Time spent on HierarchicalRequirement in Rally Rest API - rally

Question

I have a report that hooks into the Rally API web service. It lists the user stories and defects for presentation to an external client.
The developers are filling in the time they spend on their tasks in the time sheet, but when I try to get the actual time spent using the 'TaskActualTotal' value, it always come back as 0.
The values are definately recorded as my internal reports on the timesheet produce these values.
Do I have to call for the time spent using a different method?
Thanks

Answer 1

Do your developers enter time in the Time Tracker module? There is no connection between Actuals and Time Tracker module. Actuals also predates Time Tracker.
The Actuals field is designed to be used during retrospectives to provide insight on root causes for missed commitments, while the Time Tracker module is designed to help report on development costs.
We generally only recommend using Actuals values by teams new to Scrum or Agile who are still working on providing good estimates. Comparing Estimates to Actuals can be valuable during retrospectives to help identify where the larger gaps in estimating might be occurring.
For more established teams, we recommend the Actuals field remain hidden as these values can seem to draw focus on the amount of time or resources spent on particular functionality rather than highlighting whether commitments were made by the team as a whole.
Of course, all teams are very different in the processes they use and the development cycle followed.
The intent of the timesheet values was more for capturing and reporting on development cost for billing and capitalization rather than for assisting with completion or estimation charting. Actuals however, were designed to assist in this regard and live on Tasks just as Estimates and ToDo values do and roll up at the story level for easy comparisons.
You may still query on Actuals in WS API. For example, I have a story with two tasks, each with Estimate set to 2, and Actuals set to 3. If I query on user stories by the specific iteration this story is scheduled for, I get the TaskEstimateTotal and TaskAcutalTotal as long as I fetch them. Here is my query:
https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/hierarchicalrequirement?workspace=https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/workspace/1111&query=(Iteration.Name = i5)&start=1&pagesize=20&fetch=TaskEstimateTotal,TaskActualTotal
And here is the relevant part of the return:
{
"_rallyAPIMajor": "2",
"_rallyAPIMinor": "0",
"_ref": "https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/hierarchicalrequirement/22222",
"_objectVersion": "9",
"_refObjectName": "my story",
"TaskActualTotal": 6,
"TaskEstimateTotal": 4,
"_type": "HierarchicalRequirement"
}
However this query will only return results if Estimate and Actuals values were entered on the Details page of tasks, and not in the Time Tracker.
There are two objects in our WS API that are relevant to Time Tracker:
TimeEntryItem and TimeEntryValue.
Here is an example of a query on TimeEntryItem based ona Worproduct.Name:
https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/timeentryitem?workspace=https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/workspace/11111&query=(WorkProduct.Name = us1)&start=1&pagesize=20&fetch=WorkProductDisplayString,TaskDisplayString,Values
and the relevant part of a result:
{
"_rallyAPIMajor": "2",
"_rallyAPIMinor": "0",
"_ref": "https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/timeentryitem/77777",
"_objectVersion": "3",
"TaskDisplayString": "TA1: ta1",
"Values": {
"_rallyAPIMajor": "2",
"_rallyAPIMinor": "0",
"_ref": "https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0/TimeEntryItem/77777/Values",
"_type": "TimeEntryValue",
"Count": 2
},
"WorkProductDisplayString": "US1: us1",
"_type": "TimeEntryItem"
},