Additions for the daily summary page

[kiausch]

I'd like to make a few more changes to the daily summary page which I would like to discuss first:

1. Disable the fireworks and unicorn animations and rephrase some of the texts.
   In my opinion the casual tone and the playful animations do not fit well to the otherwise very professional impression of the application. I would like to add a configuration option which turns off the animations and replaces some of the casual headlines and button texts like "Aye aye! Shutdown!" with a more objective phrasing.
   This is just my personal opinion and I do not mean to offend anyone who designed this or prefers to keep it this way. I think it would be a good compromise to implement this as a configuration option.
   (I know that there is already a configuration option to "disable all animations" which also disables the fireworks, but I would like to have the possibility to keep discrete ui animations while being able to turn off the celebration mode)

2. I usually do not use the stopwatch feature to track the time spent on tasks. Instead I prefer to recap and manually divide the work hours to the finished tasks at the end of the work day. My workflow usually is something like:

   • Fill the work hours and break times, e.g. "worked from 8:30 to 17:00, 1 breaks / 30m => worked 8h today"
   • "Spent roughly 50% of my day on Project A, 2h on Task B, 15m on Task C => Change the spent time on these tasks in the summary"
   • This leaves ~1h 45m which I have not explicitly booked on any task.

   Most of this already works pretty good with the current state. I would like to propose a few changes to make dealing with the 'dangling' work time more convenient:

   1. Make the net work time more visible, i.e. calculate and show work start to work end minus breaks
   2. Calculate and show the work hours which have not (yet) been allocated to any task
   3. Add the possibility to quickly add new tasks and immediately add spent time on them. Like the "Add new Task" line in the break dialog.
   4. Add some way to account for unassociated time when the "finish day" button is pressed. I could imagine having a catch-all task (configurable, something like "other", "administration time" or "set-up time") which automatically receives the unaccounted hours. Alternatively have a special section in the daily/weekly summary where the unassociated time is accumulated.
   5. At the moment the daily-summary only shows projects which have tasks which have been marked as done or already have tracked time for today. It would be nice to be able to reveal other projects as well, maybe have them folded by default, or add a "show more projects" button.

   I think this would add more flexibility for different time tracking use cases while not distracting the "stopwatch workflow". What do you think?

[johannesjo]

Thank you ver ymuch for your input!

I agree on the phrasing. It should be more professional (apart from "Take a moment to celebrate" which I think is important)!

Personally, I love the fireworks though I agree that it gives a less professional feeling. Making it optional is a good solution.

• Make the net work time more visible, i.e. calculate and show work start to work end minus breaks
• Calculate and show the work hours which have not (yet) been allocated to any task

For my use case (using the stopwatch) this is always "Time Spent". I think it might be confusing to have a different net work time. Maybe we show this only in case the values don't add up (this might be a more complicated subject)? I definitely would like to support your use case better, but ideally it should not lead to confusion for users using the app in the "intended" way. This might require us flesh out both use cases conceptually in a cleaner way than it is currently done (tbh. I'm a bit fuzzy on this, especially the break counting is a complicated subject, which might not be possible to be done well given the technical limitations).

• Add the possibility to quickly add new tasks and immediately add spent time on them. Like the "Add new Task" line in the break dialog.

You mean inside the tables? Should be very subtle imho, as there are already so many controls. Using Shift+A and short syntax does not work well for you?

• Add some way to account for unassociated time when the "finish day" button is pressed. I could imagine having a catch-all task (configurable, something like "other", "administration time" or "set-up time") which automatically receives the unaccounted hours. Alternatively have a special section in the daily/weekly summary where the unassociated time is accumulated.

How would you define "unassociated time"? How is it calculated?

• At the moment the daily-summary only shows projects which have tasks which have been marked as done or already have tracked time for today. It would be nice to be able to reveal other projects as well, maybe have them folded by default, or add a "show more projects" button.

Not categorically against this, but I feel it might be overwhelming. There is already a lot going on on the daily summary.

[kiausch]

Thanks for your reply!

For my use case (using the stopwatch) this is always "Time Spent". I think it might be confusing to have a different net work time. Maybe we show this only in case the values don't add up (this might be a more complicated subject)? I definitely would like to support your use case better, but ideally it should not lead to confusion for users using the app in the "intended" way. This might require us flesh out both use cases conceptually in a cleaner way than it is currently done (tbh. I'm a bit fuzzy on this, especially the break counting is a complicated subject, which might not be possible to be done well given the technical limitations).

I think the "Start - End" Summary point is kind of confusing. If you track one task using the stopwatch from 9:00-9:30 and then start another one at 12:00 to 12:30, the summary point will show 9:00 - 12:30.
So this can be interpreted as "I worked for one hour between 9 and 12:30" in the stop watch use case.
But it can also be interpreted as "I worked from 9 to 12:30 (=3.5h), one hour has already been billed to two specific tasks, the other 2.5 are unspecified so far". These 2.5 hours are the ones which I referred to as "unassociated time". I would love to have some kind of mechanism which helps me to manually assign these to one or more tasks, as break time, or classify them as "setup/administation/unbillable time" before finishing the day.

So I think the question is how to handle time between Start and End which has not been explicitly tracked.

Maybe there could be something like a "Work hours" option which selects between "Spent time" and "Work day"?

• Add the possibility to quickly add new tasks and immediately add spent time on them. Like the "Add new Task" line in the break dialog.

You mean inside the tables? Should be very subtle imho, as there are already so many controls. Using Shift+A and short syntax does not work well for you?

When reviewing my day, I often realize that I have been working on some un-scheduled Task, and would like to add it to have it in my work log. So I go back to Inbox, add a new task, set the spent time, mark it as finished and return to finish day, which feels tedious.
I was thinking something like a row with an empty/placeholder input field. I did not think about using Shift+A from the summary view as this is not very obvious that it is possible. I would at least add something like a discrete "+" Button beneath the tables.

[johannesjo]

I think the "Start - End" Summary point is kind of confusing. If you track one task using the stopwatch from 9:00-9:30 and then start another one at 12:00 to 12:30, the summary point will show 9:00 - 12:30.
So this can be interpreted as "I worked for one hour between 9 and 12:30" in the stop watch use case.
But it can also be interpreted as "I worked from 9 to 12:30 (=3.5h), one hour has already been billed to two specific tasks, the other 2.5 are unspecified so far". These 2.5 hours are the ones which I referred to as "unassociated time". I would love to have some kind of mechanism which helps me to manually assign these to one or more tasks, as break time, or classify them as "setup/administation/unbillable time" before finishing the day.

But shouldn't it be obvious to the user to interpret this, since he should know if he really worked the whole time or not? When I go to the office from 9-5 there is also no indication on how long my lunch break was.

So I think the question is how to handle time between Start and End which has not been explicitly tracked.

Maybe there could be something like a "Work hours" option which selects between "Spent time" and "Work day"?

Yes maybe this could be an approach. It could be like a full retro-perspective mode where you get asked questions about your day (start, end, which tasks etc.). We could also add a button that reads "Refine time tracking" or something like this.

[kiausch]

Yes maybe this could be an approach. It could be like a full retro-perspective mode where you get asked questions about your day (start, end, which tasks etc.). We could also add a button that reads "Refine time tracking" or something like this.

I like that thought. Maybe treat the whole page as read only summary, but can switch to interactive mode via the "Refine" button.
I will try to play around with that a bit and make a suggestion...

(Note: edited my previous reply because I accidently marked some of it as quote)