Plans 💳 : Everyone
User Permissions 👥: Admins
Now that you've dived into the diverse Timely Ecosystem and, hopefully 😁, reviewed the easy steps needed to connect Timely to Zapier, you may be wondering - "What's next?".
Lots of folks have found inspiration in our Sample Zapier Zaps or need specific workflows for apps such as Salesforce or Google Sheets. However, the most common task we've seen with the Zapier integration is creating projects in Timely. To help you with this we've put together a quick overview on how to set up a Zap to achieve that goal.
🤔 We're going to assume you already know the basics of setting up a Zap. If not, you might want to check out Zapier's Quick Start guide and the resources above first.
First steps
After selecting the action "Create Project" and connecting your Timely user account, the workspace in Timely needs to be selected. The project Name will most likely be mapped from one of the previous steps of the Zap.
Identifying the client for the project
The next step is to define the client of the project. The client has to exist in Timely. It is possible to create the client in a previous step of the Zap. The actual identification of the client is done in 2 steps:
1) Select the identification method for the client. There the following options are available:
Timely Client ID
Client Name
Client External ID
2) In the field "Client (As Selected Above)", the client can be specified by the attribute selected above using the "Custom" tab.
Choosing the "Custom" tab allows you to map a Timely Client ID/Client Name/Client External ID that you get from one of the previous steps of your Zap.
No matter how you choose to identify the client you can always select the tab "Client (As Selected Above)" and use the dropdown to hard code the client.
Selecting color and setting an External ID
Next, you can customize your project by selecting a color, making user notes mandatory if desired, and set an External ID — which is really handy when building deeper integrations between Timely and other apps.
To select a color, you can choose from the pre-selected options in the dropdown menu. If you prefer a different color, navigate to the "Custom" tab and specify the color by the hex code.
Assigning users to the project
In order to allow user to log time to the project they have to be assigned to it first. Only active users already present in the workspace can be assigned to a project. The user assignment is done in 2 steps:
1) Select the identification method for the users. The following options are available:
Timely User ID
All Users
User Email
Team
User External ID
Timely Team ID
2) In the field "Users (As Selected Above - Not Required for All Users)", the user can be specified by the attribute selected above using the "Custom" tab.
Choosing the "Custom" tab allows you to map one or multiple Timely User ID(s)/User Email(s)/User External ID(s) that you get from one of the previous steps of your Zap. It is possible to select multiple users by adding each additional user in one of the appearing input fields.
When selecting All Users, all users that currently exist on the workspace will be assigned to the project. Be aware that users that are added to the workspace after the project creation will not be added to the project automatically. (You can assign them to the project during the user invite.)
You can also assign a Team/Timely Team ID to the project. Then all current team members will be assigned to the project. People who are added to the team later on will not be added to the project.
Setting hourly rates
In the next few fields the user can set if a project is going to be billable or not. The user has the following options:
Non-Billable (no hourly rate is applied to logged time)
Project Rate (each billable hour has the same hourly rate that is specified below)
Individual User Rate (the hourly rate is taken from the default settings for each user)
In case of selecting Project Rate, the actual rate needs to be specified in the following field "Hour Rate".
You can learn more about how rates are configured within a project HERE.
Defining a project budget
First you'll need to decide if it is going to be a time or a monetary budget. Afterwards the amount of the budget needs to be specified in hours or in the workspace currency. In the last step the user can select the budget to be recurring. There are the following options:
Monthly
Weekly (starting on Monday)
Weekly (starting on Sunday)
✋ It's important to note that recurring budgets, specifically, can't be edited after they are set for a project. The interval and amount are then fixed - you'd need to create a new project if these figured would ever need changed down the road.
Assigning tags to the project
There are 3 options at first to decide on if and how you want to assign tags to the project:
No tags
All tags
Selected tags
If you go for the option Selected tags, you have to pick at least one tag list that will be assigned to the project. In order to select a specific tag list you have to enter the ID of the tag list. (It is possible to find the ID of a tag list using the name with the action "Find Tag List and Tag".)
Afterwards you can decide if you want to make all selected tag lists required, make it required to select at least one tag or make it optional for users to add tags to their time entries.
If you decide to assign all tag lists, you can decide to make it required to select at least one tag out of all tag lists or do not make it mandatory to use tags when logging time entries.
You can learn more about Tags in Timely HERE.
Success!
As always when creating a new Zap, it's really important to perform those final checks and ensure you've selected the correct variables and fields as outlined above. Make sure you carefully review each step to make sure that everything aligns with the instructions provided. Once you're confident that everything is set up correctly, go ahead and test your Zap, this will reveal and issues or errors you may need to correct.
If everything looks good you can go ahead and deploy - success! Happy Zapping ⚡️😁