New setting: Export hours as

When exporting time entries or projects from mite to Excel or as a CSV, you can now choose how the duration should be formatted. You can select either decimal hours, hours:minutes, or minutes. For example, one and a half hour can be exported as 1.5, 1:30, or 90 minutes. Simply pick the format that suits your workflow best.

Setting: Export hours as

If you’re the account owner or an administrator, please find the new setting at the tab labeled »Account«. Your pick will affect all of your account’s exports from »Reports => Time entries«, »Reports => Projects«, as well as from any shared reports.

Julia in New features

Excel & CSV export: updated duration notation

When exporting time entries or projects from mite to Excel or as a CSV, we used to convert the duration to decimal hours. From now on, we display the duration in the hours:minutes notation and additionally in minutes. For example, one and a half hour used to be shown as 1.5. Now, you’ll see 1:30 as well as 90 minutes.

If you still prefer decimal hours, Excel or other spreadsheet software can convert the duration for you. Please divide the minutes by 60, and format cells to display numbers with 2 decimals. It would be an extra step—but hopefully an easy one, manageable by non-Excel-magicians too.

Whenever possible, we strive not to hinder or break existing workflows. This time though, we decided to change things because so much feedback reached us asking for a change. Yes, decimal hours made further processing easy, but you told us that they were also confusing to some, not precise enough or too technical to others. It seems that the one notation, perfect for everybody, does not exist. That’s why we went for a combination: one, hours:minutes, the notation well-known from mite‘s user interface and easily readable by humans, two, mere minutes, the exact notation easily readable by software, and thus easily processable by humans. Furthermore, we won’t have to round the duration anymore, and thus hopefully won’t confuse anybody with revenue calculation.

A warm thank you to all users who got in touch and made us understand why they weren’t happy with the former notation. We’d be glad to hear from you if this update makes your reporting easier!

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Update, June 14th: Your feedback was quite clear: This update was not helpful for most users, quite the contrary. You want the old notation back. We did not expect to judge the situation so badly. We are sorry.

Thus we just decided to roll-back the update. Instead we’ll add a setting, thanks to which you’ll be able to choose the notation that works best for you. We hope to deploy this update’s update until next Monday, June 17th. Please hang on.

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Update II, June 14th: He have just deployed the new setting. You can now choose which format suits you best when exporting to Excel or as a CSV. Please find a detailed description in our new blog post.

Julia in New features

New API feature: retrieve changes

The mite.api, our open data interface, now features changes endpoints. Thanks to these you are now able to retrieve changes to time entries, customers, projects, and services. This will hopefully prove helpful e.g. to keep a local copy of resources in sync with data in mite, without having to transfer the whole – and possibly very large – list again and again.

For more details, please have a look at the API documentation of the changes endpoints. Cheers to smarter, more efficient code!

Julia in New features, Tech talk

mite under pressure

As of 8:26 CET this morning, mite is handling some requests very slowly. We’re working together with our hoster to get rid of this problem, fast. The cause is a problem in our data center. We are so sorry, please have some patience! mite should be stable and fast at all times, we do know that and it’s our top priority.

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Update: Since 9:33 CET mite is running smoothly again. A neighboring server was causing the problems. Again: we are sorry!

Julia in Tech talk

Scheduled maintenance on February 5th

During the night from today to tomorrow, Tuesday, February 5th, our hoster will perform regular maintenance work in our primary data center in Berlin, Germany. Between 0:00 and 7:00 AM CET, mite will thus be unavailable for up to 30 minutes. This maintenance is necessary to perform security updates which require a reboot of our servers. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed successfully. mite was unavailable for a total of 16 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk

Scheduled maintenance on September 20th

During the night from today to tomorrow, Thursday, September 20th, our hoster will perform maintenance work in our primary data center. Between 0:00 and 8:00 AM CEST, mite will thus be unavailable for up to 30 minutes. This maintenance is necessary to deploy security updates which require a reboot of our servers. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed at 3:01 AM CEST. mite was unavailable for a total of 15 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk

mite & the GDPR

On May 25th the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force. While mite does support its principle guidelines since day one, we too have to adapt legal documents to meet the new requirements:

  • Data Processing Agreement (new)
  • updated Terms of Service
  • updated Privacy Policy

Data Processing Agreement

When you input data into mite it isn’t stored locally on your device but centrally on special mite.servers in the data center of our hoster SysEleven in Berlin, Germany. Thus we process data on your behalf. And thus we now have to conclude a so-called Data Processing Agreement (DPA) in the meaning of Art. 28 GDPR with you.

In this DPA we promise to process your data only for purposes linked to mite. We explain which data exactly we collect, how we process and protect it, and which rights and duties you have.

Please conclude our DPA until May 25th. If you’re the account owner, we display a direct link within mite to take care of that. Alternatively please head over to the »Account« tab by yourself.

Updated Terms of Service

Due to the GDPR we also have to slightly update our ToS. Please find the new version at its usual place. You can still access the former version here.

In §13 Data protection you now commit to follow legal data protection guidelines, and to conclude a DPA (see above) with us.

Moreover our ToS now specify that not only companies but also consumers may use mite. This clarification results in new clauses and new rights for consumers: §1.3, §2.3, §3.6, §5.

Our updated ToS become effective automatically if you do not object within six weeks. Should you object, you or we are entitled to terminate our contract.

Updated Privacy Policy

Due to the GDPR we also have to fundamentally change our Privacy Policy. Please find the new version at its usual place. You can still access the former version here.

Until now we had a pretty tight text which we thought to be easily and quickly comprehensible. Now we have to explain everything in epic detail and legal language which we think makes it less accessible. But we do hope that you’ll still appreciate it because now you get access to much more information on how your data is handled by us.

In the end

Thanks for hanging on – until the bottom line of this long post as well as until days before the GDPR comes into force. We’ve been having the topic in mind for almost a year, but frankly it has been quite a challenge to find a good lawyer with time on his or her hands. Sorry. But hopefully, now that the updates have arrived, you’ll see them as a step forward. GDPR & mite: ahoy!

Julia in Inside out

Scheduled maintenance on April 12th

During the night from today to tomorrow, Thursday, April 12th, between 0:30 and 1:00 AM CEST, mite will be unavailable for up to 10 minutes.

We’ll move mite to new servers with a new server architecture, and to do this properly, we’ll have to take the app down for a couple of minutes. We ask for your understanding: this is necessary so mite will be fast and secure for years to come. By the way, while we do move mite to other servers, SysEleven in Berlin, Germany will continue to host it. They have been taking care of us so well during the last years.

If you cannot notice anything working differently, we put our thumbs up. But if you do happen to stumble upon a problem, please tell us so we can fix it right away. Send us a detailed e-mail which includes information on your browser version. Thanks and mite ahoy!

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Update: Maintenance was completed at 0:36 AM CEST. mite was unavailable for a total of 6 minutes. From our point of view all servers are working smoothly.

Julia in Tech talk

Scheduled maintenance on January 16th

During the night from today to tomorrow, Tuesday, January 16th, our hoster will perform maintenance work in our primary data center. Between 0:00 and 8:00 AM CET, mite will thus be unavailable for up to 45 minutes. This maintenance is necessary to deploy security updates which require a reboot of our servers. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed successfully at 2:40 AM CET. All servers are patched now. mite was unavailable for a total of 22 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk

Scheduled maintenance on October 19th

During the night from today to tomorrow, Thursday, October 19th, our hoster will perform maintenance work in our primary data center. Between 0:00 and 8:00 AM CEST, mite will thus be unavailable for up to 45 minutes. This maintenance is necessary to deploy security updates which require rebooting our servers. We ask for your understanding.

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Update: Maintenance was completed successfully at 2:22 AM CEST. All servers are patched now. mite was unavailable for a total of 18 minutes.

Julia in Tech talk