Connecting with GitLab

If you use GitLab as a project management tool, you can easily integrate it with Everhour and start tracking time for all your GitLab issues. No more tab switching. We only integrate with GitLab Cloud version at this moment.

How to setup

Important. To see the embedded timer in your GitLab and track time there, you need to install our browser extension. This is how we embed controls into their interface. The extension must be up-to-date and installed on any computer you use.

1

You'll be prompted to connect during signup. To do this, you need to hit 'GitLab' button and let Everhour do the rest, step-by-step.

2

You can connect GitLab or any other platform at any time from the Integrations page in your account settings.

3

You need to invite your team to join Everhour. During the registration process, they will need to connect their GitLab accounts and install our browser extension. I.e. only those you invite into Everhour will be able to track time and see time progress. These are not necessarily all GitLab users. Same way your clients will not see anything in GitLab unless you add them to your Everhour team.

Tip: Click on the extension icon in Chrome, and then on the pin icon next to Everhour to make it visible all the time.

How sync works

When you connect GitLab, Everhour will automatically sync all your projects across all groups and organisations, except your public projects where you are not the creator or not assigned to the project. Projects of such organisations won’t be synchronised by Everhour and time cannot be tracked for these projects. It's currently not possible to make a granular sync, deciding what projects you wish to connect and what not.

We won't sync a project, when it is a fork from a project that belongs to another organisation, to which you did not grant access for Everhour. This integration version also does not sync Merge Requests, but that may change in the future updates.

Sync happens periodically and automatically so all new project that you create in GitLab will be added to your Everhour account. Everhour also updates the names of issues or projects if they were renamed. This way Everhour reports will always show the freshest data.

When you have a personal private project where you don't track time, or set task estimates, or set billing and budget, such project won't be visible to other team members including admins.

How to trigger instant sync:

1

If you just added a new project in GitLab or renamed the existing one and want to see these changes immediately in Everhour, you need to re-sync projects from the Integrations page manually.

2

Same with tasks. If you've just renamed an issue, added a new tag or moved the issue into a different section and you want to see these changes instantly, you need to go to the Projects page, select the project(-s) with a change and hit 'Resync Data'.

Controls inside GitLab

After successful integration, Everhour supplements GitLab interface with a number of features.

Task time (1,2,4): total time reported by each employee and estimate into the issue. Click on the badge to make changes;
Buttons (3): you can track time using the timer or log time manually.

Making reports with GitLab data

There are a number of columns that shows specific data coming from GitLab. Open a report builder and select any of columns to display the data in your report.

Project and task accordingly show the names of GitLab projects and issues;
Task number and Task status shows the task ID and whether it is open/closed;
Task Type shows if an issue is a task or incident;
Tag shows the name of GitLab tags.

Permissions

In general, we rely on GitLab's permissions a lot. If in GitLab the user has access to the task project, therefore, he can track the time in it. If you take away someone's access to the project in GitLab, this user will no longer be able to track time into its issues. Past history will remain in the reports of the team, but the user will lose it.

Configuring budgets, marking a task as non-billable, assigning a client to the project can only be done by admins. The admin in Everhour can see projects and tasks of all members (except your public projects where you are not the creator or not assigned to the project). It does not matter if an admin has access to the same projects in GitLab. This is due to the fact that any admin should see the same totals in time reports and be able to configure projects billing and budgeting.

Regular users cannot track time into the archived project. Admins can do that, but only manually (timer is disabled). Thus, we indicate that the project is archived and make sure that no one tracks time accidentally.

Troubleshooting

It may happen that GitLab changes something in their code and these changes break some part of our functionality. We always do our best to apply the necessary corrections ASAP, but this requires updating our browser extension (this is how we embed into GitLab interface and there is no other mechanism). If you encounter an issue that something has stopped working, please make sure that you have the latest version of the extension installed. Read this article for more details.

If suddenly the review of our extension is delayed by Google team, as a temporarily workaround, you can install the dev version of our extension. Read this article for more details.

Disconnecting

To disable integration, go to 'Integrations' page in Everhour account.

This option affects only your account, other team members are still able to track time. If the whole team disconnects GitLab, no one can track new time in GitLab, time history remains only in admin reports.

To remove all Everhour controls from GitLab interface, delete our browser extension.