ceven

DeskTime

Syncs employee productivity metrics and project hours into your project management tools, flags burnout risks, and automates weekly timesheet summaries.

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Why use Ceven?

  1. AI native DeskTime integration

    • Describe the outcome and Ceven picks the right DeskTime calls, fills the parameters, and checks the result.
    • Structured, agent friendly tool schemas so each call runs reliably instead of by guesswork.
    • Rich coverage for reading, writing, and querying your DeskTime data, across all 11 of its actions.

  2. Managed auth

    • Built in OAuth with automatic token refresh and rotation.
    • One place to manage, scope, and revoke DeskTime access.
    • Per user and per environment credentials instead of shared keys.

  3. Agent optimized design

    • Actions are tuned from real success and error rates so reliability climbs over time.
    • Full execution logs so you always know what ran in DeskTime, when, and on whose behalf.
    • The agent pauses and asks when DeskTime is unclear instead of plowing ahead.

  4. Enterprise grade security

    • Fine grained access so you control which agents and people can reach DeskTime.
    • Least privilege by default, read scopes first and only the writes a workflow needs.
    • A full audit trail of every DeskTime action to support review and sign off.

Supported tools

Every action Ceven's agents can run on DeskTime, and when to use it.

Create project
Use this when you need to set up a new DeskTime project programmatically, including an optional initial task to start tracking immediately.
Get account details
Pull the company name, work settings, account timezone, and current timestamp to ensure workflow synchronization.
List all employees
Fetch the full organization roster including roles and statuses to map users to other internal systems.
Get employee data
Pull detailed data for all employees within the company to analyze aggregate productivity trends.
Get employee projects
Retrieve projects assigned to employees including durations and statuses for a specific date.
Get projects and apps
Pull combined project and application usage for a given employee and date to see exactly where time went.
List active projects
Retrieve all active projects for the company and their related tasks for a high level overview.
Ping API
Check if the DeskTime service is operational and responsive before running a large data export.
Start project task
Begin timing work on a specific project and optionally tag a task to record active labor.
Stop project task
Record the end time for a project or task once the work is finished.
Search employees
Find a specific user in the DeskTime roster by name or email to retrieve their tracking ID.
Audit project time
Pull a summary of all time logged against a specific project ID to verify billing accuracy.
Create Project with Optional Task
Tool to create a new project with an optional initial task. use when you need to set up a new desktime project programmatically.
Get All Company Employees
Tool to list all employees in the company, including their roles and statuses. use after confirming valid credentials to fetch the organization’s roster.
Get Employee Projects and Apps
Tool to retrieve an employee's tracked projects and application usage. use when you need combined project/app time data for a given employee and date (defaults to current user and today). example: "get projects and apps for employee 711867
Get Projects List
Tool to retrieve all active projects for the company, including related tasks. use when you need projects overview after authentication.
Ping DeskTime API
Tool to check the api's availability and confirm the service is operational. use when you need to verify that the desktime api is reachable and responsive.

17 actions · scroll to see them all

Frequently asked questions

Ceven only accesses the data points you explicitly authorize through the API scopes. We do not record screens or keystrokes ourselves; we simply read the aggregated time and application data that DeskTime has already processed. All data transferred from DeskTime to Ceven is encrypted in transit and at rest. You can limit which employees are tracked by adjusting your DeskTime privacy settings, and Ceven will only see the filtered results. We never sell this productivity data to third parties, and you can wipe all stored DeskTime history from your Ceven workspace with a single click in the integration settings menu.
Yes. By using the Start Project Task and Stop Project Task actions, you can build workflows that trigger timers based on other events. For example, when you move a Jira ticket to In Progress, Ceven can tell DeskTime to start the timer for that specific project. When the ticket is moved to Done, the agent can automatically stop the timer. This removes the need for employees to manually click start and stop buttons throughout the day, ensuring that your data is more accurate and your team spends less time on administrative overhead.
DeskTime imposes specific rate limits on their API to ensure service stability. If a Ceven workflow attempts to pull data for thousands of employees simultaneously, you may encounter a 429 Too Many Requests error. To handle this, Ceven implements an automatic exponential backoff strategy. The agent will pause and retry the request at increasing intervals until the rate limit resets. For very large organizations, we recommend scheduling heavy data syncs during off peak hours to avoid hitting these limits during the core workday when real time tracking is most critical.
Ceven leverages the data generated by DeskTime's automatic tracking. While Ceven cannot change how the DeskTime desktop app records activity on a local machine, it can read those logs via the API. This means you can build workflows that react to automatic tracking. For instance, if DeskTime automatically detects a user is spending too much time in a non productive application, Ceven can send a gentle nudge via Slack or add a note to a daily productivity log for the manager to review during a one on one meeting.
Absolutely. This is a primary use case for the integration. You can create a workflow that pulls the total hours logged for a project in DeskTime and then creates a corresponding invoice or time entry in QuickBooks. The agent can handle the mapping between DeskTime project names and QuickBooks customer names. You can set this to happen daily, weekly, or monthly. This ensures that your billable hours are captured exactly as they were tracked, eliminating the errors that come with manual transcription at the end of the month.
Yes. DeskTime allows for tasks within projects, and Ceven can interact with both levels of granularity. When using the Start Project Task action, you can specify both the project ID and the task ID. This allows you to see not just that someone worked on a project for five hours, but that they spent two hours on research and three hours on execution. You can then use this fine grained data to analyze which parts of your project lifecycle are taking the most time and where you can optimize your internal processes.
When an employee is removed from your DeskTime account, they will no longer appear in the List All Employees call. If you have workflows that rely on a specific user ID, those workflows will fail with a not found error. Ceven handles this by logging the error and notifying the workspace administrator. You can set up a cleanup workflow that automatically archives the user in your other connected systems, such as your CRM or project management tool, whenever they are removed from DeskTime, keeping your entire tech stack in sync.
Yes. While DeskTime has its own dashboard, Ceven can pull raw data and format it however you like. You can tell the agent to find the top five most productive employees based on focus time and send that list to a leadership channel. Or, you can ask it to identify projects where the actual time spent is twenty percent higher than the estimated time. Because Ceven can combine DeskTime data with data from other tools, you can create reports that show the correlation between time spent and actual project outcomes.

Alternatives to DeskTime

Other tools that solve a similar problem. Ceven supports these too, so you can switch or run more than one at once.

Toggl Track logoToggl TrackHarvest logoHarvestClockify logoClockifyHubstaff logoHubstaff

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