Configurations

Configurations

• Environment specific settings (.env)
• Config files
• Overwriting local configs (local.yaml)
• Reload changed configurations
• System-configuration screen
• User preferences vs. system settings

This is an introduction into the configuration options and files, which are used by Kimai and an explanation on how to change them.

Specific configuration settings are explained in the respective documentation chapters.

Environment specific settings (.env)

The basic settings, which are required for Kimai to work are stored in the .env file:

• MAILER_URL - smtp connection for emails
• MAILER_FROM - application specific “from” address for all emails
• APP_ENV - environment for the runtime (use prod if you are unsure)
• DATABASE_URL - database connection for storing all application data
• APP_SECRET - secret used for hashing user passwords (don’t change it, if you have user accounts in your database)

Config files

Configuration of Kimai is spread in all files in the config/directory but mainly it these files:

• .env - environment specific settings
• config/packages/kimai.yaml - Kimai specific settings
• config/packages/admin_lte.yaml - Kimai base theme
• config/packages/fos_user.yaml - user management and email settings
• config/packages/local.yaml - your configuration settings (file needs to be created by yourself)

There are several other configurations that could potentially be interesting for you in config/packages/*.yaml.

If you want to adjust a setting from any of these files, use local.yaml (see below).

Overwriting local configs (local.yaml)

You should NOT edit the file config/packages/kimai.yaml directly, as it contains default settings and will be overwritten during an update. Instead create the file config/packages/local.yaml and save your own settings in there. This file will NEVER be shipped with Kimai. Having your custom settings in local.yaml allows you to easily update Kimai. This is the same concept which is used for the .env file.

An example config/packages/local.yaml file might look like this:

kimai:
    timesheet:
        rounding:
            default:
                begin: 15
                end: 15

admin_lte:
    options:
        default_avatar: build/apple-touch-icon.png

The local.yaml file will be imported as last configuration file, so you can overwrite any setting from the config/packages/ directory.

Whenever the documentation asks you to edit a yaml file from the config/packages/ directory, it means you should copy this specific configuration key to your local.yaml in order to overwrite the default configuration.

Reload changed configurations

When you change a configuration file, Kimai will not see this change immediately. You can reload the configs after you are done by rebuilding the Symfony cache with:

bin/console cache:clear --env=prod
bin/console cache:warmup --env=prod

Depending on your setup it might be necessary to execute these commands as webserver user, please read the Installation docs for more details.

System-configuration screen

With version 0.9 a new system configuration screen was introduced. This screen allows you to change some of the most important configurations directly from within Kimai.

This screen is only visible to users with the permission system_configuration which is by default given to ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN.

Each setting in this screen is also available in the config file (config/packages/kimai.yaml) where you might find additional information or links to the correct documentation chapter.

User preferences vs. system settings

A user has several preferences, which change the behaviour how he interacts with Kimai.

Check out the user preferences documentation to find out more.