Record activity time accurately and configure automatic time spent

Time spent records effort associated with an activity. It helps a B2B team understand the work behind an investigation, customer update or handoff. The activity composition timer measures time while composing; a manual Hours/Minutes selection lets the agent record the appropriate amount explicitly. Neither value is the same as the age of an open case, the customer’s waiting time or an SLA target.

Record a manual Time spent value  ·  Distinguish the different clocks  ·  Administrator: disable automatic activity composition timing  ·  Choose an effort-recording practice that fits the team  ·  Verify a policy change without rewriting history  ·  Troubleshoot missing or unexpected time

Record a manual Time spent value

1. Create the intended activity in an existing case, or prepare the initial activity on New Case. Confirm which work this entry represents.
2. Find Time spent when the applicable policy displays it. Choose the appropriate Hours and Minutes. A manual selection overrides automatic composition duration for that activity.
3. Check the activity content and audience, then complete the normal activity action. If the activity is an outbound message, review recipients and sending behavior as well.
4. Open the saved activity details and verify Time spent. A selected value that was never committed is not a recorded historical entry.
5. Use a consistent team practice for what counts as effort and how interruptions are handled. Do not enter the same work on several activities simply because several people need the update.

A policy can hide Time spent or require an explicit value. If the field is unavailable or saving asks for time, confirm the applicable policy with your administrator. Do not infer a product-wide default from another agent’s screen.

Distinguish the different clocks

When no manual duration is selected, automatic timing supplies a value only when it is enabled for that context; otherwise the submitted duration is zero, subject to the applicable validation/policy. Review the saved activity instead of reconstructing effort from its created and modified timestamps.

Administrator: disable automatic activity composition timing

1. Open Settings → Cases → Policy (the page heading is Case Policies) and identify the policy that actually applies to the intended workflow and users. You need permission to edit Case Policies.
2. For the initial activity created with a new case, edit the applicable Case Open policy. For activities composed in an existing case, edit the applicable Case View policy.
3. Open Options and turn on Disable automatic time spent. Its wording is negative: enabling this option disables automatic composition timing.
4. Review Show time spent and any applicable required-field behavior so agents still have the intended way to enter effort. A manual duration can still be recorded when automatic timing is disabled.
5. Save the policy and test its intended scope with a new composition. Record a known manual duration on approved test work and verify the saved activity value.
6. If both new-case and existing-case composition need the same behavior, review both applicable policy types. Changing one does not establish that the other uses the same policy.

Choose an effort-recording practice that fits the team

Automatic timing is useful when the time spent composing reasonably represents the effort you want to record. Manual entry is useful when an agent performs the investigation elsewhere and writes the result afterward, or when interruptions make composer time a poor estimate. Decide the convention with the operations lead and explain it to agents before comparing totals.

For example, an analyst spends 25 minutes investigating a customer integration and five minutes preparing the update. If your team records the whole investigation on that activity, manually entering 30 minutes is clearer than relying on the five-minute composition interval. If separate activities already record the investigation effort, avoid double-counting it in the update. The product stores the value; your team defines the honest recording practice.

Compare like with like in reporting. A team using manually recorded investigation effort and another using only composition duration are measuring different things. Do not interpret the difference as productivity without checking the recording rules.

Verify a policy change without rewriting history

• Use the intended actor and case context; verify which policy matches.
• Start a new composition after the change and inspect whether the field and automatic behavior match the plan.
• Save approved test work and inspect the activity’s recorded Time spent.
• Check manual-entry behavior separately from the blank-field case.
• Explain the effective practice to the team and note the date for reporting interpretation. Do not assume a policy change recalculates historical activity values.

Troubleshoot missing or unexpected time

Continue learning

• Work with case activities
• Create a case with the right customer context
• Interpret KPIs and operational performance
• Configure Case Policies and field behavior