daily effort details view with navigation and gap/overlap display
Hi there
First of all, thanks for this great tool - just what i needed now that i have to keep detailed track of my efforts.
However, here's a suggestion for a usability improvement.
I don't know if it's just me, but i'm working day-effort focused, and i have to account for complete days.
A day view that provides the following would really be a huge productivity boost for me (and probably for others ?):
- based on the detailed effort view (actually a modification of it)
- this should only show the effort list for a chosen day
- it should have a date navigation control
- it should show gaps and overlaps, where
- a gap is when preceding entries end-time and current entries start-time are not adjacent
- an overlap is when current entries start-time is before preceding entries end-time
- gaps should be "empty" entries (showing only the start+end times in a special color, e.g. blue)
- overlaps should be marked (with the current entry colored, e.g. in red) Ideally,
- a new effort could be entered by double-clicking the "empty" effort with:
- start and end-time pre-populated from the "empty" effort
- task prepopulated from the task chosen in the task view
*) see P.S. below
This would be something that would really boost productivity for me.
It would practically enhance Task Coach to be a timesheet app.
Other minor suggestions for usability:
"Export with cleanup"
- export the tasks with efforts until a certain date into a Task Coach file (used as archive) and removing the exported efforts from the current one
The Export/Import features seem a bit broken.
And i have more ideas minor usability improvements around entering entries, navigating, keayboard accelerators and the like, and if you're interested.
Don't get me wrong - it's a great app already (many thanks again), but it could be the great app.
Thanks a lot,
cheers,
Claudius
P.S.:
To give you an idea of what i mean, i could send you a small java app that i use for checking daily effort entries.
It's too bad i can't attach it here, or provide screenshots of it.
This is just for my personal use, it doesn't help with entering anything, but it demonstrates the concept of the "daily effort" display
Requires Java 6.
It's nothing sophisticated - no advanced error handling or the like, as this is just a workaround tool for me.
And i hope it runs everywhere - i'm not a programmer ;-)
I'm sorry to not be able to provide this in Python, but i'm not proficient in it.
-
Bruce Keplinger commented
I fully agree with this user (including the part about this being a great app!). I accomplish what he suggests with exporting the CSV and opening it as spreadsheet (short explanation), then using conditional formatting to see the gaps and overlaps. To see this in the Effort details window would be great! I particularly like the '"empty" effort' comments above.
A related item: Once gaps and overlaps are rectified, a graphical way of moving the "joints" between efforts as a way of adjusting times for adjacent efforts would be very cool and super-useful.
-
AdminAaron Wolf (Admin, Task Coach) commented
Claudius, these are some useful ideas.
You could join the general users group at Yahoo to discuss further:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/taskcoach/or the developers group:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/taskcoach-dev/We'd be happy to hear your thoughts, and UserVoice isn't great for open-ended discussion
If anything is broken, please post a bug at sourceforge:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=130831&atid=719134Some other thoughts:
The way to export tasks to another .tsk file isn't the export options, it's under File > Save Selection… (although we may change that soon, it isn't clear)