Presets

A preset is a ready-made shape for a workspace: its fields, views, statuses, timing formulas and starter work items. This topic covers the presets that come with Grindstone, the ones you save for later, preset files, and how to create a preset from a workspace you’ve set up.

Choosing a preset

When you set up a workspace, the Select a Preset step of Setup Workspace asks where to Start From (see Getting started):

• Built-in Preset: one of the presets that come with Grindstone.
• Saved Preset: one you’ve saved for later use on this device.
• Preset File: a .gs5preset file, such as one someone shared with you.

Choose Finish to set up the workspace from the preset you picked, or Build on This with AI to tailor it first (see Building a preset with AI). For the rest of setup, see Getting started.

Built-in presets

These come with Grindstone. General Time Tracking is listed first and selected to start; the rest are in alphabetical order. A folio imported from Grindstone 4 also starts from General Time Tracking (see Coming from Grindstone 4).

• General Time Tracking: Estimate, Due and Complete for assignments, the Work Items, Time Slices, Time Today, Time This Week and Time This Month views, actions for marking assignments complete or incomplete, and reminders to take breaks and to stop for the day.
• Accounting Firm: Engagements and Services: engagements with their client, service and whether they’re chargeable, and your chargeable hours, this week’s utilization and this year’s CPE time on the dashboard.
• Agency or Consultancy: Clients, Projects and Retainers: projects with their client and whether they’re billable, each client’s monthly retainer with the hours left this month, and your billable hours and utilization on the dashboard.
• Engineering Firm: Projects and Phases: project phases with their project, EJCDC phase and whether they’re billable, and your billable hours, utilization and professional development time on the dashboard.
• Law Firm: Matters and UTBMS Codes: matters with their client, matter number and whether they’re billable, time entries coded with the ABA’s UTBMS codes, a narrative for every entry, and time in tenths of an hour.
• Nonprofit: Grants and Functions: activities with their function and funding source, each function’s and funding source’s hours this month and this year, and time charged outside an award’s period.
• Personal Life: Areas and Weekly Goals: activities sorted into areas of life, each area with an optional weekly goal and limit, and alerts when you meet a goal or go over a limit.
• Software Development: Projects and Capitalization: work items with their project and work type, time entries marked capitalizable or not, and each project’s capitalizable hours this month and this year.
• Student: Courses and Coursework: coursework with its course, activity, due date and estimate, a to-do list ordered by due date, and your study time this week against each course’s weekly goal.

Select a preset to see its summary, and choose All Built-in Presets to return to the list.

Saved presets

Saved Preset lists the presets you’ve saved for later use, in alphabetical order. Saved presets are kept on this device. You can save a preset in two ways:

• In Setup Workspace, choose Preset File and turn on Save this preset for later use. Grindstone saves it once the workspace is set up.
• When you create a preset, turn on Save this preset for later use.

If you already have a saved preset with the same name, Grindstone asks Replace Saved Preset? Choose No to keep both.

Preset files

Choose Preset File, then Browse to pick a .gs5preset file. Grindstone shows the preset’s name, description, author and choices before you go on. If the file isn’t a preset Grindstone can read, it tells you so.

A preset file can come from anyone. Its name, description, author and choices are what its author wrote.

Reading a preset’s summary

Each preset’s summary shows:

• Its name and description.
• Who made it, when its author chose to say. If the author gave a link, their name is a link.
• What it’s based on, when it was made from another preset, such as “Based on General Time Tracking by Epiforge.”
• Choices this preset makes for you: select it to expand the author’s short statements of the calls the preset makes, such as how time is rounded.

The choices are the author’s own words, so read them before you pick a preset. The built-in presets use them to state their limits plainly. For example, Law Firm: Matters and UTBMS Codes says “Rounding is for display only: billable hours add up exact time,” Nonprofit: Grants and Functions says “Nothing here approves, certifies or locks time,” and Accounting Firm: Engagements and Services says its CPE time “is clock time, not CPE credit.”

What a preset sets up

A preset can carry a workspace’s traits and list values, starter work items with their traits, system and user views, timing formulas, statuses, patterns, actions and a dashboard. It can also carry the workspace’s default working days and hours for Find Gaps (see Finding gaps). It also carries how its author arranged things for themselves, such as their dashboard and which statuses and views alert them, and gives that arrangement to whoever sets up from it.

A preset never carries people or recorded time. Grindstone creates you as the person who sets up the workspace, and your time comes from tracking it.

For how these fit together, see How Grindstone thinks. Each has its own topic: Traits, Views, Timing readout and label, Statuses and alerts, Formulas, Actions and The Dashboard.

Creating a preset from your workspace

To turn the workspace you’re in into a preset, open the main menu and choose Create Preset. Grindstone reads the workspace and opens Create Preset, which says what the preset will carry, along with the system views and how you’ve arranged your views. If your workspace was set up from a preset, it also shows what your new preset will be based on. For where the main menu is, see Getting started.

The new preset carries the workspace’s default working days and hours, which come from the preset the workspace was set up with. Working days and hours you change in Find Gaps are your own and don’t travel.

Name, description and choices

• Name (required): what the preset is called where presets are offered. In the list of presets, a name with a colon, such as “Law Firm: Matters and UTBMS Codes,” shows the part before the colon as its title and the rest beneath it.
• Description: shown beneath the name where presets are offered.
• Choices This Preset Makes: optional, one on each line, such as how entries are rounded. They’re shown where presets are offered, and given to the AI agent of anyone who builds on your preset.

Author

• Author: optional. Shown as who made the preset. Leave it blank to stay anonymous.
• Author Link: optional. A web address starting with https:// or http://, or an email address starting with mailto:, where people can find out more about you.

Starter work items

Starter Work Items lists the workspace’s work items. Checked work items travel with the preset, along with their traits. Their time stays in your workspace. Work items that formulas in your workspace name start out checked, and any work item something names shows what names it.

Left Behind

Left Behind lists things your workspace names that won’t travel, such as a person, a time slice or a work item you left unchecked, and what names each one. Formulas in the preset use defaults in their place, and starter work items won’t carry traits that name them. Check a work item under Starter Work Items to bring it along.

Saving the preset

Choose Create, then choose where to save the .gs5preset file. Turn on Save this preset for later use to also add it to your saved presets on this device, so it’s offered under Saved Preset the next time you set up a workspace.

Deleting a saved preset

In Setup Workspace, choose Saved Preset, select the preset, and choose Delete Saved Preset beside its name. Workspaces already set up from it are unaffected. This can’t be undone.