Admin users can see this for any team members; other users can see this on their own calendar only.
Yellow striped: Indicates a predictive time entry. To help users add time entries quickly, a predictive time entry appears on the current date in the weekly calendar views.
A predictive time entry always begins after the most recent time entry logged on the same day, or 9 a.m of the current day if no time entries have been logged. It will always end at the current time (NOW). A predictive time entry is recorded once it’s selected and converted to an actual time entry.
Light red: Indicates a due date. A small, light-red block will appear on the calendar on the date and time at which a task is due.
You can also see due tasks that are assigned to other users if you created the task.
Purple (Opaque): Indicates a reminder. A purple block will appear on the calendar on the date and time at which a task is to ‘wake up’ or become actionable.
Reminders appear as tasks in todo.vu with a workflow status of ‘Snoozed’ until their ‘wake up’ date passes.
Blue (Opaque): Indicates a time entry on any date that’s in the future of the current date.
Transparent with blue border: Indicates a time entry that has not been connected to a task.
Tip: Gleaning more detail from calendar entries
If space allows, a task’s title will appear in a time entry, together with any time notes a user has logged while recording that time.
Hover your mouse over any calendar entry and a tooltip will appear with more details about the task to which that calendar entry is connected.
Hover your mouse over the icon on the left to see the task assignee on task reminders and due tasks (you will only see a task if you are not that task’s assignee). Hover your mouse over the icon on the right to see the client to which that calendar entry is connected.
Who sees what?
Every staff user in todo.vu will see on their calendar time entries, due dates, and reminders for tasks they’re either in charge of as a task assignee, or that they follow as a task follower.
Administration users in todo.vu will also be able to see this information as it relates to each of their staff in their separate calendar views. Only private tasks are kept hidden from users other than the task’s assignee.
You can also see due tasks that are assigned to other users if you created the task.
Create a new time entry
In this section, we explain how to add time entries to your own todo.vu calendar.
If you are an admin user and want to add time entries to a staff user’s calendar, there are a few differences that you will need to know about – more on this below. If you are not an admin user, you will only be able to see your own calendar.
There are four primary ways to add a time entry to your own todo.vu calendar:
1. Predictive time entry
You can add a time entry quickly with todo.vu’s predictive time feature, which appears as a yellow striped time entry on the current day whenever you open your own calendar, provided your timer isn’t on and tracking time.
Predictive time entries will always start at the preceding task of the current day or 9 a.m., and will end at the current time. Simply click anywhere on the yellow-striped time entry to add, adjust and create a real time entry from the predictive time entry.
2. With a click anywhere on your calendar
You can create a time entry directly on the calendar by clicking on blank space anywhere on your calendar when it’s open on any of the rolling day views or the weekly view. You can click (to select the start time) then drag the mouse and release (to select the end time).
You can also right-click on any date from within the monthly and yearly calendar views to add a new time entry to that date.
3. With the timer
You can start the timer from the header button above the calendar. When you are ready you can stop the timer to record time or click on the green tile on the calendar to adjust the timer before logging the time.
4. Within a Task
You can create a time entry while on a Task page within todo.vu by selecting the ‘Time spent’ tab on the sidebar to the right, and then clicking on blank space at a chosen time within the calendar that appears there.
No matter which method you use to create a time entry, a pop-up Time modal will appear.
This Time modal will present you with different options depending on if you are editing an existing calendar entry, or creating a new calendar entry.
Primarily, the Time modal allows you to adjust the duration of a time entry, which you can clearly see as large numbers displaying hours and minutes in the centre of the modal. It is also where you can add notes to your time entry, and more.
If the Time modal is being used to create a new calendar entry, you will see additional options in the modal, as in the screenshot below.
To create a new time entry, stay on the ‘New time entry’ tab as displayed by default in the top left-hand side of the modal. (More on the other two tabs, ‘Task is due’ and ‘Set reminder’ below.)
If the Time Modal is being used to edit an existing calendar entry, you will not see these options:
You can adjust your time entry by:
- selecting the plus and minus signs on either side of the hours and minutes
- selecting any number on the Time modal, including the start and finish times above the time duration, and using the up/down arrows on your keypad to increase or decrease the time. You can also insert the real numbers from your keypad. Note you can toggle the start and finish times between am and pm by selecting them with your mouse, or using your arrow keys to toggle between them.
- selecting the time disks underneath the time duration.
If you’d like to see your updates to the Time modal made in real time on the calendar, be sure to move the modal by using the 12-dot ‘grabber’ at its top left-hand corner; just click the dots and drag the modal anywhere on your screen with your mouse.
Your edits won’t come into effect until you select ‘Save’ and leave the Time modal. You can also add detailed notes to your time entry from the Time modal, which adds greater transparency to your reporting and billing, as time notes appear on your time billing reports.
You can also connect your time entry to a client and a task here, too, but more on this below.
Mouse-less time modal editing
You can edit any detail on the Time modal by navigating the data fields with your tab key and left and right arrow keys, and adjusting values with your up and down arrow keys.
Adding to another user’s calendar
If you are an admin user, you can add calendar entries (including time entries) directly to a team member’s calendar by selecting that team member’s avatar from the hamburger menu at the top left of the calendar, and opening their calendar view.
When you add a calendar entry directly to a team member’s calendar, and that calendar entry is linked to a new task, todo.vu will automatically make that team member that task’s assignee.
Note
Team calendar views are persistent; once you select a team member’s calendar view, you will remain on that team member’s calendar until you update the view to either your own or another team member’s calendar. This includes when you close the browser on your Workspace entirely, and then reopen it later.
Record time entries on tasks
For time entries to appear in reports, including billing reports, they must be recorded on tasks. We do this by connecting time entries to tasks. This way, you can know down to the minute and down to the dollar what every activity in your business is worth, no matter how small that activity is.
For many, the easiest way to connect time to tasks in todo.vu is to track your time in real time directly on your tasks. However, for those who like to add time entries to their calendar as they work, there are other ways to do this:
a) Connect a time entry to an existing task from the calendar
If you or a staff member has already created a task in todo.vu, time can be recorded and connected to that task from within the calendar.
As you click on your calendar to add a time entry, underneath the field to ‘Add a note’ on the pop-up Time modal, you will see a field that identifies a client and task. You will see ‘No client’ and ‘Not linked to a task’ if the time entry is not connected to a task.
Select this field, and a new pop-up modal will appear – the Tasks modal. By default, this modal displays a list of recent tasks ordered chronologically based on your interaction with them.
You can search for the task on which you want to record your time entry by using keywords in the search bar at the top left-hand side.
You can also filter your recent task list by a specific user or client, by selecting the relevant avatars at the top.
If you are a staff user, you can filter your task list by other users and clients who have assigned you tasks or whose tasks you follow.
You can also toggle the Task modal to assume a view similar to the Task Dashboard, by selecting the icon next to the cross (x) at the top right-hand corner of the modal.
Use this view as you would your Workspace’s actual task dashboard to search and select a task on which you want to record your time entry. Once you have selected the right task, the Tasks modal will disappear.
Simply select ‘Save’ to record your time entry to the existing task.
b) Connect a time entry to an existing task from a Task page
While you have a specific task open at the task page, select the ‘Time spent’ tab on the right-hand sidebar.
A mini calendar view will appear, displaying the current day in hourly increments including all calendar entries, not just those relating to this specific task, that relate to your User. You can add a time entry directly to this task here by clicking anywhere on this calendar view.
Like on todo.vu’s main calendar, you can navigate through the days with the left and right arrows at the top left-hand side of the sidebar. The dot in the middle of these two arrows will take you back to your current day.
If you click on the hamburger icon in the upper right corner of the sidebar, you will consolidate your view to display time entries logged by you and your team members on this task only.
You can also add time entries here by selecting the (+) sign at the top left-hand corner of the sidebar.
You can also set a time budget for this task by selecting the pencil icon in the bottom right-hand corner of this sidebar.
c) Connect a time entry to a new task
To connect a time entry to a new task, follow the same instructions as connecting a time entry to an existing task. However, when the pop-up Tasks modal appears, you will want to create a new task here, instead of searching for an existing one.
Creating a new task is easily done.
First, click on the field that says ‘No client, Not linked to a task’, or select the link icon.
Then, type in the new task’s title in the blue Task Adder bar at the bottom of the Tasks modal.
Then, select the icon at the left in the Task Adder bar to assign existing clients and projects, or create new ones, to the task.
(To add new clients and projects on the fly, just start typing in the search bar on the selection screen where it says ‘Type to search/add clients and projects’.)
Once you have selected your client and project, select OK or press enter. Then, press enter again on the Task modal (or select the right arrow on the Task Adder bar).
Select ‘Create time entry’ once you are taken back to the Time modal.
You can complete this same process while in the alternate Tasks modal view, which you can navigate to with the icon on the top right-hand side of the Tasks modal.
A note on unlinking
You can unlink a time entry from a task at any time by selecting that time entry to open the Time modal, then selecting the link icon at the bottom right of the time modal.
Create a due date or reminder in your calendar
To create a due task or task reminder in your calendar, simply click the date and time in your calendar (while within either of the 1-,3-, 5-, 7- or 9-day rolling views) on which you want your task to be due or to receive the reminder.
The same pop-up Time modal will appear. This time, select either the ‘Task is due’ or ‘Set reminder’ tab to the right of the ‘New time entry’ text at the top of the modal. Here, you can create a new task, or select from an existing task, to be due or ‘woken up’ at this time.
The process of creating a new or connecting to an existing task for a reminder or due date is the same as when connecting a time entry to a task. The only difference is that you are in the ‘Task is due’ or ‘Set reminder’ tab on the pop-up Time modal.
That is:
Select the ‘No task selected’ text or link icon at the bottom of the modal. This will take you to the same pop-up Tasks modal as described above, where you can add or create new tasks.
Search for your task using the Most Recent or Task Dashboard views in the Tasks modal, which you can toggle between using the icon at the top right-hand side of the Tasks modal. Select the task and you will be taken back to the Time modal.
Add new tasks using the blue Task Adder bar at the bottom of the Search Tasks modal. Add (or create) a client and project to connect to this task by clicking on the icon at the left in the Task Adder. Press enter or select the right arrow on the Task Adder bar and you will be taken back to the Time modal.
Then, select ‘Set due date’ or ‘Snooze and remind’.
If you click out of the Time modal at any time, your changes will be lost and the pop-up Time modal will disappear.
Note
If you create a task reminder or due date on a different user’s calendar, todo.vu will prompt you to add that staff member as a follower to that task, if they are not already a follower or task assignee. This is so that they will receive notifications relating to the task.
Note also that you will not be able to set a due task or task reminder on any date in the past.
What does a reminder mean?
When you set a reminder in your calendar for an existing or a new task, you ensure the task the reminder is connected to appears in the ‘Snoozed’ workflow state of your Task Dashboard.
You will receive a notification as soon as the reminder date and time is reached, and that task will automatically move from ‘Snoozed’ to the ‘To do’ workflow state.
Modify calendar entries
You can move any calendar entries on your (or your team members’) calendar at any time with a simple drag and drop. This includes due dates and reminders.
You can also edit time entries, due dates and reminders with a quick right click of your mouse on a calendar entry from within any calendar view, or with a right click on a day from within your weekly or monthly calendar views.
A right click on a calendar entry will allow you to:
- change the time entry’s user
- change the time entry’s date
- change the time entry’s billing rate
- change or remove a due date
- mark a due task as done
- log time on a task
- start timer on a task
- delete a time entry
- and more.
A right click on a day within the Month or Year calendar views will allow you to:
- add a new time entry to the day
- add a task due date to the day
- add a task reminder
- navigate to that day’s hourly view
Note
A right mouse click on a calendar entry will yield different options depending on the type of calendar entry.
For example, a right mouse click on a green-striped calendar entry, which indicates that your timer is running, will also give you the option to stop your timer and log your time. Be sure to check out all of the different options!
If you click on any time entry, due date or reminder with your left mouse button, the pop-up Time modal will appear, and you are free to edit that particular time entry as required.
Update the time entry’s duration, add a or update the note, and update the task (and therefore client and project) to which that time entry belongs.