Next to all the features of SessionLab that save you time and allow you to work collaboratively when planning your sessions, Time Tracker is a brand new feature which allows you to track the time when you deliver your workshops.

When you’re ready to begin delivering your session, you can click on the ‘Start Session’ button at the top of the session planner to begin running your agenda. You will see the Player toolbar appear at the top of your session where you can see your current block, how much time you have remaining, and if you're ahead or behind schedule.

Please note that Time Tracker is currently not available for sessions which contain breakout rooms.

There are two different modes of the Time Tracker, and you can choose which way of running it fits you better:

Once you launch the Time Tracker in either of the two modes, you’ll see the Player toolbar appear at the top of the session planner, which will always show you the title of the current item on your agenda, and the time remaining in this current block. The colour in the Player toolbar will change from green to orange when 20% of the planned time is left, and to red when only 5% of the designated time remains.

You’ll also see some action buttons on the right side, which allow you to add more time to your current block, or to move onto the next block in your agenda.

You will also see a horizontal line appear on the left side of the session planner in the ‘minimap’. This will show you a visual representation of how far through the current block you are.

After the 15 minutes designated to this particular block is over, the session will automatically progress onto the next block.

The Time Tracker will automatically run through your whole agenda, moving seamlessly from one block to the following in your schedule, without you or your collaborators needing to manually move onto the next block.

This enables you to focus on the delivery of your session and not on spending time clicking the ‘next’ button. However, while Time Tracker is running, you can still adjust the timings of your agenda or fast forward in case your plan changes.

Finally, at the end of the session, you can choose if you would like to keep the updated plan, or restore the session to the original plan.

If you prefer to manually indicate when a block is finished in your session, you can use the manual mode of the Time Tracker.

To start Manual Mode, click the down arrow next to the Start Session button and choose ‘Start in manual mode’.

You will see the Player toolbar appear at the top of your session where you can see your current block, how much time you have remaining, and if you're ahead or behind schedule.

The next block will not start automatically. You can use the Next button to go to the next block of your session when you’ve finished delivering the current one.

If at any point you would like to stop manual mode and allow the next block to start automatically, you can tick the box in front of the ‘Start next block automatically’ option at the top of the player toolbar.

If you find you need more time on your current activity, you can add more time to the block while Time Tracker is running. In the ‘Add Time’ section of the Player toolbar, you’re able to add time in 1-minute or 5-minute increments.

Adding time in this way will not only add time to your current block, but it will also amend the start time of all the following blocks in your session. You can also adjust or even reorder the blocks as you would do during planning, while Time Tracker is running.

If you need less time than you planned on a block in your session, you can click the ‘Next’ button in the Player toolbar to move on to the following activity in your agenda.

It might happen that you go over time and that the Player toolbar transitions to the next block before you are finished delivering the current one. In that case, you can return to the previous block by simply adding more time to it as you would normally during planning.

When you’ve finished delivering your session, you can click on the ‘End’ button in the Player toolbar to stop Time Tracker running.

A separate copy of your session is created with the actual timings as a separate day in your session. You’ll see that an additional day is added to your session with the session title followed by text ‘[delivered]’.

If you used Time Tracker on a day in a multi-day session and decide to keep both versions of the day-agenda, the second day will be added immediately after the day you just ran:

Please note: if you end the session with some blocks that have still not been delivered and you decided to keep the actual plan, the duration of these blocks will be adjusted to a 0-minute duration, to reflect that they have not been delivered.

If you keep both the original planned and the final delivered version of your agenda, then that allows you to compare the differences between the two versions.

You can see the two version next to each other if you go to the Overview of your session:

If you decide that you don't need either the original or the final real-time agenda, you can still delete one of the delivered days from your session, or extract it into its own separate session.

If you didn’t press the ‘Start Session’ button at the moment you began running your session, you can always modify the start time of your first block to reflect the actual start time of the session. This will then correct your timing.

If you had a locked block at the start of your agenda, and you began running your session late, you will automatically be behind schedule as shown in the below image. However, adjusting the start time of the first block to the correct time will put you back on track.

If you have other locked blocks in the session, and you don’t start at the planned time, there might be some odd conflicts happening in your schedule - including a case in which it might appear as some or all of the session has already been delivered.

For instance, if you planned (and locked) a break at 10, but you actually start the whole session at 11 then the break as well as other blocks connected to it will already be “in the past”. In this case you’ll need to adjust all the locked blocks in your session.