[dev] Time/billing system
Mike Coughlan
mcoughlan@gothambroadband.com
Wed, 7 Nov 2001 10:50:05 -0500
Thanks for the link. Here is my humble opinion:
Regarding Timesheet functionality:
I believe strongly, that a timesheet tool should focus on the core
functionality of timesheet entry and time reporting. Timesheets are used
mostly by bean counters, and it is a wonderful thing for a bean-counter to
be able to slice up time entry data every which way. Timesheet reports help
decide where to give pay increases, allocate $ by department, allocate $ for
new buz development, and cut costs. I highly recommend that the HORDE dev
team consider that person his or her most important customer when authoring
a new HORDE timesheet module, not the helpdesk team, or bug tracking team.
The easiest way to do this is to make time entry easy, and to make the data
conveniently available in many difference cross sections. It may be enough
to export data to a .cvs file. It would be best if there were robust
reporting features built in as well.
Regarding the interface:
We use journyX (it runs on python and is not free), and I really like the
spreadsheet interface.
In addition, the columns, [Project], [Department], [Project Phase], [Bill
Status], & [Comments] are all abstracted and re-nameable. As the
administrator, I could rename "Department" to "Group", and could also add or
remove departments from the drop down list.
As a user, I am also able to "Memorize" common entries so that they show up
each week, ready for my time entry.
In short, the calendar like spreadsheet interface makes entry easy, and the
customizability allows us to capture all the data we need. If anyone shows
interest, I can attempt to set up a demo in our DMZ.
Most of the complaints come from the clunky and confusing report generator.
Regarding Achievo:
I personally do not like the Achievo time entry screen. The reality is that
most people forget to enter time, and the bean counters are constantly
sending reminders. I often sit on a Friday afternoon and enter my time for
the busy week that past. The spreadsheet interface helps me to do this
tremendously.
Regarding extra functionality:
Although it is important to think ahead, I would be very hesitant to author
a timesheet AND bug tracking tool. Some other programs also try and fold in
expense tracking into the timesheet. Interoperability is good to have, but
perhaps it is enough to understand the data object models and open them up
to future horde components that can share the column names as codes above.
There is enough work to do in creating a friendly interface, and robust
reporting to leave those other tasks to a separate module. I still think
there is a tremendous demand for a robust timesheet entry system, especially
since this is an area where MS Exchange is weak.
Again, the key I believe is to satisfy core functionality first. Achievo
does not fit our bill.
Thanks HORDE for the tremendous PHP infrastructure. Please let me know your
feedback.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Singleton [mailto:scott@beacon-inc.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 6:18 PM
> To: 'dev@lists.horde.org'
> Subject: RE: [dev] Time/billing system
>
>
> What is the concensus then? I took a look at Achievo, and though fairly
> complete although it doesn't support bug tracking and task integration for
> users.
>
>From mike@graftonhall.co.nz Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 05:54:45 +1300
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From: Michael Cochrane <mike@graftonhall.co.nz>
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Subject: 64 Bit long issue.
This is not specifically a horde issue but i have a problem with importing from
the windows address book
Microsoft have kindly stored the dates as a 64 bit long representing the number
of 100ns persiods since Jan 1,1601 (weird huh?)
But php doesn't handle 64 bit longs... and using GMP isn't a option as it is not
available on the win32 platform... does any one have any brilliant, or even not
so brilliant but still usable ideas on how i can work around this.
I can get the value stored as an array of 16 ints but not sure how i go about
dividing.. does anyone have any links to algorithms for doing this that i can
implement effiently in php?
Thanks
Mike
>From jan@horde.org Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 11:01:19 +0100
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Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 11:01:19 +0100
From: Jan Schneider <jan@horde.org>
To: dev@lists.horde.org
References: <87CA342C2861B246B6FBC9B24412C75C617B@bcs-nt40.beacon-inc.com> <1004714411.3be2b9ab186e4@mail.lsit.ucsb.edu> <1004914214.3be5c6263949f@linux.wg.de> <1005129229.3be90e0da72e1@mail.partex.net>
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Subject: Re: [dev] Some functionality and tweaking questions
Zitat von M Z Rahman <zrahman@partex.net>:
> >
> > $identity->getFullname() should do that part.
> >
> > Jan.
>
> If someone doesn't have his/her Identity defined in the options, then? I
> did
> something like this:
>
> if (!empty($imp['maildomain']) {
> echo $imp['user'] . '@' . $imp['maildomain'];
> } else {
> echo $imp['user'];
> }
>
> this makes sure if the user doesn't set the Identities and even if the
> administrator doesn't set the mail domain in the servers.php, this will
> show the
> username only.
I think you should rather fall back to the behavior of the login screen:
ucfirst(Auth::getAuth())
Jan.
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>From jan@horde.org Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 11:41:46 +0100
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From: Jan Schneider <jan@horde.org>
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Subject: RE: [dev] Time/billing system
I agree that the great problem with time tracking software is that users
forget to track there time. We used achievo here in my company but it's
quite dead now because people doesn't use it actually.
This is why I like the way time tracking is handled by PHProjekt
(http://www.phprojekt.com). I had the chance to be at a presentation of the
author on the php concference. They have four buttons to allow users to
handle their time entries: Coming to work, leavin office, coming back to
office and leaving work.
Any time later you can assign your spent time to projects that are managed
by a seperate application module.
We agreed in the Horde team that we have to put more focus on group support
e.g. group calendars. If we can get Horde so far that is becomes the main
tool while in office (as replacement for Outlook/Exchange or similar tools)
the chances are that users actually will use the time tracking feature.
But time tracking doesn't make much sense without project assingment. So a
project manager should also be discussed here and kept in mind to be
implemented as a Horde module.
Jan.
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>From jan@horde.org Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 11:53:20 +0100
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Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 11:53:20 +0100
From: Jan Schneider <jan@horde.org>
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Subject: turba RC and branching
I'm not sure if we had a decision when discussing the release of Turba and
the branching policy in Frankfurt.
Here's my opinion again: We should also push Turba to version 1.0.0RC1
because people probably won't use IMP without Turba and would be irritating
if they can use Horde and IMP tarballs but have to download Turba from cvs.
We also have to be clear about a branching policy. I propose that we really
branch the tree for the release candidates so that we only do bugfixing and
minor improvements in the RC branch and are still able to implement new
stuff in the HEAD branch.
For everybody on the list who is irritated now: We already tagged Horde
2.0RC1 and IMP 3.0RC1 on Tuesday and will release them as soon as the
tarballs are ready!
Jan.
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