Time tracking blog

What went wrong?
Midnight on Aug 26th our text message provider stopped forwarding your text messages to us. It turns out that they preformed a software update that caused all sorts of problems that affected not just TSheets, but several other companies using their services. We received no advanced warning that this software update was going to take place, and now almost 24 hours and dozens of phone calls later, they still don’t have things completely fixed. We are very disappointed with our upstream providers (Tatango and 4Info) and couldn’t be more sorry for the inconvenience this is causing.

It’s working! (mostly)
One of the things changed by our provider’s software update is they are now intercepting all text messages with the word “start” or “stop”. Since 95% of the text messages sent to TSheets are “t start” or “t stop”, none of those messages are getting to us. To work around this we have setup the new words “in” & “out” to replace “start” & “stop” respectively. So if you would have previously texted “t start at 0800″, you will need to replace that with “t in at 0800″ instead.

Confirmations may not work
If you happened to text “t stop” to us during the last 24 hours, chances are that we won’t be able to send messages back to your phone. Our provider is intercepting the word “stop” and blocking your number so that we can’t send messages to you. We don’t have a work-around for this yet, but will keep you posted.

A backup plan
Be assured that we are completely committed to restoring a reliable system for tracking your time via text message as quickly as humanly possible. We are working through the night researching other text message gateway providers and alternatives to get a reliable system in place. Expect another announcement in very the near future with backup number you’ll be able to text to.

Please call or email if you’d like more details or just feel like venting.

Brandon

• 2009-08-28: Status Update: Our provider will be applying a patch tonight. Read my update in the comments below.
• 2009-08-31: Status Update: Things are back to 100%! Read my update in the comments below.

Thank you for all of your feedback! – we have a few kinks in our system we’re working on right now.  In the Time Slider view, if you go back and view a week prior to the DST change, you’ll notice that the time displayed is 2 hours off from what it actually is in the system.  This is just a display bug and the underlying data is fine.  We’ll have a fix for this in place soon.  Fair warning – if you ask me right now whether I think DST is a good idea – I’ll tell you I’ve considered moving to Arizona ;)

Also, in our new beta Time Card the task total and the day total tallies are sometimes off by an hour or two.  This is also a display-only problem, and doesn’t affect the actual time tracked.  We’re working to fix this quickly as well.

We’ll update this post once we have another update – thank you for your patience!

The TSheets Crew

3/12/2009 Update: We have the bug in the new Time Card fixed. Now when you clock in the total worked time should come up properly. Let us know if you see any strange behavior with it!

3/25/2009 Update: The Time Slider view now works correctly when sliding from a week with one timezone to a week with a different timezone.  Let us know if you experience any other issues!

Some users may have had difficulty clocking in this morning. The elusive bug introduced last night that was causing the issue has now been squashed.

Thanks to the users who reported having issues, it made fixing it much easier.

So we have a bug that may affect you if you use SMS to track your time.  If you have been strictly tracking your time via SMS (text) messages from your cell phone, you may have noticed that on your reports, your clock in/out times may be off by an hour since Daylight Savings Time changes occurred.

Don’t worry, it doesn’t change the amount of time you’ve recorded, it just affects how it shows up when editing or reporting.  Read on for details of why this is, and for what to do to fix it.

WHAT THE BUG IS
When you clock in to TSheets, we automagically detect what time zone you are in and record it in your timesheet record.  The problem is, we don’t have a good way of detecting your time zone when you’re clocking in from an SMS text message.  So, we look at what your time zone was the last time you clocked in, and just use that one again for the new record.  The problem is, if you only use SMS text messages to clock in/out, then you’ll forever be stuck in the same time zone, since we always grab whatever your last timezone was and stick it in the new records.  This leads to the problem where Daylight Savings Time comes and goes and your timezone may shift an hour – but SMS clock-ins continue to use the ‘old’ timezone which existed in previous records.  So now reports look odd because everything could appear off by an hour.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO FIX IT
The fix is actually quite simple.  All you need to do is log on to TSheets.com from your computer, and clock-in, then clock-out.  When you do this from a computer, we’ll be able to correctly detect and record your timezone.  From that point on, any clock-ins via an SMS text message will use the newly recorded timezone and everything in the reports will be right again.

If you have questions or you don’t have the luxury of sitting down at a computer any time soon, call us. We will fix it for you and/or walk you through how to remedy the SMS bug from a desktop.

You can also call or Email us to let us know if you’d like your timesheet records since the DST change to be adjusted to reflect the correct timezone.  You’ll just need to let us know what your timezone is, so we’ll know what date DST occurred and can get your timesheets fixed up for you.

WHAT WE ARE DOING TO FIX IT
Programming like crazy!  It is a bigger issue than just a few tweaks to the program & “poof” problem solved. Because it is a complex problem, it’s going to require a complex solution – but rest assured that we’ll have it resolved before our next DST change, so you won’t be required to do anything next time.

SUGGESTIONS?
We are open to making this work for everyone, if you think you have a solution, let us know!
As soon as we have this resolved, we will post here so it is always available.

Thanks,
The TSheets Team