WorkSpy

Author: Patrick Dantressangle.
Email: timetracker@dantressangle.com
 

Download Version 2.30 updated May 2011 Create a directory where you want to store your project files and reports. Unzip Workspy229.zip in that directory and you're ready to go Create a shortcut for WorkSpy.exe wherever is convenient for you (for example:your Desktop, Start menu, Startup folder, ...). Double-click the shortcut to start workspy.exe. Configure it by cliking on the F(ont) and P(arameters) buttons.(I usually choose small fonts like MSSansSerif regular 8) Resize WorkSpy to the smallest size possible. (I usually put mine in the lower right corner of my screen)     You could also download some extra tooling developped by Gary Faircloth, a core workspy user . ;-) You can download his WebConso code here: http://arkadianriver.com/pub/WebConso/ Take a look at Gary webConso screenshots here: WebConso screen shots	WorkSpy Wconso
Some history: I developed the first version of this tool in 1992-1993. I used to automatically generate end-of-the-month reports for the company I was working for as a consultant. They had to bill the customer for the number of hours I spent working on the projects. The customer and my company wanted detailed and consolidated report (per project, per week), and I didn't like that much tracking everything on paper. Way too slow, cumbersome and I would always forget something anyway. So I designed a tool that would small enough to fit on 1993 memory size laptop, CPU friendly and a nice simple GUI to be as efficient as possible. The first tool was created using ObjectView, but I later ported it to Delphi for a smaller footprint. The orignal tool could also conenct to a RDBMS, load the tasks in SQL tables and then consolidate everything using the power of full SQL statements. Consolidating all the workspy data for many people working on many projects was just a breaze then. I'm still struggling to find time to port the Workspy SQL features to this Delphi version.
How to use the timetracker ( WorkSpy.exe): It's simple and very basic. WorkSpy is tracking the time spent in each task in each project, by allowing you to click on the task your are working on. That's it! WorkSpy will cumulate the time in the selected task and save it for you regularly in a file. You can later 'consolidate' your task files for report generation. The format of each task in the task file is -. The '-' sign is the delimiter between the project and the task in the project. Switch to any task by just clicking on it. The time is tracked to the nearest 10 seconds, by default but you can change that. You can configure the tool by going into the file->preference menu. You can also force it to stay on top by selecting the Top checkbox. WorkSpy stores the data for each day into a text fil having a name looking like WSYYMMDD.TXT where YYMMDD is the date. The file is saved in the same directory where WorkSpy is installed. Because the data is stored as simple text files, it is very easy to come up with templates to use in a team environment. All tasks can be modified except for the PAUSE task. WorkSpy will not let you load a file that does not contain the PAUSE task. To evaluate your time spent on projects over many days, you can call the consolidation tool to create a summary report for the month. Access the consolidation tool by going into the task->consolidate menu
How to use the consolidation tool (WConso.exe) Wconso.exe is the consolidation program that will generate the pie chart per project, the statistics per project, and the HTML/spreadsheet files for you to use with EXCEL or LOTUS 123. An option for SQL scripts generation is not included yet in the tool but should come soon. If you want to edit & modify the tasks files, double-click on the particular file in the list on the left side of the consolidation tool. This is useful usually when you're away on business trips, or simply forgot to click on the tas and want to manually edit the task file for modifications.

 
 

History of fixes.
Version 2.30 May 2011	Added or Fixed in Workspy program Added a preference option to disable automatic checking of new version from the web Fixed the previous bug introduced during fixing the change-of-year issue where Workspy was not picking up the last file from the previous year to prime the new tasks
Version 2.29 January 2011	Added or Fixed in Workspy program Fixed the change-of-year issue where Workspy was not picking up the last file from the previous year to prime the new tasks
Version 2.28 June 2010	Added or Fixed in Workspy program Added the possibility to modify a task in previous files in modify_task dialog/submenu via a check box. Fixed "on-top feature" not set when reloading workspy Fixed OK button in About dialog.
Version 2.27	Fixed in Consolidation program Added an extra ?Sort by percentage descending" check box in preferences so that tasks are sorted on their decreasing relative percentage, and not alphabetically. When the checkbox is unchecked, the default is to sort the tasks alphabetically. Added extra options in Consolidation menu (with keyboard shortcuts) to consolidate "up to now" ATL+U, "for the current month" ALT+M and "for current week" ALT+W. This speeds up consolidation for most used intervals.
Version 2.26	Fixed in Consolidation program Added an extra ?Current Month? button for faster monthly reports. Improved the version checking feature to not block Consolidation during lookup on the web.(use multithread now). Added an extra preference to change the default Tab displayed after Consolidation is done. (default is on second tab : Tasks Chart).
Version 2.25	Fixed in Consolidation program Added in preferences dialog a checkbox to remove PAUSE from totals and reports.
Version 2.24	Fixed in Consolidation program Added a Consolidation button. No need to go to menu anymore Added a Current week button to facilitate quick consolidation Added a possibility to directly open the Workspy project WEB page on the external web site if an update of Workspy is available Fixed in Workspy program Added a possibility to directly open the Workspy project WEB page on the external web site if an update of Workspy is available
Version 2.23	fixed in Consolidation program added saving of last directory  visited for task files in Wconso.ini . added a refresh list Task main menu and list popup-menu instead of a big button in the middle of the window. updated shortcuts in task list popup menu improved formatting of  task tab lists and project tab lists added Totals sums in task tab added a button to consolidate all days up until now Fixed clipping of top labels in task pie chart fixed in Workspy program Spaces in the install directory doesn't cause any problems for editing task notes. new option in preferences to automatically append a line delimiter and current date/time to separate task notes.There is no need to generate a specific batch file or download the NOW utility anymore unless you want to append specific information every time you add a new task note. Allow editing of the path of the task note editor in the preferences. Was too strict before. Spaces in the project/task name
Version 2.22	Can now check if new updates of workspy are available.Get option in the Help menu like this: Fixed a formatting bug in spreadsheet reports. Added a few more SQL functions into the DB2 script.
Version 2.21	Can right click on time/date in the header to right,left or center justify the time/date like this: Fixed a few minor bugs as well Provide a DB2 script to load the database into a DB2 database.