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Product Review

Published on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 03:24 PM

allPM.com is pleased to welcome its first member of the current Product Review team, Ms. Katy Koenen, to our PM web portal. Katy passed her "audition" with flying colors, and you can find her fair and objective product review of Replicon's Web Time Sheet 4.5 below and on the Product Review page. We look forward to hearing from others who want to serve as volunteers for the worthwhile activity of creating product reviews. Those of you who are interested, please send your bio, C.V. or resume to Ms. Judy Umlas at judy.umlas@allpm.com. Those of you who have products that you would like to have reviewed, please send them to allPM.com's administrator, Mrs. Carolyn Osborn at carolyn.osborn@alllpm.com.

Product Review: Web Time Sheet 4.5

by Katy Koenen

Updated February, 2003

Product Type: Software

Abstract

Web Time Sheet 4.5 is the latest timecard and productivity management offering from Replicon Inc. Attractive and inviting, Replicon's Web Time Sheet 4.5 may be exactly what you are looking for to track productivity. It is not, however, flawless.

Review Detail

The Web Time Sheet 4.5 makes an excellent first impression on a new user. Upon launching and logging-in to the program, an introductory screen launches in tandem with (and in front of) the primary program window. This introductory screen is separated into three tabbed divisions: Workflow, Setup, and Help, and does a great job of providing visual cues about how to approach the Web Timesheet 4.5.
The Workflow tab gives a visual overview of how to use the Web Time Sheet, starting with Setting up a Project, moving to data-entry of productivity data by project team members, through to timesheet approval and report generation. Clicking on the center of the workflow graphic (as noted in the user interface) opens the Help topic describing how to create timesheets in Web Timesheet 4.5. While I really like this approach, and was pleased to have this particular Help topic available from a single-click at this point, I was disappointed that the Help provided was remarkably general and high-level. I was happy to read about what I would be able to do when creating timesheets; however, as a first-time user, I wanted more specific procedural information available (even as a related link) about how to actually implement the capabilities the Help topic discussed.

The Setup tab gives another visual overview, this time of the two-pronged approach possible for establishing projects and users within the Web Time Sheet 4.5 context.

The Help tab opens a categorical view of the online Help files, and does a good job of providing links to related topics throughout. The Following list shows the categories Replicon uses to organize the Web Time Sheet 4.5 help files.

Important Concepts

Help Topics

Glossary

Index

Contact

New! in 4.5

Poking around the demonstration version of the software, I was a little frustrated that things were not as intuitive as I would have wished; however, once I started digging around the Help files, I was pleased to fine much more procedural information than my first glance (from the Workflow tab) had led me to expect.

Over all, the only real bone of contention I had with the Web Time Sheet software, was that I could find no way or instructions for a supervisor to enter timesheet data for a subordinate. Given that, in my own workgroup, I have had the need to enter time data for people who have worked for me, I found this lack particularly frustrating.
Interestingly, in the demonstration version of the Web Time Sheet 4.5 software, Replicon has included the ProMax add-on module. While the ProMax module lacks the graphic overview of its purpose and functionality found in the Web Time Sheet product, it does offer the ability to track productivity on a visual basis. It is the ProMax module, however, that caused me the most frustration.

For example, the software claims that you can track productivity on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, for the company as a whole, or for groups, by department or project. As it turns out, however, there is no way to enter a date range for these reports, so productivity can only be measured on a calendar-year basis, not a fiscal-year basis, or some other point of reference in time. Additionally while it does indeed chart departmental productivity, it does not actually show productivity by project. Instead, when you click on the menu item to see project productivity, you really get a screen displaying productivity by client, not by project. So, if you have three separate projects all for the same client, there is no way to differentiate among them.

Finally, an administrator must manually enter productivity targets by user, rather than by user and project. In poking around, my expectation was that there would be some Project Estimate screen, probably in the ProMax module, possibly in the Time Sheet program, which would be created at the start of the project, and from which the productivity data would be exported as appropriate. Unfortunately, this was not an option.

Ultimately, if all you need to do is track timesheets, I can recommend Web Time Sheet 4.5, almost wholeheartedly. If you are also interested in tracking productivity, I suggest that you take a hard look at how the Promax module works in relation to the Web Time Sheet software before making an enterprise-wide commitment to this solution.

For More Information

Replicon Inc.
Address:
Suite 800, 910 - 7th Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
T2P-3N8
Voice: 403-262-6519
Fax: 403-233-8046
Toll-Free (North America) 1-877-737-5420
Toll-Free (Europe) 00-800-7375-4266
Toll-Free (Australia/New Zealand) 011-800-7375-4266
E-mail: info@replicon.com

Katy Koenen began her career in technical documentation at Microsoft. Prior to joining the Microsoft Windows CE documentation team, she was responsible for documenting Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools and Microsoft Server Appliance Kit. Currently, Ms. Koenen is the writing lead for the Microsoft(r) Windows(r) Powered Smart Display (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/focuson/smartdisplay.asp). In addition, Ms. Koenen is a member of the Society for Technical Communcation, and was a judge for the 28th annual 2002-2003 Puget Sound Chapter STC competition (http://www.stc-psc.org/competition/competitionjudges.html). She earned her Master of Arts degree in English at Colorado State University. As an English professor at Seattle University, she taught writing and grammar courses before joining Microsoft.

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