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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.

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 that GitLab introduced with this new feature: /spend and /estimate.

Quick actions can be used in the body of an issue or a merge request, but also in a comment in both an issue or a merge request.

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.

Estimates

To enter an estimate, write /estimate, followed by the time. For example, if you need to enter an estimate of 3 days, 5 hours and 10 minutes, you would write /estimate 3d 5h 10m. Time units that we support are listed at the bottom of this help page.

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 a time spent, use /spend 3d 5h 10m.

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.

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

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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