Creating and Configuring Internal Issues

Creating Internal issues requires the Jira administrator permission; configuring Internal issues requires the Tempo Administrator permission.

Internal issues are Jira issues that you create to manage time spent on non-project activities such as company meetings and events, onboarding, and internal training, or on time that your organization needs to account for and know about such as vacation, sickness, parental leave, or a scheduled medical leave.

After the Internal issues are created, Tempo administrators can configure Tempo so that the issues are used properly in Tempo Timesheets and Tempo Planner.

• Users can plan time and log time quickly on internal issues because they're all grouped together on Internal tabs in the ​Issues side panel​ in ​My Work​ and the ​Resource Planning view​​, as well as in the ​Log Time​ and ​Plan Time​​ forms.

• Users need to have the Work on Issues permission for the Jira project that you create for the Internal issues so that they will see these issues in Tempo.

• Users with the Work on Issues permission can log work on internal issues, even if they do not have the Browse Projects permission.  

• In Tempo Timesheets, time logged to internal issues may be included in the billable hours, but it’s typical that these issues aren’t typically billable, such as vacation or sick time. To keep hours logged to internal issues separate from the billable hours, it's recommended to set up a ​non-billable account for the internal issues​​.

Watch this video to learn how to create and configure Internal issues. This video is for Tempo on Jira Cloud, but the process is similar to Jira Server/Data Center:

Creating an Internal Jira Project and Issues

It's recommended that you first create a separate Jira permission scheme and Jira project for the internal issues to simplify granting, viewing, and editing permissions. Having a separate permission scheme helps maintain privacy for internal issues; for example, you can limit the ​View All Worklogs​​ permission to Team Leads and HR Managers so that only they can see personal data that is often logged to Internal issues. Creating a dedicated Jira project ensures that all internal issues are easily identified because they use the same prefix, such as "INT".

To create internal issues:

1. Create a new Internal Jira permission scheme - see ​​Managing project permissions ​​ (Atlassian documentation).

2. Grant certain permissions to only those who need access to this data.

3. Create a Jira project with an easily identifiable name and key (such as INT).

4. Create all the Jira issues to cover your organization's non-project events. You can always add more issues later, but it's best to create most of them before your employees start logging time to them. Remember that internal issues should have no ​Original​​ or ​Remaining Estimate​​, no ​Due Date​​, and no ​Assignee.

If internal issues are in a separate Jira project, it's easy to run reports on that project to see the ​number of hours logged to​ or ​planned for​​ on each Internal issue, such as to find out how many sick days have been taken for the month.

Configuring Internal Issues in Tempo

When you configure internal issues, you select the existing Jira issues that you created for this purpose and add them to a list of issues that is marked as "internal". This lets Tempo know that these issues are special, and are automatically used to populate the Internal tab in the ​​Log Time​​ and ​Plan Time​​ forms, and in the Issues Side Panel in My Work in Tempo Timesheets and the Resource Planning view in Tempo Planner.

To configure Jira issues as Internal in Tempo:

1. Select Settings :settings_dc:  in the Tempo sidebar.

2. Under Configuration, select Internal Issues.

3. In the Issue Key search box, select a Jira issue that you want to consider as Internal for Tempo.

4. Click Add.

5. To delete an internal issue, click Delete for the issue you want to stop using as an Internal issue for Tempo. The issue is no longer marked as Internal, but is not deleted from Jira.