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.
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.
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 will be 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 will be added to the current total time spent for the issue or the merge request.
You can remove time by entering a negative amount: /spend -3d will remove 3
days from the total time spent. You can't go below 0 minutes of time spent,
so GitLab will automatically reset 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 (CORE ONLY)
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.