Linked Sessions are one of the most powerful tools in our mission to save you time and effort when it comes to billing efficiently and accurately.
You may work on the same activity for the same client multiple times over the course of a day, but that doesn’t mean your client wants to be billed for each individual bit of time. Time by Ping (TBP) takes care of that by automatically consolidating all those separate pieces of work for the same Activity into single Linked Sessions. With Activities grouped this way, it’s quicker to assign, edit and update Narratives and other details, and have them ready for release as a single Entry with fewer clicks in less time.
What is a Linked Session?
Time by Ping (TBP) works by capturing Activities in your working day and adding each to your Timeline individually in chronological order.
But we know that work isn’t always consecutive and you may dip in and out of the same document or email thread at different times throughout your day. Each of these separate pieces of work will show as individual Activities in your Timeline, but TBP recognizes their connection and links them together automatically. This is what we call a Linked Session.
It means that you can take an action (editing, assigning etc) only once and see it applied to all activities that make up that Linked Session. Activities in a Linked Session show in your Timesheet as one Entry, ready for release to the Practice Management System (PMS).
Let’s give you an example: if you work on the same document at different points in your day, every time you work on it TBP captures your time and creates an Activity. Because TBP can tell the work is being done on the same document, we automatically group all these Activities into a Linked Session and they will form only one entry on your Timesheet.
What Activities Create Linked Sessions?
TBP uses specific rules related to the type of Activity and working sessions we capture to define which Activities should be grouped into a Linked Session.
There are five types of Activity that TBP captures and applies Linked Sessions rules to.
Email Linked Session
Email is a vital way to communicate with clients and a classic example of why Linked Sessions are so important to help group and manage your billable time. Writing and replying to emails can be time-consuming and by its nature, fragmented throughout the day. TBP captures email Activities for the same thread on the same day and automatically groups them into one Linked Session according to:
- Qualifying interactions with the same email or email thread – reading and writing
Document Linked Session
Drafting, editing and reading documents is part and parcel of most working days, so TBP groups together all Activities relating to the same document on the same day according to:
- Document title
Research Linked Session
Research is important and can be extremely varied. Automatically grouping all your research Activities together as one Linked Session saves you valuable time when it comes to billing for all your research work. TBP groups together research Activities on the same day that:
- Have the same root URL
- Don’t have a break of more than 12 minutes between Activities on the same root URL
Let’s give you another example: if you visit www.lexisnexis.com to research a legal matter, then use that research to inform an email you’re drafting and then return to www.lexisnexis.com within 12 minutes, TBP will group those two website visits into one Linked Session.
Manual Timer Linked Session
The Manual Timer is there for when you prefer to track your own time rather than have TBP do it for you automatically, and is also useful for when you’re working on something TBP can’t track like impromptu meetings.
Each time you start and stop a Manual Timer, TBP creates an Activity associated with that timer. We then group together all unsubmitted Activities recorded on the same timer on the same day into a Linked Session.
Once you submit your Manual Timer to your Timesheet, TBP will mark the Linked Session as complete and reset the timer. If you start the same timer again, it will create a new Linked Session for all following timer sessions until you next submit them.
Mobile Timer Linked Session
Mobile Timers work in much the same way as Manual Timers on your desktop. The primary difference is that you can complete a Mobile Timer Linked Session or Sessions directly in the TBP app prior to submitting it to your Timesheet, which means you can submit more than one Mobile Timer Linked Session to your Timeline at once.
Each time you start and stop a Mobile Timer, TBP creates an Activity associated with that timer. We then group together all unsubmitted Activities recorded on the same timer on the same day into a Linked Session. When you complete a Mobile Timer session, a new Linked Session will start the next time you use the Mobile Timer.
Once you submit your Mobile Timer to your Timesheet, TBP will mark the Linked Session as complete and reset the timer. If you start the same timer again, it will create a new Linked Session for all following timer sessions until you next submit them.
For more information on mobile timer linked sessions, read our Mobile: Capture On The Go article.
What else do you need to know?
- On your Timeline, a Linked Session will show each Activity at its relevant timestamp with its individual duration. It will also show the number of other Activities that form that Linked Session at that specific time.
- Select any Activity in a Linked Session and TBP will automatically select all the Activities in it. These selections will be shown in the Global Navigation Bar and the activity count shown in the selection panel on the right-hand side of your TBP window, above your Current Matters List.
- Any edits you make to a Linked Session will be applied to all activities that make up the Linked Session on the Timeline and will be reflected on the Entry in Timesheet.
- In your Timesheet, TBP automatically groups together every Linked Session Activity for the day into one Entry under the Client / Matter it's assigned to. Each Entry will show the number and total duration of all the Activities in that Linked Session as an increment value.
