What is the Work Diary?

The Work Diary is a proprietary oDesk tool that enables a user to review the progress and work of any provider working on a job. oDesk providers run a client application called oDesk Team that sends work info to the oDesk server on 10 minute intervals. That information can be reviewed using the Work Diary.

Accessing the Work Diary

From https://my.odesk.com, any registered user can access the oDesk console that includes a pane for each member of that team. Click the Work Diary link to access the corresponding Work Diary for the current day.

How to read the Work Diary

For all time that is logged by a provider on a job, any user with the appropriate permissions can access the Work Diary. You will see a filmstrip type of view of thumbnail images.

Each thumbnail view represents a lot of information about the work being performed on the job.

How to navigate the Work Diary

On any Work Diary page, you'll have all the navigation tools you need in the top headers of the page.

How do I use the Work Diary

If you are a provider and you are working on a job, you should check your Work Diary at least on a weekly basis to make sure that all of the time that has been logged is fair and accurate. If you need to add or delete any time, you will be able to do that from this Work Diary page. Make sure to double check that all the time that was logged was spent working on the appropriate project and included clear and detailed work memos.

If you are a buyer and you are reviewing the work of a provider, you may want to revisit the Work Diary on a regular basis to check up on the work and progress. You can check it as often as you like, but remember that if any changes need to be made, they must be made by Tuesday, midnight GMT following any work week.

Tips And Best Practices

We've heard a lot of great feedback on the Work Diary and some interesting stories of how users have put the tool to use. The following tips and best practices have been related to oDesk from our many users. We hope you find them useful, and would love to hear any other tips or best practices in our forums.

• Use it frequently in the beginning of a project to build up trust about appropriate time-logging.
• Use it to spot-check code on an ongoing project to make sure it was up to coding standards.
• Use it to reach out to providers that were struggling on certain topics. For example, a buyer noticed that a provider spent some time on a php bulletin board and reached out to the provider to offer help on the advanced topic.