Primetric and Clockify integration with Power Automate

Challenges arising from using two different systems

Clockify is a widely used tool for reporting hours spent on projects. It’s a good solution for post-factum analysis and detailed settlements. It also has a standard integration with another app – Primetric – for tracking and forecasting the availability of developers so that work on project implementation can be well planned.

“The hours we have in Clockify automatically transfer to the projects being executed and planned in Primetric. This allows us to track the plan and verify its implementation in real-time. We immediately see any discrepancies, such as someone being assigned to a project for 8 hours but reporting 10, or vice versa. However, there is one thing missing – the transfer of absence information and all vacation requests from Clockify.” – says Adrian Wieczorek, Chief Delivery Officer at Netwise.

From a project manager’s perspective, this data is very important, especially during vacation periods and winter breaks, when vacations are spread out over time and difficult to predict. While planning people’s workload in Primetric, we don’t have information about a person’s absence, and without it, we can’t properly plan work in iterations. The same goes for vacation requests or absence. With their visibility, a PM can plan sprints in such a way that the project proceeds according to schedule despite the absence of specific individuals.

“We decided that since the out-of-the-box integration between Clockify and Primetric doesn’t allow for this, we could do it using Power Automate and the APIs of both platforms. So, we created a flow that transfers and updates this data in real-time. Everything works as we planned, and the coolest part is that we didn’t use a single line of code. Literally, we clicked it together on the low-code platform and supplemented the functionality with the missing integration element.” – Adrian Wieczorek adds.

How did we connect Clockify and Primetric using Power Automate?

First, HTTP requests are sent to fetch data from a specified date range. Data from Clockify and Primetric are fetched concurrently through their APIs, and the integration between the systems is unidirectional – records are created and updated only on the Primetric side. To make this possible, the “id” field for Clockify and the “employee_note” field for Primetric were used to link records together, populated at the time of record creation. Then, they are sorted and joined together by the “id” and “employee_note” fields, which were used as primary keys for integration purposes.

The entire flow isn’t that simple, as it consists of multiple steps and conditions. However, thanks to Power Automate, there was no need to write code for this purpose:

To obtain a more complete data structure, additional employee data is fetched from Primetric and linked by email address to the vacation records in Clockify. An attribute “p_uuid” is added, which corresponds to the “uuid” attribute from Primetric.

How does it work now?

After creating the solution, if anyone requests time-off or wants to report an absence and submits such a request in Clockify, the project consequences of accepting the request are immediately visible in Primetric. The Project Manager can see whether they need additional help, whether a slight modification to the plan within the sprint is sufficient, or if adjustments are necessary.

Agile thinking, ingrained in Netwise’s DNA, always guides us towards the simplest and most effective solutions. Combined with knowledge and skills, we manage to maximize the potential of the tools we use. Not only familiarity with the systems we work with is essential, but also creativity to know how to utilize them, and the courage not to be afraid to try.