Your Global Navigation Bar combines with Open Time to create a powerful double-act that helps you account for every minute you’ve worked that day, whether Time by Ping has captured it or not.
Your Global Navigation Bar and Open Time help you quickly pinpoint what work has and hasn’t been captured on Time by Ping (TBP) at any time during your day. It’s a great quick-reference snapshot that immediately lets you know if you need to add an Activity to account for work you did that we didn’t capture – for example if you were offline or working in a tool TBP doesn’t track or device it isn’t connected to.
In essence, it’s a simplified alternative view of your Timeline but, of course, the two work cleverly and seamlessly together, saving you time and effort as only TBP can.
What are the Global Navigation Bar and Open Time?
If you look above your Timeline, you’ll notice a blue bar stretching across your screen from left to right. This is what we call your Global Navigation Bar (GNB). It shows you a holistic or ‘global’ view of your day from beginning to end.
Your captured Activities show as dark blue blocks along the thin blue line, and consecutive Activities create a long continuous blue block. When there’s no Activity yet captured – for example at the start of the day – the GNB will be blank with default hours set to 10am - 4pm. But, because it’s dynamic, your GNB adapts to your day as soon as it starts to capture your Activities. For example:
- If your first Activity is captured at 7:01am, your GNB will round down and start at 7am
- If your last Activity is captured at 10:01pm, your GNB will round up and end at 11pm
Any gaps you may see between the dark blue blocks on your GNB are what we refer to as Open Time. This makes it quick and easy for you to see where the gaps are in your day and create a manual Activity to fill it if you need to account for other work you’ve done.
With your Global Navigation Bar you can:
- Quickly scan and see your entire day’s captured Activity
- Quickly see where you have any time unaccounted for – Open Time as we call it
- Quickly jump to any point in your Timeline that day
- Quickly create a new Activity to fill in any gaps in your day
What’s the difference between my Global Navigation Bar and my Timeline?
Great question! Your GNB is a simplified view of your Timeline that tells you exactly when Activity has and hasn’t been captured. But the two work together seamlessly.
Scroll through your Timeline and you’ll notice a small dark blue vertical line in your GNB moves left or right to correspond to the same time. Conversely, click any time in your GNB and your Timeline will scroll to the same point in time. Hover your cursor over your GNB and you’ll also see a timestamp to help you navigate it in granular detail.
Filtering is another useful feature that integrates beautifully between the two. Use your Current Matter List to filter the Activities in your Timeline by Client / Matter or unassigned time and the corresponding Activity blocks in your GNB will highlight in a darker blue to help you see them.
How do I create Activities to fill any Open Time?
Easily. Click on any Open Time in your GNB and you’ll see the corresponding Open Time bar in your Timeline already populated with the timestamps and duration of the uncaptured period, as well as a button to create an Activity to fill it.
By placing the Open Time bar in your Timeline, TBP makes it easier to place what you were doing at that time in context of the other Activities captured before and after it that day.
To create an Activity in an Open Time slot:
- Click on the Open Time in your GNB when you want to create an activity for
- In the corresponding Open Time bar in your Timeline, click on ‘Create Activity’
- In the Create Activity pop-up window, select a Client / Matter so you can save it to your Timeline – this is mandatory to save it as an Activity
- You’ll see that TBP has automatically filled in the timestamps and duration. If you change the start or stop time, TBP recalculates the duration for you – this section is also mandatory. You can add the Narrative and any missing Work Codes now or later
- Click ‘Save & Close’ and TBP will automatically add the Activity to your Timeline and show the change in your GNB
