I think the important thing to deal with here is to keep the relationships of your data in mind for you to be able to create fields and views that produce the information you want.
Here is a base I made that is fairly simple, but it gets the job done and has fields available to use that will allow you to integrate it with, say Toggl for instance, or you can even just plug it right into a Google Calendar or something. There are lots of ways that you can get this done. Click here for the invite
Stuff to note about this base:
I have gone ahead and created columns for duration in seconds, minutes, and hours. I did this so it would be easier to produce time fields if I desired later, and because some Zapier integrations, like Toggl for instance, require you to produce an amount of time in seconds in order to create a project task entry.
I have linked all 3 tables together so they all function as junction tables for the entire base if you would like them to do that, but the most important field in each one is of course the primary column. So we have a record name based on the time and project, we have a team member name that can be given assignments for projects, and we can see who did what work under time entries. It is important to note though that the attribution of these links is NOT redundant. Though you as a project manager can assign a project to a specific set of team members, that should not prevent any team member from logging time on any project. As we all know, just because something isn’t officially your job, refusing to do it outright does not work well in the world of IT unless you have enough promotions under your belt that you are no longer dealing with time tracking.
Some columns and lookups have intentionally been made dynamic, but keep in mind that dynamic columns should probably not be volatile for the source of the data, if at all possible. With that in mind, we have a simple check for “was this time entry done this week or last week” and you can do validation for your views based on that.
Time entry using this base would be done simply by using a form from the Time Entries table. With form views, just because someone has that form view does not mean that they can see all of the records. So you can just feel free to distribute that form view and anyone who needs to put time on it can do so, provided they are in the Team Members table.
There are a lot of ways to use this. I highly recommend using Zapier for any kind of weekly report distribution, but at least you can make sense of the data here now. As I have said before, the important part of managing your data is to change it from merely data into actionable information. So you get the data in and then massage it until it is ready in an acceptable view, and after that, do whatever you want with it. Share it as a view that can be checked any time or even embedded in anything that lets you embed an iframe, make an RSS feed out of new entries, whatever you feel like. User adoption is way more important than anything else in this, and airtable’s job here is to be the tool that allows you to convert the data you’ve got into something that a person can read. If you need it to specifically look a certain way that airtable does not allow, you can always user zapier to feed your massaged records into some kind of automated workflow that then feeds into whatever dashboard you want to use.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions about the base!
