Time tracking software

[scitobor 617]

My team has had a rule that all members must spend a certain number of hours at team meetings in order to be able to get out of school to go to the compition. Our system for keep track of the time students spent working on the robot was a notebook with a page for each student where the wrote the time they arrive and depart. At the end of the build season the hours would calculated and those with the required hours, about 40-60 hours, could get the days out of school with a little support from teachers to turn in class work a late. Being my teams programmer I'm always looking for things to automate and at the beginning of the year this time keeping process was one of my projects. I'm finally getting around to working on this project again and I was wondering how many other teams have similar rules, and if there are what features would you like to see in time keeping software? Would you also like project management tools for keeping track of work that needs to be done? I'm kinda new to the world of GUI design so any ideas or input in that area would also be helpful.

Oringinal time system which was never finished
Screenshots and mockups of the new system

[sanddrag]

My philosophy is that if I take the time to track my time, then I wouldn't have any time left to take. To me ther's no point in tracking my time. I know how hard I work and others should see it too; if they can't that is their problem.

You can come to robotics and sit and play computer games for 60 hours or you can come and spend 40 hours building a frame and gearbox. To me, time logging is worthless.

And now comes the slamming since I am not sychronous with the intended discussion for this thread.

[scitobor 617]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

And now comes the slamming since I am not sychronous with the intended discussion for this thread.

Lol, no I won't slam you since I agree with what you said and do not believe the rule is very effective or fair. However, I was simply looking for tasks that my team must do which are better to have automated. Plus it gives me a chance to get out of the command line atleast for a little while and do some GUI coding.

[jdiwnab]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

You can come to robotics and sit and play computer games for 60 hours or you can come and spend 40 hours building a frame and gearbox. To me, time logging is worthless.

We agree. We have a problem with people playing games and looking up shoes on the Internet (why?). Because our mentors want a large team, it is almost unmanageable. Many people want to go to robotics as a social event and to say they were doing robotics. We try to subtract hours from unproductive people, but that is hard too. We have the time log so there would be a quantitative way to see if people should be allowed to miss school for the competitions. People want to be able to go to the competitions, but they also want fair treatment. They think if they go to the meetings, they should be able to go to the competitions. If we were to do it qualitatively (how much did you contribute instead of how long you "worked") then people would complain that they contributed, but no one noticed or that the powers that be just over looked their contributions. While I think that everyone should have a chance, I think that if their contributions weren't large enough to be noticed, then they didn't contribute enough to go. But not everyone agrees.

The time stamp system flawed to a great extent, but a better time stamp is a good idea for the flawed system. The advantage to such a system is that it can be expanded to include more than clocking in. It could be possible to have chats when we can't meet in person, to post minutes of meeting, and distribute information. Sounds like a job for a website more than an application, but applications have their advantages, too.

[Gdeaver]

Our team keeps an attendance log for the above reasons and for liability. We have to know if a student was in our charge. Each year we assign one student the job. Some have kept manual attendance sheets others have used excel. If you don't know excel this would be a good learning experience. Other uses for a spread sheet- Track all parts on the robot, their source and cost referenced by an invoice and their weight. You could also set up a little accounting system to track all expenditures and income. This is invaluable for the next year for planning. If you look at the office web site there are many templates that may fit your needs and get you started.

[Greg Marra]

We whip up a little Excel spreadsheet with each student's name and an "hours" box, and have people fill it in when they leave. We just print off a new one each meeting and file them all somewhere.

[Alex Pelan]

There is some pretty decent time-tracking software posted in the white papers section, Orologio . Like Greg said, 177 just sticks to good old fashioned paper and pencil for recording hours, then we enter them in a spreadsheet. There are online services for tracking time too. One such service is Clockwork Time Management. Although it's meant to track time spent on various tasks, it is easy to see how it could be reconfigured to track how much time is spent by people at robotics.

[sciguy125]

We started keeping a log of who shows up in a notebook. We just start a new page every meeting. Nobody really told me why though. I just sign in.

As for your software, for simplicity, I would just go for a web based thing. It's easy to deploy and I think it would be easier to develop. Of course, depending on how much control you have over your server, you might not be able to keep people from cheating by signing in at home.

If you really want an application, I recently started using Qt (http://www.trolltech.com). I use linux, so my only choices were Qt and GTK+. Both are cross platform (but I think GTK+ doesn't work on Mac). The reason I chose Qt was that it has a nice utility for making GUIs. Making the interface is essentially drag and drop. Make a window, then drag buttons into it. Then you just connect each button to a function. It's only for C++ though. GTK+ has bindings for other languages. I think VB has a utility similar to the Qt one. But Qt is free and VB is Microsoft...

Your other option is to learn the Windows API in the language of your choice. Just remember that GUI programming from scratch is messy. There's lots of strange classes and function calls floating around. I've learned enough about Qt that I could probably write something from scratch, but it's too big and messy for my tastes.

[scitobor 617]

Originally Posted by sciguy125

If you really want an application, I recently started using Qt .

As a matter of fact I am writting it in Qt. The reason why I am not just finishing my php system is because I am a senior and would rather leave the team software that does not require knowlodge of the Linux command line and MySQL to edit and reconfigure. The only server that we can run it from would be mine and it is likely to be in a college dorm somewhere this time next year.
Also, I chose to use Qt because I am a linux user and my school is one of the now infamous Henrico County schools that sold all of those iBooks about a week ago :: flashback to so called "riot" ::. This year all students will have Dell laptops running XP so I can easily develop complex Qt programs that will not only be easily ported to windows but also to OS X if the need ever arises. My team also seems to misplace meeting minutes or just not take them so I thought that features like being able to take notes from a student laptop and having them automaticly sync to the "server"(which will just be a desktop pc in our classroom) would make us more organized.

We did use Excel one year but once the build season starts it is hard to stop people from solving robotics problems to go and maintain a spreedsheet. Another reason for this software is that I love to reinvent the wheel espically if there is room for innovation.

[Cyberguy34000]

One of our mentors wrote a simple time tracking (sign-in/signout) system that worked incredibly well. Although one of the main features was being able to calculate how much time someone spent at the build site, it was mainly used to keep track of where people were. We had it running on a really old computer near the door and anytime anyone left the buildsite, they would input their ID number along with where they were going and how long they'd be out. It was very useful in case we needed to find someone quickly. It had a nice simple interface, and it generated a log file that one of the mentors offloaded every night.

The program was very successful and useful.

If you are interested in the program, PM me and I'll ask our mentor if he'd be willing to share it.

-Chris

[mechanicalbrain]

I don't know about software... *thinks about a 555 then shakes head* But i know our team tried to keep track of time people were present last year and it never got enforced. This year however... well to put it simply they are a little more strict on our team. Its part of a series of changes that are going to be interesting and hopefully make us more business oriented.

[jdiwnab]

Originally Posted by sciguy125

I use linux, so my only choices were Qt and GTK+.

REALBasic has a Linux beta that is free. The versions for Windows and Mac cost, but any linux person can get it. They have extencive graphical support and language reference.

[fowlerm]

Originally Posted by jdiwnab

REALBasic has a Linux beta that is free. The versions for Windows and Mac cost, but any linux person can get it. They have extencive graphical support and language reference.

There's also the .NET/Mono Framework that works on all three platforms.

[sciguy125]

Originally Posted by jdiwnab

REALBasic has a Linux beta that is free. The versions for Windows and Mac cost, but any linux person can get it.

While I haven't heard of that one specifically, I do know that there are alternatives to Qt and GTK+. But, I like to follow standards as much as possible (as is the anti-Microsoft way). The two major Linux desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, use Qt and GTK+, respectively.

[KathieK]

When I was on RAGE they kept track on a sign-in sheet. It allowed us to see how many hours we had put into the program (something sponsors like to know) as well as being able to see when students had left the building in case a parent called looking for them.

Following the change in the FairPay Act last year our IT jobs were reclassified from salaried to hourly and now we use a simple electronic time card system available here that allows you to punch in and out, compile reports and log time to different projects. It's very inexpensive and might be a good solution for you.