Archiving Staff with MetriQ Time Tracking Solutions

See also:
Using the Staff Archiver
Updating your Roles for Archived Staff
Display All Time using the Group Tool

To Archive Staff, first open the Staff tool by pressing the Staff button from MetriQ's main window, or going to Tools > Staff from the main window. When the staff tool is open, choose Actions and then Archive User (see also Merging Staff).

What is the Staff Archiver?
The Staff Archiver Tool is designed to help you manage your timing data for you and your staff over a number of years. By selecting a Staff member from the drop down list of staff, and entering an archive date, MetriQ will archive all timing data, Icon notes, disbursements and workflow for that chosen staff member from when records started up to the selected date. In so doing MetriQ effectively splits your data to give the following:

Before Archive:

After Archive, as of 31 March 2008.

As you can see from these two tables, MetriQ has now split the original user John into John 2007 and John, where John 2007 represents the archived user.

Why would you use the Archiver?
You may wish to use the staff archiving tool for a number of reasons, but the most compelling is for the change of charge out rates at the start of a new financial period.

Example:
Using the example above, suppose John's charge-out rate was $100/hour. However, as of the 1st April 2008, that rate increased to $150. If you were to adjust the charge-out rate for John's Role without using the archive feature, all new billings would be at the new rate of $150/hour. However, if you were to look retrospectively at past data, all of your past data would now also be reported using the $150/hour charge-out rate. This may not be a problem if your invoices have all been settled for the previous year, but may be an issue if you have invoices outstanding from last year or invoices to be carried over into 2008.

The Solution:
By using the Staff Archiver Tool, you are able to spit the user into 2 different entries (John 2007 and John). Once done, simply add a new Role using the Role Tool (e.g. Manager 2008 at $150/hour), and use the Bulk Assignment Tool to update John's role to be Manager 2008.

Reporting:
After John has been archived, your reporting data will of course remain the same - except where previously you had the data for one person (John), now you have timing data for both 'John 2007' and 'John', which combined aggregate the accrued time for all work done by John before the archive.

Using the Staff Archiver:

Staff: Having opened the archiver tool, select from the drop down list the staff member you wish to archive. Only ACTIVE staff will be shown.

Archive Date: Select an end date up to which all available data will be archived. In the example above this would be the the 31st May 2007 (up to and including).

Tag: When you archive your staff, you will need to give them a unique name. To help, MetriQ provides the Tag field, in which you can enter your own specific ending to both the Staff's Last name and User Name. As a default, MetriQ inserts the year of the archived date, but can of course enter your own tag, or edit the name of the staff at any time after you have finished archiving.

Keep Active: By default, MetriQ will make your archived staff Inactive. In so doing, the archived user's details will not show up in MetriQ's logon screen. This may be important if you do not wish your staff to be able to logon to MetriQ using their archived name (e.g. John 2007).

Passwords: An optional field that should only be completed if you wish to change the password needed for logon. Ordinarily, if your archived staff remain Inactive, they will not show up at logon time, removing the risk of your staff logging on with the incorrect and archived user name.

When done, press Okay, and MetriQ will archive your selected user.

Updating your Roles for Archived Staff:

Having archived your staff, you may now wish to update their roles. Here's how.

Before we begin, let us remind ourselves what became of the user John when we did our staff archive.

First we split our User John, into John 2007, and John. John 2007 has data from when MetriQ was first used, up until March 31 2007 - the date chosen for archiving this user. John has all remaining data from 1st April 2008 to the present day.

At this stage, both staff (John 2007 and John) have the same Role, in this case that of a Manager. However, the charge out rate for John changes in 2008 so you must now do the following:

1. Open the Roles Tool and create a new Role to reflect the change in charge out costs. Call this new role Manager 2008 and enter the new charge out rates. Close when done.

2. Now use the Block Assignment Tool to re-assign the new Role Manager 2008 to John. When the Block Assignment tool opens, select the user John and assign the role of Manager 2008 to him. Remember, by opening the Block Assignment tool on a specific Folder (right click on a folder and choose Block Assignment Tool), all changes will occur relative to that folder and its child folders. However, opening the Block Assignment tool without first selecting a Folder (by right clicking anywhere except on a folder in the Timing Folder tree view to open the Block Assignment Tool), and all changes will apply to ALL folders.

Close this tool when done.

Display All time using the Group Tool:

If you want to display all time data and accrued costs for John and John 2007, along with their respective charge-out rates, use the Group Tool. In this example, open the Group Tool (Tools > Groups) from the main drop down menu in MetriQ. Create a new Group Called John, and add the user John and John 2007 to the group. Now when you open the Reporting tool, you can view the data for this user by selecting the new group John.

©Copyright 2004-2007 MetriQ Limited All Rights Reserved. MetriQ Software is Patent Pending

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