Time spent, presence and planning

This page explains three related things: how Bernard counts the time spent on tasks, how it tracks the team's presence, and how you plan the work (Gantt chart) and follow each person's workload (Workload).

Time spent

It counts itself

You do not enter your time. The server counts it: as long as a task is in WIP, time accumulates for the assigned person. At each exit from WIP (to Pause, Done, Waiting…), the duration spent in WIP is added to the time of each person assigned to the task, minus the inactivity time reported by the workstation. Time is stored per person and per day (Time Log property), then accumulated on the compound, the workflow and the item. Script tasks do not count time.

Only one task can be in WIP per person: setting a task to WIP puts the previous one in Pause. The states and the automatic switches to Pause are described in the page Workflows, states and templates.

The Idle Timeout is set in the global settings (Bernard › Settings › Global Settings, reserved for administrators). See Interface.

Day change. The day changes at an adjustable time (3 a.m. by default, Working Time › Next Day Start After). Night hours are stored on the right day, which suits night shifts, and a session left open is cut at that time. See Working Time.

Correcting or adding time by hand

Times entered by hand are still possible, depending on your role.

Where: in the Properties panel, right-click on a task's Time Log property, then Edit Time Log. The TimeLog Edition on '…' window has two tabs:

• Edit Existing TimeLog: choose the person (User) and the day (Date), change the duration (Time), then Apply;
• Append TimeLog: choose one or more people (Users), a day (Date) and a duration (Time), then Add or Remove.

What can get in the way: the Edit Time Log entry is only offered for a single task at a time and only if your role allows it. The permissions are Can edit existing Timelogs and Can manually log arbitrary timelogs (see User management and the role permissions in Interface).

Budget and variance

Each task has a budget (Bid), accumulated on the parents. The variance (Time Delta) is the budget minus the total time spent: it stays green as long as you are within budget and turns red when you go over. Canceled tasks (Aborted) are left out of the accumulation of time spent and budgets. The Bid is expressed in the studio's unit (hours or days) and the length of a day comes from Duration Unit Display › Working Day Duration.

To export time spent to a file: Bernard › Data › Export › Timelogs, see Import, export and logs.

Presence and working time

The Working Time View (Windows › Working Time View) shows, for each person and each day, presence, working time and overtime. It is described in Interface. The settings that govern it are reserved for administrators:

• the day types (working day, weekend, holiday, leave…), with their expected time and their color: Day Type;
• the day-change time, the lateness tolerance and the factor that converts time spent into working time: Working Time.

Three notions to remember:

• presence goes from the arrival time to the departure time;
• working time is presence minus the day type's break. For the roles that have Compute working time based on Timelogs (vs Attendance), it is the time spent on tasks, multiplied by a studio factor;
• overtime is the time beyond the day type's expected time (on weekdays, only for the roles that have Include extra weekday hours as Overtime).

Presence also has an effect on planning: a leave day set for a person in the Working Time View is greyed out on their row in the workload and does not count there as a working day (see Workload).

Planning: principles

Where to open it: Windows › Planning View. At the top, the view shows a Gantt chart (the tree and its filters on the left, the bars on the right), below it one or two workload timelines (WORKLOAD 1 and WORKLOAD 2), on the same time scale. The horizontal scroll bars of the three timelines are linked; the padlock, at the top of the view, unlinks them.

One planning per project and per scenario

The planning keeps its own dates (start and end) for each planned object: project, folder, item, compound, task. You can therefore prepare a planning without touching the tasks, then validate it: only at that moment are the dates written onto the tasks (Start Date, Due Date).

Since 2026-11-04, plannings are stored per project and per scenario. A scenario is a way of organizing the work; under each scenario, Bernard creates one planning per project, as soon as an object of the project is planned in it. A large studio is therefore no longer limited by the size of a single planning.

• The Scenario: selector, at the top left of the view, chooses the scenario displayed. A scenario named Default is created automatically if none exists.
• Plannings from before this version are not carried over: they have to be redone.

Saved with the tab

A Planning View tab reopens as you left it: scenario, Gantt filters, hidden columns, visibility options, period (or All dates), zoom, scroll position, and the workload settings (Bid / Timelog, Tasks, Planned, names on the bars). See View presets.

The Gantt

What you see

One row per object, in the hierarchy: projects, folders, items (Project Items), compounds, tasks. The workflow itself is not displayed: its tasks are directly under the item.

The tree (GANTT TREE) has six columns:

• Hide or show a column: right-click on the header, or the Visibility options menu (below).
• Adjust a column: double-click between two columns. Right-click on the header then Fit all columns adjusts them all.
• No stray scrolling: selecting rows or bars no longer moves the view.

The bars. A bar goes from the first to the last planned day, end day included. Its outline is dotted as long as the planning's dates are not the ones written on the task (Start Date, Due Date), and solid after Validate your plan. It is colored according to the task's state and filled up to the progress. A validation task is a milestone: it can only be moved. The object's name is written in the bar, or after it if it is too narrow.

The "missing dates" icon. An icon flags a task without a start or end date, or an item without a date, or one whose tasks have no date. Hover over the row: the tooltip adds "Missing dates : " and the reason (for example "task without start or due date : " followed by the names). This icon reads the Start Date and Due Date of the objects, not the dates of the planning bars.

Tooltips. Hover over a row or a bar of the Gantt (or a task of the workload): name, planning dates with the number of days and working days, state, budget and time spent in the studio's unit, assigned people. An unplanned object shows "Not planned".

Visibility options

The Visibility options button (eye icon), to the right of the GANTT TREE title, opens a menu. An open eye means "displayed", a crossed-out eye "hidden"; a click toggles it. The choice is saved with the tab.

GANTT FILTERS

The left column contains three blocks: TIME FILTERS, first and always visible, then GANTT FILTERS, then GANTT TREE. The + button of GANTT FILTERS adds a filter; the filters are grouped, with an icon.

A new tab starts with useful filters: the Scope on the current project, canceled tasks and validation tasks hidden, and the folder filters ready to be filled in. Reset Filters, at the bottom of the + menu, goes back to that state. Folder filters work alone or with the item filters (for example a folder name such as "E*" applies right away, even over a whole production, and items created afterwards in those folders appear by themselves).

TIME FILTERS

With no period, the label shows All dates and the timelines cover the planned dates. The period filters apply to the Start Date and Due Date of the tasks.

Zoom, scrolling and selection

The names of days and months are always in English, whatever the workstation's language.

Holidays (the studio's day types) and weekends are greyed out in the Gantt and the workload.

Planning

Moving and resizing a bar

• Move: drag the bar. If it is part of the selection, all the selected bars move, and the preview shows them. Short bars can also be moved; they are not only for resizing.
• Resize: drag one of the bar's edges (except for a validation task).
• Dates snap to the day (to the half-day when you zoom in a lot).
• Esc during the drag cancels: the bar goes back, nothing is written.
• Moving a compound, a workflow or an item also moves the tasks it contains.

Undo, redo

Ctrl+Z undoes the last date change made in the planning (drag, menu entry, Plan from…) and Ctrl+Y (or Ctrl+Shift+Z) redoes it. Bernard keeps the last 100 changes. During a long operation (planning, fitting to time spent), undo is refused.

The Gantt right-click menu

Right-click on a bar or on a row of the tree. For several selected objects, a number in brackets ("[3]") is added. The date of the Plan… entries is that of the day clicked on the timeline; from the tree, it is today's date.

Confirmation for Remove and Validate your plan is asked before anything is written.

Plan from

The result follows the workflow: each task starts after the end of its sources, and its duration comes from its budget (Bid). Bernard consumes the budget day by day, at the rate of the studio's working day (Working Day Duration). Saturdays and Sundays are skipped. A task without a budget takes no time (start = end). A task that has a budget occupies its whole last day: the next one starts the following day.

Example: a 5-day Design task, planned from a Monday, ends on Friday.

To change a task's duration, change its budget then run Plan from again. Be careful about what you select: if you select only one task, only that task is re-planned. To re-plan an item's whole workflow, select the item: all its tasks then follow one another.

Plan Until and Plan To End On

• Plan Until plans each object as early as possible from its planned start (today if it is not yet planned), then stretches its dates so that it ends on the chosen day. An object that starts after that day is not changed: Bernard flags it in a message.
• Plan To End On looks for the latest start that allows ending on the chosen day (or the last working day before it), with the budgets, dependencies and working days.

Plan To Item Dates and Plan To Parent

Plan To Item Dates fits the planning to the Start Date and Due Date already present on the objects. It is the way to take over an imported planning: if you imported start and end dates task by task (Import From Files, or a table), select the items and run Plan To Item Dates. If only one date exists, Bernard deduces the other (two days by default, avoiding the weekend). Objects without any date are listed in a message (ten at most) and stay unchanged.

Plan To Parent gives the selected objects the interval of their parent (a parent without dates takes those of its own parent, up to the project); their children follow.

Fit Dates To Time Logs

Fits the dates to reality. For each selected item:

1. tasks that have time spent take the first day spent as their Start Date and the last as their Due Date;
2. their compound and their item enclose their tasks;
3. tasks without time spent (excluding canceled tasks) are planned after the tasks with time spent, from the day after the last day spent, following the workflow, the budgets and the working days;
4. the planning dates take the same days, and the Start Date / Due Date of the planned tasks, compounds and items are updated (the bars are then solid).

An item without any time spent is not modified. The operation runs in the background: Bernard stays usable, a pill above the Gantt shows the progress (for example the number of workflows read), and you can cancel it with Ctrl+Z. Only one long operation at a time is accepted per scenario; otherwise, a message tells you so.

Validate your plan

This is the step that makes the planning official. For the planned tasks and items of the selection (and of what it contains), Bernard writes the planning dates into their Start Date and Due Date. The bars go from dotted to solid. Objects without dates in the planning are not touched.

A complete example

1. Open Windows › Planning View and check the scenario (Scenario:) as well as the Scope filter (the current project).
2. In the tree, select the item to plan.
3. Right-click on the timeline, at the desired start day, then Plan from "day". The tasks follow one another according to the workflow and the budgets.
4. Adjust with the mouse: drag a bar, stretch an edge. Ctrl+Z goes back.
5. When you are happy with the result, select the item, right-click, Validate your plan, then confirm. The bars become solid and the dates are in the tasks' Start Date and Due Date properties.

Workload

The workload compares, for each person (or each department, project, item), the budget (Bid) of planned tasks and the time spent (Timelog), day by day, week by week or month by month depending on the zoom.

The workload only reads the tasks that have dates in the planning of the scenario: an unplanned task has neither a bar nor a number.

Groupings

On the left, the WORKLOAD GROUPINGS area defines the grouping levels; the + button adds one among Project, Department, User and Project Item. Each level has its cards (colored) and its filters (Filters, with a Scope and properties of your choice). Right-click on a level, Remove Grouping, deletes it. When you change the levels, the Apply Groupings button appears: click to recompute. The Auto Apply setting (Local Settings › Views › Workload) applies changes by itself.

• A level's palette button makes it the "master" level: its color colors the numbers of the timeline, the budget and the time spent. A level's Filters button opens its filters; the arrow collapses the level.
• On a User level, two icons choose which tasks are taken into account: those where the person is assigned (Shows tasks where the user is assigned) and those where they have spent time (Shows tasks where the user has logged). Both are active by default; one of the two always stays active.
• An Unassigned row gathers the tasks with no assigned person, with their budget. A value that is missing for a grouping is called Unspecified.

Each card

A card names a value of the grouping (a person, a department…). The ▼ Time Info ▼ button shows or hides the columns of numbers: BID, TIMELOG and DELTA, in the studio's unit (hours, or days if the studio counts in days).

• The variance (DELTA) is green if the budget exceeds the time spent, red if the time spent exceeds it, and grey when the two are almost equal.
• If a task is assigned to several people, its budget is split among them (it is counted only once in the totals). A person who spent time on a task without being assigned to it sees their time, but no share of the budget.
• A task partly outside the displayed period counts for the days displayed.

The timelines

• The timeline title (WORKLOAD 1) has buttons: Bid, Timelog (at least one stays lit; both together display two sub-rows), Ctrl+T switches between them: budget, time spent, then both.
• Tasks shows or hides the tasks of all rows; a double-click on a row does the same for that row alone. Tasks there are bars as in the Gantt: you can move and resize them in the same way.
• Planned displays only the rows that have planned tasks.
• Folder, Item and Task choose the names written on the task bars (at least one; Item and Task by default).
• The total stays visible under the dates when you scroll; a week or month cut by the edge of the timeline keeps its numbers.
• Load is measured as a share of the cell's working time. On a person row only: a cell filled to less than 100% is tinted green, beyond that red, and its number turns red (overload). A value placed on a non-working day is an overload.
• The studio's holidays are greyed out and do not count as working days; a person's absences (presence types of the Working Time View) are hatched on their row and do not count either. The load of a week or a month is measured on its working days. Weekends stay greyed out even if the studio expects a workload on them.
• A second timeline, WORKLOAD 2, has its own groupings: for example one per person and one per department.

Exporting the workload

The drop-down menu at the top left of the timeline (Export) offers Export to EXCEL, Export to CSV, Export to HTML, Export to JSON and Export to CLIPBOARD. An options window opens:

• Styling (HTML, Excel) with Style column headers, Style row index, Alternate row colors, Color tasks (and Span Cells for Excel);
• Filtering Options (no styling): Task, Bids, TimeLog, Total Bids, Total TimeLog;
• for CSV, the column separator (Comma, Semi-colon, Tab).

You then choose the file; a window confirms (Copy path to clipboard, Open file). If the file cannot be written (open elsewhere), Bernard says so. The CLIPBOARD export copies the table, ready to paste into a spreadsheet. Values are in the studio's unit.

History

An object's History tab keeps who changed what, when and from which workstation, including the time spent written by the server. See History.