Dave,

My biggest problem with Billings isn't the features that it offers but the lack of integration. Personally, I just hate the idea of entering the same info in two places (make that three places, since I also have to enter info into QuickBooks). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like FreshBooks would be any help in that department. Like you said though, I would certainly jump on any solution that had real integration with DL.

George,
Yes. Integration is the key. I have much better things to do with my time than triple enter data. Since Marketcircle hasn't shown any desire to provide a solution, it was my hope to point out the possibility of integrating the Freshbooks API as a plugin to DL3.

I wish I had the chops to do it myself or the time to learn how...

Dave

I hear you. I've actually been exploring the possibility of setting up some sort of integration with QuickBooks. I assume the process would be similar for Freshbooks. Right now, that's where a lot of my energy is focused.

I don't know if I'll have the time to actually do this, but I think I could probably figure it out if I really tried. Although, I would certainly be more than happy to pay some enterprising individual to do it for me!

Well, integrating a 3rd party API to a web site is something I am quite capable of doing. However, I'm not really inclined to do it because it's not the way it should be. What I'd like is a way to extend Daylite to include time logging of tasks within their interface. Now, if the developer API was open enough to let me create new tables in the database to store that info, it would be awesome. Although come to think of it, it may be possible to use the task description area to store time log information in an automated way. The tricky part might be how to report on that data. Possibly if the task details contained some sort of time log identifier tag that would let me extract the time slips for the task, then I could use f-script to query all the tasks and extract out the time-slip log entries from the details for reporting purposes. Hmm... Maybe that's an idea that needs further exploration.

Maybe a little bit of XML would do the trick:

<time_logs>
<log id="1"><start>02-10-2007 09:00:00 am</start><end>02-10-2007 11:59:59 am</end><note>start of logo design</note></log>
<log id="2"><start>02-10-2007 12:00:00 pm</start><end>02-10-2007 12:59:59 pm</end><note>lunch break</note></log>
<log id="3"><start>02-10-2007 01:00:00 pm</start><end>02-10-2007 05:00:00 pm</end><note>resume logo design</note></log>
</time_logs>

Then in the UI, create a pop-up menu command on a Task that you can select to bring up a more advanced timer window with a start/pause/stop button and a note field. Each time this is invoked, it parses the task details and extracts the XML so when you click start, it adds a new log entry to the details. If there's already a log entry, the button says "Resume". There would be a separate stop button in any case. Or I guess just pretty much use the same interface as in Billings for the timer window. I'm not even sure if the developer API lets you get this sophisticated though. Ultimately I would rather add a TimeLog entity to the database and have that information stored in a separate table.

Hey AJ, if you read this message, is it possible to extend Daylite in such a fashion?

One problem I see is if MC were to add this feature soon, it would be a challenge to convert all your historical data to whatever new format they come up with.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks,

Brendan

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Brendan,

I agree with what you're saying--integrating DL with a website isn't the way it should be. I guess the real question is, does MC have any plans to implement anything along this line, or is this an area that is going to be addressed by a third party solution if it's going to need to be addressed at all. I mean, I don't think there's any question but that what there is some significant interest in a time billing solution for DL. I know that this is certainly on MC's radar, but I wonder if this is a market they intend to exploit...

It would be nice if they chimed in to let us know if they were working on a solution, or are they leaving it up to us to address.

Right!

I did a quick look at the Freshbooks API documentation and it looks like it is all XML based.

During my quick look at the API documentation, I didn't see the new timesheet functionality. That may be because the documentation needs updating.

Now whether this would be the perfect solution or not... I don't really care. It would be a much better solution than currently exists and most importantly reduce the number of times data needs to be entered.

The fact is, that no single solution will be appropriate for everyone. Ideally there should be a wide variety of solutions implemented for a spectrum of applications. I suspect that MC will eventually role something out, but when and with what features is unknown. I solution involving QuickBooks would be interesting, but I am sick of Intuit and how they have treated the Mac community and I would be very cautious of any solution involving QB.

The reality is that we will all use DL3 differently and expecting it to be a universal solution is not desirable or feasible. I see DL3's great strength is that it is extensible via its plugin architecture. This allows it to play with a great spectrum of solutions and fit a wide variety of users.

I hope someone will build a Freshbooks plugin.

Dave

Dave,

I'm in agreement with what you're saying. I guess the missing piece of the puzzle is really Daylite's market saturation numbers. I know that there are some plugins out there, but most of those are your 10-20 dollar plugins and aren't all that complicated. I would expect that something that addressed the time billing market would be a bigger undertaking for a developer and could represent a bigger risk. I know that DL is available on the shelves at the Apple Stores (at least it is at my local store), so I would assume that it has a fair installed base, but I have no idea if it's 1000, 10,000, or 100,000 users. But, I guess we'll see...

Well, I took it upon myself to learn some Cocoa / Objective-C programming and I built a subtask timer plug-in. I'm just about to give it to my designers for testing. Basically you select a task and select "SubTask Timer" from the Action menu. This brings up a timer similar to the one found in Billings where you can pause and resume a task. Every time you pause and resume, it adds another subtask to keep track of the stop and start times for whatever you were doing. You can easily set the name and details of the subtask right in the pop-up window. The timer window also stays on top of all applications, so you can minimize Daylite and still be able to start and stop your task. I'll let you know how our tests go with it. I'm considering putting it in the Share Zone, but my business partners are thinking that maybe we could charge a small fee for it. Dunno what to do yet.


Thanks,

Brendan

Brendan,

I'd vote for share zone but would be willing to pay a small fee.

Would there be any way of integrating appointments so that you could run a sum of tasks and of appointments for a given project or as a timesheet for the week?

Good luck with the testing. If you need outside testing, let me know.

marc

I've posted my SubTask Timer plug-in to the Share Zone. Have at it.

well done o that Brendan - ive just had a look at the export for billings file though and i reckon it wont be hard to code a parser util for the xml to get it into a csv format that we can use in excel for project time tracking! once its in cvs we can use other apps like excel to report properly - you can even suck that data into an invoicing app.

looks easy .. stay tuned ...