We will no longer be updating this article. See new updates for 2022 Q3 / Q4 here.
LATE JULY 2022
time:study NOW Mobile App:
CLARITY using time:study NOW mobile app the first time
The first time that you use the time:study NOW mobile app, you need to go through a mobile account setup process in order to link your existing Time Study account to the mobile app. We’ve changed the verbiage to make that process more intuitive. The first time you use time:study NOW, use the new link:
| Already a timestudy.co user? Setup your mobile account |
Note: you can only setup your mobile account if your organization has chosen to enable mobile usage. If your organization does not use the time:study NOW mobile app, create a support ticket to learn more about getting set up.
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Web application:
COMPLETE REDESIGN of User Profile Pages
The new User Profile Wizard helps you navigate through all the components for setting up a new user and makes it easier to edit existing users as well.
When adding new users, the required fields must be filled out before proceeding to the next step, and you are guided through the Navigation Bar to ensure that nothing is missed. Later, when editing users, you can jump around to whichever step you need (as before) for greater efficiency.
The redesign is cleaner, simpler, and more intuitive, because our goal is to make your life easier.
EARLY JULY 2022
Web application:
IMPROVED SECURITY for Password Reset Flow
The password reset flow has been made more secure with these updates:
- A captcha “I’m not a robot” checkbox has been added
- The email you receive has a link to reset your password, rather than a temporary password directly in the email
- Your password is not reset until the link is clicked
- The link in the email expires in 24 hours and can only be used once
- As before, if you enter your password incorrectly five times, then your account becomes locked. But now, you can unlock it yourself via password reset rather than needing to reach out to someone else to unlock your account.
- We added improvements in how to handle password reset for inactive users, usernames that don’t exist, etc
- The password requirements haven’t changed. Your new password needs to meet these requirements:
- 8-20 characters long
- contains at least one numeric
- contains at least one upper case
- contains at least one lower case
- contains at least one special character
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CLARITY on time studies with organ tabs
If you use time studies with organ tabs along the top, they will be simpler now. Previously, you would be shown all organs in the system, but now the organs are filtered down to only those selected in your profile. We recently made this change for organ checkboxes but now it is completed for organ tabs as well.
Administrators, there are a couple of things to be aware of in order to use this new functionality:
- This is only relevant for organ-related time forms.
- In everybody’s profile, you need to keep the organs list up to date.
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time:study NOW Mobile App:
IMPROVEMENTS to Summary page on time:study NOW mobile app
Day of the week:
When looking at your Summary, Attest, or Add Activity page, you will now see the day of the week along with the date:
Mon 7/4/2022
Tue 7/5/2022
Date range selection:
If you filter the Summary page by a day or time range, we will now remember that selection even if you move away from that page and come back to it. Your options to choose from are these:
- a specific day
- the last 7 days
- a time range of your choosing.
After you enter hours on a specific day, then when you return to the Summary page, it will be filtered to that specific day.
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IMPROVED EASE OF USE when entering time on time:study NOW mobile app
When adding new hours, you’ve always been able to see how many hours you had previously logged for that activity on that day. However, from this screen, you were unable to see how many hours total for the day had already been entered.
Now, the Add Activity screen will show you two lines of “Logged Before” information:
- How many hours for this day for THIS activity
- How many hours for this day for ALL activities
This will make it easier for you to keep track of what has already been entered.
If your organization does not use the time:study NOW mobile app, create a support ticket to learn more about getting set up.
JUNE 2022
Web application:
CLARITY on time studies with organ checkboxes
If you use time studies with organ checkboxes along the top, they will be simpler now. Previously, you would be shown all organs in the system, but now the organs are filtered down to only those selected in your profile.
Administrators, there are a few things to be aware of in order to use this new functionality:
- This is only relevant for multi-organ time forms.
- There is a setting on our side that needs to be turned on for your organization - so please create a support ticket if you want to enable it.
- In everybody’s profile, you need to keep the organs list up to date.
NEW OPTION for reporting by month in Custom Report
Your feedback has been heard! You will now find “Month” in the Grouping Options and Select Fields all the time. You can run a Custom Report over the entire year and have your results broken out by month.
As always, when filtering by quarter, you can opt to select a single month. But now, in the month dropdown, you will only see the months that are relevant to the quarter that you’ve selected - based on the fiscal year, not the calendar year. In other words, if your Fiscal Year runs July through June, then selecting Quarter 1 will give you month options of July, Aug, Sept.
CONSISTENCY between Approved Records and Pending Records Reports
In our ongoing efforts to simplify reports and increase consistency throughout the site, the Total Hours column has been added to the Approved Records Report, to be consistent with Pending Records Report.
time:study NOW Mobile App:
IMPROVEMENTS to entering hours on time:study NOW
1 hour duration:
The duration for a new Activity defaults to 1 hour instead of 15 minutes, as a result of feedback from our Reporters.
Save your work:
If you’ve begun creating or editing an activity, then if you forget to save before you go to a different screen, you will be reminded that you haven’t saved your work.
Location permission:
The app will ask permission to use your location before you log in.
Mobile Expiry Date:
Admins: you no longer need to upkeep the “mobile expiry date” in the User Profiles. From now on, as long as mobile usage is turned on for your organization, it will remain on for every active user without needing to worry about someone’s access expiring.
If your organization does not use the time:study NOW mobile app, create a support ticket to learn more about getting set up.
MAY 2022
Web application:
IMPROVED DISPLAY for Pending Records
If you are a Supporter who reviews time studies submitted by your Reporters, you'll notice a new design on the Dashboard for the Pending Approval Records table. It has been redesigned to match the Missing Records table above - with the columns in the same order, and the "Pending" status label more visually appealing, and the addition of the quick link to "See All..."
This table does not show if you are not required to review time studies post-submission, or if there are currently no pending time studies for you to review.
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VALIDATION to email alerts character limit
If you are an Admin adding or editing Email Alerts, you should be cautious of the length of your emails. Email alerts that are too long may be rejected by email servers, and if an email is too long, it may not be fully read by the recipient. Therefore, when adding or editing an Email Alert, you will now be limited to no more than 4,000 characters (including text and html tags).
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IMPROVEMENTS to the Custom Report
As an Admin, you know that the Custom Report is a robust and complex feature, with many options for customization. It can be overwhelming, and we are always looking for ways to simplify without reducing the functionality available to you. As such, we have made two improvements to simplify the design and make it more accurate:
- Only Approved Records appear on the Custom Report, so we removed the section that appeared to give you the option to change that.
- When you filter by a quarter, you are also able to filter down to one specific month. We now limit that list to only showing the months that are relevant to the quarter you've selected. **This feature was delayed but was deployed in the next release in June.
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INCREASED SECURITY AND CLARITY for SSO login issues
Single Sign-on (SSO) login is when you sign in directly through your organization's login portal, using a username and password that you already use elsewhere in your company, instead of a username and password managed through Time Study.
Sometimes, you may be able to be granted access through the organization's SSO login even when you should be prevented from accessing Time Study (such as when your Time Study account has been inactivated.) Or sometimes, even though you log in properly through your organization's SSO, your organization sends an incorrect username to Time Study.
When either of those happen, you will see a clear message on what happened and who to contact to resolve the issue.
TIME:STUDY NOW MOBILE APP:
IMPROVEMENTS to guided walkthrough
Some of the guided walkthrough tips have been reworded for clarity. If you ever want to turn them on again, go to Settings > Personal Settings > then toggle “Enable Interactive Guided Tours” off and back on again to reset them.
FIX for edit activity unexpected date change
We fixed an issue where editing an activity would result in the date reverting back to the previous day.
Note: "Edit Activity Time" will only let you edit duration. In order to change the date, you must delete the activity and re-add it to the correct date.
UPDATE to loading indicator
The spinning loading indicator in Time:Study NOW mobile app has been upgraded. It has an updated look and now disables interaction with the app while the action is being performed.
April 2022
Web Application:
IMPROVEMENT to Expired Records handling
You can more easily manage records that are expired (ie past the deadline date):
- Both Admins and Supporters can see a new “expired” label in the status column, next to HOLD or NOT COMPLETED in the Time Studies > Missing Records page.
- For Admins, it’s easy to go to the Time Periods screen so that you can extend the deadline date if desired, using a new calendar icon in the “action” column. Supporters do not see this icon.
- For records that are not expired, you still have an action icon to view or edit the time study.
- The .csv export from this report now also includes “Expired” in the status column.
- As always, you cannot see expired records on the Dashboard.
- Reporters will not see unsubmitted expired records anywhere.
- If anybody attempts to load an unsubmitted expired time study (with a bookmarked link, for example), they will see an Access Denied message.
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LINK CHANGE for consistency
If you have bookmarked the link to Custom Reports, please note that we have updated the URL to provide consistency across the website. Instead of the URL ending like this: /Reports/CustomReport.aspx
It now ends like this:
/Reports/Custom.aspx
Please update your bookmarks, or utilize the left-hand Navigation Menu instead.
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NEW ABILITY to restore deleted users
You can now see and restore deleted users. However, if the user has previously completed any time studies, we advise that you add a Termination Date in their user profile rather than delete them. A Termination Date will make their account inactive, and they will not be responsible for any future time studies, but their previous time studies will still be included in reports.
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VALIDATION to disable trash can when you shouldn’t delete
To prevent having activities that aren’t assigned to a category, you are now prevented from deleting a category that has activities associated with it. The red trash can icon will be disabled. Similarly, you cannot delete a division when a department is associated with it. The red trash can on the list view will be disabled.
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IMPROVEMENT to Part A/B/Other Type in Activities listing
If your entity assigns Part A, Part B, or Other to activities, we made the Activities list more readable by showing all your Type assignments in one column.
Part A, Part B, and Other assignments are used by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services for cost reporting purposes. Time Study refers to these assignments as “Types” and only one of each Type can be assigned to an activity. If you choose not to assign a Type, the column will display “None”.
When an activity is assigned to any of these types, the Finance Report will adjust its calculations accordingly to display the total Part A, Part B, and Other hours submitted by your users. You can access this report from the Quick Navigation Menu under Reports > Summary Reports.
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VALIDATION on entering >24 hours in a day
When you accidentally enter more than 24 hours in any field or as a total on any day, those fields will now be highlighted yellow to help you find the problem field. You will also receive a pop-up error when attempting to save a time study that fails this validation.
March 2022
Web Application:
MAJOR FEATURE IMPROVEMENT to Time Period Creation!
You can easily create weekly recurring Time Periods. When creating a New Time Period, try this:
- Select Submission Schedule Weekly.
- In the new dropdown Recurring, select Yes.
- Set the Start Date and End Date to span multiple weeks.
- Notice that Deadline Date cannot be manually set - it will automatically set for 10 days after the End Date.
- Fill out the rest of the fields as normal.
- When you click Save, multiple Time Periods will be created. The first will start on your selected Start Date and run for one week. The second will run the following week, and so on up until the End Date you selected.
- If your time range doesn't run cleanly to the end of a week, then the final week will be cut off at the End Date that you set.
- After creation, you can edit each newly-created time period separately. The series cannot be edited as a whole.
Newly-created Time Periods:
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IMPROVEMENT to Time Form Assignment:
Your feedback regarding how to assign Time Forms has been heard! When you assign a Time Form to a Reporter, you will only see Submission Schedule options (weekly/monthly/quarterly) that correlate to a currently existing Time Period. You won't see the Submission Schedule dropdown in the User Profile at all, so you only need to set the Submission Schedule in one place.
PREVIOUS (in User Profile):
NEW AND IMPROVED (dropdown in Time Form assignments):
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IMPROVEMENT to Email Alerts:
Your email alerts are going out early morning before office hours, to maximize email open rates.
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CLARIFICATION about Changing Password:
If you've been confused before about the password security requirements when trying to change your password before, you're in luck! We have provided clearer wording to make sure that you know what to include in your new password:
- Password must be 8-20 characters long with at least one numeric,
one upper case, one lower case, and one special character.
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BETTER ACCESS to Help/Resources:
In the left-hand Navigation Menu, the "Help" Section has been renamed "Resources" and includes the following changes:
- User Guides has been renamed to Your Files, because Admins can upload any .pdf files that would be helpful to users of your entity
- All of the training videos, Time Study user guides, FAQ, and the support ticket creation form can be found in the Help Center
- You can keep updated on all product improvements under What's New
February 2022
Web Application:
When assigning a Reporter to a Supporter on the Access Rights page, you can find the Reporter more easily now. Instead of scrolling through a full list by Department, you can directly search for the Reporter by name or username and then assign/unassign them using the button on the right.
Also, you now have the option to filter the list by whether they are assigned or not.
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If your Admin or Supporter user profile indicates that you should not be able to Save and Submit for your assigned Reporters (via the dropdown Support Staff Submit Time Records), then the attestation box and Save and Submit button on time forms will be completely disabled for you, to avoid confusion about what you can do.
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You can assign Time Forms to a user with fewer steps. The dropdown in the User Profile now automatically populates the Submission Schedule column in the Time Forms page.
Update 3.10.2022: this feature has been further improved, as detailed in the March 12, 2022 release notes. Please see there for more updated functionality.
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If you would like your Reporters to manage their own Allocation Agreements, then you can enable the setting for Provider Allocation Agreement in the Facility configuration page.
They will be able to list/delete/edit/add their own allocation agreements in their Manage Profile page.
January 2022
Web Application:
Your action buttons (Submit, Reset Password, Back) at the bottom of the User Profile Managementpage are easier for you to find - now shown above the navigation buttons.
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You can filter on the Forms > Activities page (Active vs Inactive).
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Your Profile and Report pages are better than ever:
- quicker page load times
- cleaner interface
- consistent action options across pages
Time:Study NOW mobile app
You will receive timely push notifications to remind you to complete On Hold time studies.
Comments
12 comments
I've now updated the article for February 14, 2022
I've now updated the What's New article for a deployment coming this weekend.
I've now updated the What's New article for a deployment coming this weekend, April 9th.
The What's New article has been updated with improvements to both web and mobile, coming soon.
The What's New article has been updated with June improvements to both web and mobile, coming soon.
The What's New article has been updated with details of a few upcoming features:
The What's New article has been updated with details of a couple features arriving in early July:
This weekend, we deployed the following features:
The What's New article has been updated with details of an upcoming change to the time:study NOW mobile sign up flow.
This weekend, we deployed the following features:
We will no longer be updating this What's New? article. See new updates for 2022 Q3 / Q4 here. Follow that article for ongoing updates for the rest of the year.
We've posted a few new features coming soon - on the What's New article for Q3/Q4. See here to read the details, and be sure to "follow" that article for ongoing updates.
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