Here's a Daylite PlugIn for timing tasks. It's called SubTask Timer. You first select a task and then select "SubTask Timer" from the Action menu. It brings up a window that is used to start, pause, and stop timing of the selected task. It works by creating a subtask every time you start and pause the timer. The total time for the selected task is calculated by summing up the durations for each of the subtasks. The stop button marks the selected parent task done if all the subtasks are also all done.

This is my first Objective-C application, so please go easy on me!

This is what it looks like (Its resizeable) :



To install it, unzip it and put the SubTaskTimer.bundle file into ~/Library/Application Support/Daylite/PlugIns

note: ~/ means your home folder

You can download the SubTask Timer here.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Brendan

Brendan,

This is very cool. How do you anticipate capturing/reporting the time? Will it migrate to your other report?

Thanks for the time you have put into this and your Projects and Tasks by Organization Report.

Your efforts are very much appreciated.

marc

Your welcome!

I was simply going to modify the Projects & Tasks by Organization report to use the sum of the durations of the subtasks (if there are subtasks for the task). But I haven't had a chance to do that yet.

Is that report working for you? Others have said it crashes their system. I've tested it on 3 different machines and it works fine. Even with the Daylite sample database.

Yes, the report works for me.

Frankly, I wish I knew how to develop some of these things myself. We're lucky there are a few people like you on these boards that really know what you're doing, and are willing to share.

Cheers

marc

I added a report that works with my SubTask Timer. You can download it from my iDisk:

Act. Projects and Tasks by Org.dlreport.zip

Brendan,

Thanks for all the hard work. Is there anything that I need to do to use the report? I can't seem to get it working.

Nope. It should just work. What troubles are you having Rick?

There are some issues I've found.

When the subtask timer is launched and used to record a number of periods of work and then the stop button is pressed it creates subtasks for each period - this is great.

However. If you then go but to the parent task and launch the subtask timer again - recording some more periods before clicking stop again - the 'parent project' has a time allowcated to it. Which obviously isn't correct.

I think It takes the start time of the first 'subtask period' and the end time of the last task - without the breaks. Which amounts to a big block of time in reports!

Opps. It breaks in version 3.5 update!

I have uploaded a new version to my iDisk. The file is called SubTaskTimer-3.5.bundle.zip

Thank You!

Hi Brendan,

Before I install the updated version of Daylight do you know if it works ok with your SubTask Timer?

There's two versions of the SubTaskTimer. The older one does not work with Daylite 3.6. The newer one does. At least we have been using it for a long time now on even the 3.6 betas and we've found no problems with it.

Thanks Brendan!

Brendan, I have downloaded your subtask timer and would like to use it but don't have the right software to unzip it or unbundle it. I have Stuffit 12 but it can't do the job. What do I need to do to unzip the timer?

Thanks in advance,

Erin