A few weeks ago, we wrapped up our final YAKSS session of 2025 with an insightful presentation by our BI/ML Engineer Bojana Vitanova, titled “Time Well Spent: Refining the Timesheet Reporting Process.” The session focused on improving a critical but often overlooked workflow: turning logged hours into clear, reliable and scalable reports.
Timesheet Reporting in Practice
Bojana started by explaining what a timesheet report is and why it matters. Beyond billing, timesheet reports provide visibility into how teams spend their time across projects, tasks and activity types. She then walked through the existing reporting process using a real example built with Apache Airflow, setting the context for where improvements were needed.
Challenges in the Existing Process
As reporting needs grew, several challenges became apparent. Bojana highlighted messy task views, complicated steps for adding new projects, hard to track email notifications and difficulties validating logged hours. She also pointed out a usability gap: finance teams having to log directly into Airflow to access reports, something the system was never designed for.
Smarter Solutions with Airflow and Better Validation
To address these issues, Bojana introduced a refined approach using dynamic task mapping in Airflow, allowing tasks to be generated automatically based on configuration rather than code changes. This made workflows cleaner, easier to maintain and more scalable. She also shared improvements to validation logic and reporting outputs, helping teams quickly spot inconsistencies and trust the data they rely on.
A Strong Finish to YAKSS 2025
The session concluded with a look at a dedicated reporting app, enabling users to generate reports through a simple interface without accessing Airflow. This final touch brought clarity, accessibility and separation of responsibilities to the process. Bojana’s talk was a great way to close YAKSS 2025, setting a strong foundation for even more practical knowledge sharing in YAKSS 2026.
Thank you, Bojana, for an engaging and solution driven session that showed how thoughtful engineering can make everyday processes truly time well spent. 🚀
