Recent changes to feature-requests

auto save

Craig — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:50:13 -0000

I would like TimeTracker to save data to the file every five or ten minutes so I can use the data more in real time.
I'm creating a small application in VB to gently remind me when I've spent too much time playing games etc.
The data TimeTracker saves is great.

define task rules with wildcards or strings

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:50:33 -0000

it would be great to have rules that detect a part of the window title and adds the window to the task list. Eg, I'd have a rle called eg Yahoo that adds up the time spent on each window that has the word "yahoo" in its title. this way you could easily group together different apps and windows that share a similar title (and most probably are part of the same task). It could be done through ildcards, or maybe string detection.

track inactive windows

Ash Ragheb — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:00:15 -0000

I would like to have the option to track how long an application or dialog box is running without keeping it my active window the entire time.

For example, suppose my application opens a dialog titled 'Download'. I'd like to time how long it has been open while I work on something else.

Load previous data, keep running log

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:50:58 -0000

3 suggestions:

1. LOAD PREVIOUS DATA - Could I have the option of loading the previous data when I start it up? Now that you have these wonderful analysis tools (list and chart views), I'd like to see all time using those views. I guess this might be a bad direction, though, since people would then ask for different kinds of analysis. It is not too hard to load the data into Excel to get the same thing.

2. HIGH RESOLUTION LOG - It would be great if there were an option to write a log of every task switch to a separate file. That way, I could look back and find out what I was doing at 2:32 PM on November 22 (for example). An optional INI file option like highResLogFile="full-log.csv" would do the trick.

3. BUILD INSTRUCTIONS - Could you possibly post build instructions? I realize you probably have your own ideas for what to do with this project, so I thought I might try these and then send you a patch if it actually works well.

I also fully agree with 100% of the comments from the other guy. Although I don't know your code, it seems that most of this would be pretty easy to add.

Thanks,
Alex
---
(my initials)@cs.umd.edu

CSV File Format

Stephen — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:16:36 -0000

This program looks great. Thanks.

Here are a few enhancements that I think would be useful:

(1) Spanning Midnight

I would prefer that you save a full Date/Time column instead of the existing Time-only column. (You could then remove the existing Date column, if you want.)

The reason is that if you work past midnight, as I sometimes do, then all activity before midnight gets the wrong Date and wrong Day of Week. It looks like you never worked on the day before midnight. This forces me to either correct the date, or save/shutdown TT just before midnight with the correct date, and then restart after midnight.

If you prefer to keep the Date a separate column, that's fine too, but it should reflect the before/after midnight dates correctly. Right now the Date is basically a save file date, not the true activity date.

(2) Consistent CSV Line Format

Your program writes an initial separator of "******" in the first date column for each new append. This means that different lines have incompatible CSV formats. A separator line is fine, but you might save the asterisks in the Window Caption column, which is a string not a date. You could still have a normal date and day in the initial columns if you like. A consistent line format is better for importing the .csv file into a database or spreadsheet. (I use an Access database.)

(3) Fractional Hours with 4 Decimals

The fractional hour column is very useful for adding up total time. I would like to see 4 decimals, consistent with your sampling rate of 1 second, so that small intervals do not get lost in the total. Currently you seem to round to 2 decimals, which has a 36 second resolution. Of course, I can always use your hh:mm:ss column, which does have1 second resolution, but it seems the fractional hours should be comparable.

Thanks for your work on this program, it's great!

- Stephen

Automatically load task list

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:19:26 -0000

Dear Ronald,

I really like ur app, it is exactly what i need. But i cant seem to find a way to load a tasklist upon start up, is there an ez way to do this? Or can you implement this?

Thanks a bunch!

Grtz Derk Arts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Summarize Times in List/Tree Views

dswag89 — Tue, 08 May 2007 20:33:34 -0000

This little tool just keeps getting better and better! Now that I'm learning to use Rules better, I am more quickly tracking my time. A nice feature in the List and/or Tree Views would be to show what makes up each of the "Tasks". So, put "branches" to group the sub-parts of each task. This would allow you to see what is and is/not correctly "attached" to a task. The *ULTIMATE* would be to allow "drag-and-drop" to group into a Task.

TimeUsage.csv Content Changes/Additions

dswag89 — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:08:04 -0000

This app is great! I've been looking for this application for years now, I'm so glad you created it! A few things that would make it easier for me to use in the TimeUsage.csv file are:
1. In the "task name" (the bit that comes from the title bar), effectively column c of the spreadsheet, either trim out or replace the commas that may exist in that title bar with something else. I most often notice it wiht Mozilla, visiting web pages with a comma in the title. Another alternative would be to rearrange the order of the columns to put the "process name" in column C and move the "task name" out to column E. I haven't yet noticed a "process name" with a comma in it.

2. I am unable to get Excel to (easily) interpret the time stamps as numbers so that I can arrange them and add the times up to get a time value that my timecard system likes. I always enter time in unit of tenths of an hour. In additon to the time format in the h:mm:ss format, it would be nice to have a x.yy format that shows the portion of an hour. So, if you have the time 0:52:35 in column D, the next column would be 0.88.

Great app.. I LOVE IT!