TimePilot Best Practices
All About User-Defined Exports
(Reprinted from the June 2011 issue of the TimePilot Times
newsletter. © TimePilot Corporation, all rights reserved.)
We talked in a recent newsletter about the benefits of keeping your TimePilot IV software updated to the
current version. We issued an update at the start of June that makes updating even more valuable.
The update gives your software the ability to create spreadsheets and other types of files containing exactly
the TimePilot data you want—and nothing else. You set up the format you want only once; from that point onward, all you
have to do is tell the software to prepare that data in that format, and the job is done.
The feature is called "User-Defined Exports." Here's how to set one up and use it.
Creating the Export
- In TimePilot Central, click the "File" menu, then run your cursor over "User-Defined Export" and click
"Create/Edit User-Defined Exports" in the menu that appears.
- The User-Defined Export screen will appear. (The
numbered items in the screenshot are keyed to explanations in the text below.)
When the window opens, you’ll be in the "File Setup" section. Here you’ll tell the software whether you
want to create an entirely new Export or to modify one you’ve already created, as
well as the kind of file
you want to create and where you want to put it.
Let’s assume you’re creating your first Export, and you plan to use a spreadsheet program
like Microsoft Excel to view the data. You'd like just a simple
spreadsheet with the name of the employee, their company, department
and their regular and overtime hours. Here’s how to do it:
- At the top of the User-Defined Export screen, click the button next to "Create New Export Definition."
- Name the Export. This will be the name you see in TimePilot Central
menu when you use this feature. Let’s
call it "Export-Hours."
- In the "File Type" box, choose "Comma Separated." (Optional explanation: This choice means that when
TimePilot creates the file, each piece of data will be separated by a comma, like this:
LastName,FirstName,Department,RegularHours,OTHours, etc. Spreadsheet programs know to put each piece of data
that appears
between commas into a separate cell. Other programs might require that the data be separated by tabs.)
- In the "Default Export Location" box, choose where you want to save the Export. Each time you use this Export,
the file it generates will be saved here. You can save it anywhere
you want, but for now let’s keep the location suggested in the screenshot (C:\tpData).
- In the "Default File Name" box and "Default File Extension" box,
you’ll name the file and its extension. Let's change the suggested
file name from "Export" to "Export-Hours" so we'll know at a glance
what data is being collected. This will be helpful if we create more
than one User-Defined Export. We'll keep the
file extension—.csv—suggested by the program.
That’s it for the "File Setup" screen. Now click the "Field Selection" tab at the top of the box.
This is where you tell TimePilot exactly the data you want to export.
(The
numbered items in the screenshot are keyed to explanations in the text below.)
- In the "Information Type" box, choose one of the three options. Each time you choose an option, you’ll see
the "Available Fields" choices change at the bottom left of the screen
(Item 5 in the screenshot above). For this exercise, we’ll click
"Transaction Detail."
- In the "Time Format" box, choose the time format you’d like to use. For this example, we’ll choose
"Hours and Minutes."
- Do you want the name of each field to appear at the top of each column of the spreadsheet? We’ll say yes,
and click the checkbox next to "Include Header."
- Do you want "Ignored Transactions"—clock-ins or clock-outs that you have told the TimePilot software to ignore
when calculating employee hours—to show up in the Export File? For this example,
they'd just clutter things up, so we’ll click
the checkbox so they won't appear.
- Now we choose the data that we want to appear in the export file. If you clicked "Transaction Detail" in Step 1
of this section, you’ll see a list of 39 types of data under "Available Fields." If you clicked "Transaction Summary,"
you’ll see 20 types of data and if you clicked "Profile Detail," you’ll see 32 types of data. For this example, we'll
click "Transaction Summary."
- We want to see these columns, in this order, on our spreadsheet:
- Company Name
- Department Name
- Long Name (the name of the employee that appears in
their Employee Profile, as opposed to what appears on the
screen of the TimePilot Vetro or
the TimePilot PC clock)
- Regular Total (of hours)
- Overtime 1 Total (of hours)
- Overtime 2 Total (of hours)
- Overtime 3 Total (of hours)
- Weekly Total (of hours)
- First, scroll down the "Available Fields" list until you find "Company Name." Click it to highlight it and click
the "Add" button. You’ll see "Company Name" appear in the "Included Fields" box on the right side of the screen.
One thing to remember: The columns will appear on the spreadsheet in the order you choose them here.
- Now look in the "Available Fields" list for "Department Name." Highlight it and click "Add."
- Continue the process for each of the types of data you want to see (Long Name,
Regular Total, etc.).
- When you’re done, click "Save."
That’s it! Now you can use your new export whenever you want. You can also set up other
user-defined exports that will contain
different data by following the directions above.
Using the Export
You’ll generally use your export to display data from extracted pay periods.
Here's how to use your new export:
- Open an extracted
pay period in TimePilot Central (Periods Menu > Open Past Time
Period).
- Click the "File" menu in TimePilot Central, then run your cursor over "User-Defined Export."
Your export(s) will show up on the menu that appears.
- Click the name of the export. You’ll be asked where to save the file (the default location you specified when you
set up the export will appear; you can change it here if you want) and what you want to name the file.
Please note: If you keep the defaults, every time you export data, your computer will create a file called Export.csv
and place it into the C:\tpData folder on your computer. That means that if you exported your data last week,
and are going to do it again this week, both files will have the same filename and last week’s data will be overwritten.
It’s a good idea to add the date to the name of the file; something like "Export-7-6-2011.csv"
- Click "Save." The export will be generated. Then open your spreadsheet program, browse to the
C:\tpData folder and take a look!