DonationCoder.com Software > N.A.N.Y. Challenge 2007

WorkCoach - v0.8.0 - January 24, 2007

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Seriema:
This is awesome! :Thmbsup:

I've been thinking about making an app like this for some time now. Just yesterday I was thinking, "why haven't someone already done this?" and SMACK! Here it is!

I've been using it throughout the day now. I'm on vacation so I'm a bit lazier than usual... That means, I've spent a lot of time watching movies. So I made a project "Movies" and put WorkCoach to check "vlc" (vlc.exe), but when I watch movies I'm not active. So after a few minutes it'll start counting the time as Idle. It would be great if projects could have an option to count idle time as project time. Like the Movies project could have a checkbox that I click, and as long as VLC is the active window it'll count the time towards that - wether not I'm active or idle.

The Projects tab seems a little unnecessary, it could be merged with Rules. Because now I have to create a project in Projects, then go to Rules, select that project (because it's not default selected depending on what's selected in Projects) and set everything from there. I'd rather just have the add/modify/remove buttons right under the Projects list in the Rules tab. Or the Modify button in Projects could bring up a Rules window for that specific project so the Rules tab can be removed.

It would be nice to be able to reset the timer. So I know how I spend my time each day. And being able to export that data somehow, or view graphs of it.

Keep up the good work!

Seriema:
I just noticed WorkCoach prioritizes projects without a window title rule over projects with one. Example, I had 2 projects:
Working in Visual Studio (a default rule)
My specific Visual Studio project (a rule for "devenv" with my title)

While working on my project, it counts towards the "Working in Visual Studio" project instead of my specific one. If I remove "Working in Visual Studio" then the time goes correctly to "My specific Visual Studio project". It should be the other way around..?

Arjen:
Hi gottadoit,

The window log information is stored in XML files, so with a custom XSLT file it would be possible to merge two of those into one. Right now only the window log information is saved to file (i.e. how much time is spent in each application / window title). The project log (i.e. how much time is spent on each project) is calculated from the window log file and the projects and rules defined by the user. I will soon make sure the project log is also saved, so it can be used for making reports like you mention.

The XML files WorkCoach creates are saved in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\WorkCoach

With regard to time syncing: right now the program only records how long you've been doing something, not the exact times, so this is not an issue.

I hope this helps - if you have any further questions or comments I'll be happy to hear them!

Arjen.

Arjen:
Hi Seriema,

Glad to hear you like it!

Your suggestion of adding the option "count idle time as project time" to projects sounds very usefull, so I I'll add it. That would mean if a project that has this option checked is active, and the user becomes idle, the program will keep counting time towards that project instead of starting to count idle time. Do we agree? :-)

Right now WorkCoach starts counting idle time after one minute of user inactivity. I plan to make this time user configurable, so that might also help a little bit towards your problem.

I agree that it's inconvenient that you have to switch between the Project and Rules tabs, and that these two had better be combined or integrated somehow. I did it this way because I was afraid to make the GUI too complicated. You're suggestion to put the Add/Modify/Remove buttons under the Projects list in the Rules tab sounds like the best option right now. If you have any other ideas on this, let me know.

With regard to resetting the timer: the timer is now reset every day. The idea is that the program records the time spent on each project per day. I plan to save the project log to XML files (see my previous post) so you will have an XML file for each day containing time spent per project. Since they are XML files you can make HTML or even PDF reports (or other formats) from them with XSLT or XSL-FO. I might add a report function to the program later that can call these transformations.

I just noticed WorkCoach prioritizes projects without a window title rule over projects with one. Example, I had 2 projects:
Working in Visual Studio (a default rule)
My specific Visual Studio project (a rule for "devenv" with my title)

While working on my project, it counts towards the "Working in Visual Studio" project instead of my specific one. If I remove "Working in Visual Studio" then the time goes correctly to "My specific Visual Studio project". It should be the other way around..?
-Seriema (January 02, 2007, 06:18 PM)
--- End quote ---

If you have a project containing a "wildcard rule", i.e. the window title rule is empty, that project overrules another project containing a rule for the same application, but only if that other project is lower in the list than the project with the wildcard rule. (In other words: WorkCoach cycles through the projects and rules, starting at the top, and just takes the first one that matches.)

This is a known issue and described in the first post of this thread. I will definitely fix this since this is not desirable behaviour.

A workaround now is to make sure that the project with the wildcard rule is lower in the list than the project with the specific rule. Since you can't move projects up and down in the list, you'll have to do this by deleting and adding the project. We apologize for the inconvenience. :-)

Thanks for your feedback, and I'd be happy to hear about your further experiences.

Arjen.

Seriema:
Your suggestion of adding the option "count idle time as project time" to projects sounds very usefull, so I I'll add it. That would mean if a project that has this option checked is active, and the user becomes idle, the program will keep counting time towards that project instead of starting to count idle time. Do we agree? :-)
-Arjen (January 03, 2007, 08:29 AM)
--- End quote ---

Yepp!
I'll keep a lookout on this post. Good luck now!

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