CreativePro Office Job Timer

Jeff Denton

May 24, 2007 by Jeff

9 comments
Development Progress, Features

So, the job timer went live on Tuesday night - late Tuesday night - but a full three days ahead of my anticipated delivery date. I'm hoping it's functionality is fairly straightforward so I won't bore you with a lot of details here. There are controls for timer Start, Stop and Reset. You can select a project and a task, add comments and log the hours to your timesheet once the timer is stopped.

Job timer started.

Starting the job timer

Job timer stopped.

Stopping the job timer

Known Issues

There are a couple of bugs worth noting from the outset. If you stop th timer, the elapsed time will show in the Hours text field. However, if you then navigate to another page or reload the page you're on, the elapsed time will vanish. You can quickly start and stop the timer to bring the elapsed time back but your hours really just need to stay there until you reset the timer. The same thing happens with your selected project/task. Those selections are lost if the page is reloaded.

These are relatively quick fixes but I just don't think I'm going to have time to address them before leaving on vacation for the weekend.

UPDATE: These known issues have been addressed. 

Future Enhancements

1. Integration with the dashboard as a widget - this will also provide integration of the job timer with the Netvibes and Google modules.

2. Port the timer as desktop widgets for Mac and PC and as a Vista sidebar gadget. The gadget will log your time online or offline and synch with your timesheet when an internet connection becomes available.

3. Allow multiple jobs to be timed at once. A couple of users have requested this feature but I'm having trouble figuring out how useful this could be. I mean, I can multi-task with the best of 'em but I can't fully do 3 tasks at a time and feel good about billing the entire time for all three. Anyone seeing something I'm missing here? Please let me know.

I'm also fielding input concerning widget technology. I have to admit that the Yahoo! Widgets platform sounds tempting because it's (in theory) completely cross-platform. The idea of building one widget and deploying on Mac, PC and Vista sounds too good. My concern is the adoption rate of this platform. I don't want to force anyone into downloading Yahoo's widget platform just for a job timer. Any thoughts here?

Another idea I had was building something with Adobe's Apollo platform - but again, there's that whole adoption thing to contend with. So, I'm open to ideas - I'm giving myself one week to field comments and do some research before I decide on a technology so let your voice be heard.

Thanks for reading.

Jeff

 

Discussion: 9 comments

Rob

Rob

May 25, 2007
I've been an occasional user of SlimTimer, but the CPO Job Timer is already far more useful to me.

I'm looking forward to integration of the Job Timer with the dashboard. I can see myself having two copies of the module on my Netvibes page - one for displaying my tasks and the other for the Job Timer.

On the other future enhancements, I'm fairly indifferent about the widget idea, although I can see its possible benefits for some users. The multi-task timing doesn't interest me at all, I'm afraid.
jive

jive

May 25, 2007
Wow. Timer is great. Love the way it is integrated into the projects.
.brit

.brit

May 25, 2007
Great work, Jeff. It is much appreciated!
Jeff

Jeff

Jul 2, 2007
Hey guys...thanks for the nice remarks - it's appreciated!
Mario

Mario

Apr 3, 2008
Multiproject job timer? For me much better would be sth like chess clock. I can imagine setting white to "my important project" that is interupted by black "urgent tasks" (boss coming by?) and "interruptions & small tasks" like calls, coffee, news browsing etc.
Then it would be easier to find out who is going to pay for my time.
Jeff

Jeff

Apr 26, 2008
Interesting idea Mario. Thanks.
Chad

Chad

Apr 28, 2008
Multiple project time tracking a valid need. We stop and start projects all the time. When using Harvest, our one web developer has has 6 projects in one day going. Not ideal, but reality. Check out HARVEST to see how it works. You obviously can only track one project at one time - the others are in a holding pattern until they are activated. Stop one project start another, etc...
Chad

Chad

Apr 28, 2008
Rates - is there a section to load rates? Tracking hours is one thing - but tracking billable and non-billable would be great. Also we work with multiple rates sometimes - so one hour for non-profit is less than others.
sydney

sydney

Feb 23, 2009
Yeah, it is obviously a true Article and we are getting lots of knowledge by this website. If i talk about the creative pro office job timer so it is very helpful for us. Mostly we use it for making projects and I can imagine setting white to "my important project" that is interrupted by black "urgent tasks" (boss coming by?) and "interruptions & small tasks" like calls, coffee, news browsing etc. Then it would be easier to find out who is going to pay for my time. Great Post i look forward to reading more.
Sydney
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