Enabling time tracking

To enable time tracking:

1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > Issues.
   
   
2. Select Issue Features > Time Tracking to open the Time Tracking page.
3. Select Activate to enable time tracking.

Configuring time tracking settings

To edit Jira's time tracking settings, it must first be disabled. Once you have changed the settings, you will then need to re-enable time tracking so that users can log work on issues.

You will not lose any existing time tracking data by disabling and re-enabling time tracking.

1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > Issues.
2. Select Issue Features > Time Tracking to open the Time Tracking page.
3. If time tracking is enabled (the page title displays "Time Tracking is currently ON"), select Deactivate to disable time tracking.
4. The time tracking settings will now be editable.
   
5. Configure time tracking settings by editing the following fields:
   
   • Hours per day — enter a suitable value (e.g. 8). You can enter fractions if you wish.
   • Days per week — enter a suitable value (e.g. 5). You can enter fractions if you wish.
   • Time format — select pretty/days/hours. This will determine the format of the 'Time Spent' field when an issue is displayed.
   • Default Unit — select minutes/hours/days/weeks. This will be applied whenever your users log work on an issue without specifying a unit.
   • Legacy Mode — select this checkbox if you prefer to use Jira's time tracking features as they operated prior to Jira version 4.2. For more details about this option, check the section About 'Legacy Mode'.
   • Copy Comment To Work Description — select this checkbox to ensure that any content entered into a Comment field while logging work as part of an issue operation, is also copied across to the Work Description.
     • When Copy Comment To Work Description is enabled, your user's work log entries will be visible only to members of the project role or group selected in the padlock icon drop-down on their issue operation screen.
     • When Copy Comment To Work Description is disabled, your user's work log entries will be visible to anyone by default.
6. Select Activate button to enable time tracking.
   If the permission schemes used by your project already have the appropriate Work On Issues permissions, you don't need to proceed any further. However, if you need to configure these permissions, proceed with the following steps.
7. Select the permission scheme link. The Permissions Scheme page will display.
8. Select the Permissions link of the permission scheme associated with a project where you want to specify Work On Issues permissions. The Edit Permissions page is displayed for your chosen permission scheme.
   Check Managing project permissions for details about the various permissions.
9. Check whether Work On Issues contains the appropriate users, groups, or project roles that need to specify time estimates or log work. If it doesn't, select Edit.
   
10. Select users, groups, or project roles who will be able to track time and log work on issues.
11. If an original estimate must be set when an issue is created or edited, ensure that the Time Tracking field is added to the relevant screens associated with these operations. Refer Associating a screen with an issue operation for more details.

Reindexing Jira

Changes to the time tracking configurations affect Jira search index. After you make changes to any settings, you'll get the following message in the Administration view:

We recommend that you perform a re-index, as configuration changes were made to 'SECTION' by USER at TIME. If you have other changes to make, complete them first so that you don't perform multiple re-indexes

The message means that configuration changes have been made to Jira but haven't yet been reflected in the search index. Until Jira search index has been rebuilt, some search queries from Jira might return incorrect results. 

To avoid any discrepancies, you should rebuild Jira search index.

If you want to know more about the changes to the time tracking configurations after which you need to re-index Jira, check Reindexing in Jira Server and Data Center after configuring an instance for tips.

Learn more about other major configuration changes when Jira reindex is required

Tracking time

You can either track time by entering the values in the Original estimate and the Remaining estimate fields in individual issues or when you edit multiple issues using the Bulk change option. Changing the values is also possible when you resolve issues through a bulk issue transition as long as time tracking is a part of the resolution screen. 

When you enter either only an original estimate value or only a remaining estimate value, the field that remains empty will use the estimate value of the other field. For example, when you enter 4h as your original estimate and leave the remaining estimate empty, the remaining estimate is automatically populated with the 4h value.

During bulk editing, this behavior remains if you change both fields and leave one of them empty. If you change only one field, the other remains empty.

You can change both estimates as needed while you're working on issues unless you're in the Legacy Mode. 

About Legacy Mode

• If Legacy Mode is disabled, your users will be able to change the original estimate value regardless of any work being logged on an issue. Legacy Mode is disabled by default on new installations of Jira version 4.2 or later.
• If Legacy Mode is enabled, your users can only specify the original estimate before they start logging work on an issue. This value can't be changed once any work has been logged, unless all work logs for that issue are first deleted. If not, you can only update the remaining estimate. 
• By default,
  • Legacy Mode is disabled if your Jira 4.2 installation was conducted without upgrading from an earlier version of Jira.
  • Legacy Mode is enabled if you upgraded Jira from a version prior to 4.2.