Time Tracking software recommendation
 

Hi,

I'm sorry for offtopic, but I do not found any place to ask my question.

Is there any recommendation on good time tracking software for developers (MSVC+MSDN+other soft)? I want to track a time I spend on each project, but I am unable to find anything that can track my time without pressing start and end buttons every time I want to do a job.

Please help. Thanks.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

>>I want to track a time I spend on each project
Use your watch and enter the times in an Excell spreadsheet. Or maybe something like this, which you have probably already seen.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

gosh. You want software that reads your mind and can tell what exactly you're working on at each moment?

I'm sorry, but there are telepathic computers yet.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

No, I want software that track a time I'm working in MSVC, MSDN and so on. It's possible to get the project name form MSVC title bar and save the time of activity to a log. I can write the software for myself, but I'm sure that it's already exists somewhere.

PS. Sorry my french :)

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

There is one but its web-based (runs off a php/mysql server) . Dont know its name but its commonly used by opensource developers.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

You might browse this list to see if there is anything useful to you or give you ideas of how to write your on VC++ add-on macro

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

Web-based tracker is not a solution, because it will not detect what I am working on. It just replaces excel spreadsheet.

Thanks for suggestions.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

you'll find out that getting the project name from visual studio isn't fine grained enough.
A particular project can have many different trackable issues associated with it.
And each issue could well have multiple activities which may or may not involve visual studio and may or may not have to be logged independently as sub activities.

IOW, there's no one size fits all solution, and there's no magic mindreading software that knows what you're doing when even if it could read out visual studio (and if it did, it wouldn't know if it were the actual window you're currently working with. I use multiple computers simulataneously at work, often as many as 3 workstations and terminals open to 5+ servers. Throw in some VPN connections to remote machines and there's nothing to be gleaned from anything anymore for your super snooping automatic time tracker.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

jwenting, your work is hard to track, but mine is not. I'm a freelancer and I just working on my PC on two projects and it's easy to detect automatically what I'm doing now for sure.

Re: Time Tracking software recommendation
 

it's not. If it's so easy you don't need some mindreading software to do it for you, you can remember it yourself.
What if you're on the phone to a customer, doing some research, etc. etc.?
No software is going to know what project that's for...

What if you're eating lunch around the corner but leave your PC turned on with that source code loaded? Are you going to charge your customer for that?
Or you forget to close your tracker overnight and it happily records 8 hours of dreamtime as hard labour.

If it's so easy to make according to you, there's nothing stopping you from making it yourself, is there?
And if there is a demand for it (which according to you there implicitly is) it's sure to make you some money too.