Re: Alternatives to clocking in/out for reporting time

[Samuel Wales]

i said clocked notation, but i meant closed notation.  clocked
notation, i am not sure of.

On 6/29/22, Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> wrote:
> a few things taht are probably all completely obvious or investigated
> or irrelevant just in case.  just brainstorm.
>
> do you have everything relevant in the same subtrees?  i.e. not
> wanting granular, can you search upward for a dominating entry kind of
> like git searching upward for the .git dir or so?  property drawer
> could control what's a dominating entry.  you probably thoguht of this
> or of having whatever categories as tags or categories in entries
> though. in any case that would clock.  you could even have clocking
> clock into that no matter wher eyou are via some timer in principle.
> just a brainstorm.  you said dynamic som perhaps there is no
> dominating entry for each category though.
>
> org-time-stamp-rounding-minutes and org-clock-rounding-minutes .  i
> presume you don't find them relevant.
>
> reminder: inactive ts in the clocked notation is usualy treated
> separately by org [i.e. not hte same type of ts] from bare ia.
>
> perhaps some kind of text property in the following could categorize
> entries and then org can sum them perhaps via some hook you'd
> populate.  it might be possible in principle to re-create most of the
> old agenda L timeline view, but with multiple files instead of a
> single file and with a search filter, by using the search agenda view,
> as there is some intermediate function, perhaps
> org-agenda-before-sorting-filter-function.  idk if you neeed multiple
> bare ia tses [or of various types of tses perhaps if you do decide you
> need more than bare ia] per entry but doing so is probalby possible
> merely by having that function add the duplicates.  the ts would be
> put in the prefix format.  you'd have to have custom sorting by
> whichever ts you are recording [in the total list] for each entry; idk
> if that is straightforward.
>
> above probably useless but just in case somethinghtere is relevant.
>
>  6/29/22, Russell Adams <RLAdams@adamsinfoserv.com> wrote:
>> I make extensive use of timestamps for billing (timesheet)
>> purposes. I'm looking to automate this more, and I find the existing
>> clocking system inadequate. I'm hoping someone can point me in the
>> right direction.
>>
>> Today I have log mode enabled so that each time I close a TODO item,
>> it records the date and time it was closed. At regular intervals while
>> working I add inactive timestamps to my notes. I've mapped that to a
>> single key, so it's quite fast. If I switch tasks, have an update,
>> made progress I want to note to myself, or leave and return I add an
>> inactive timestamp. I have well over 1000 inactive timestamps in my
>> current file.
>>
>> Later I can open my agenda view on the working file, choose my
>> timespan (week or month), enable log mode to show when items were
>> closed, and then enable inactive timestamps to view all of the
>> timestamps. This itemizes all the events organized by time into a
>> timeline.
>>
>> It's fairly straightforward from that timeline to count my hours based
>> on the record of where I spent my time. It is unfortunately a very
>> manual process.
>>
>> I find Org's clocking to be too detailed, and that it doesn't play
>> well with dynamically organized hierarchies of notes. I frequently
>> create and close subtasks, or switch parts of the tree. Clocking each
>> one is too much overhead, and too granular. I don't need to provide
>> down to the minute reports of each item. It also doesn't appear to
>> allow rounding of values, so I still have to adjust the results.
>>
>> What I envision is a way to count items in the agenda view to produce
>> a time report. Counting any inactive timestamp as 15 minutes, where if
>> a half hour or more is logged I round up to bill the hour. Closed TODO
>> items should count toward billing that whole hour. Clearly this should
>> be customized.
>>
>> The point is that I'm not worried about accounting time by task,
>> instead I'm aggregating tasks into accounting by whole hours.
>>
>> I'm looking at org-element, and it appears I'd have to do my own
>> agenda style scan of the whole tree to find items to classify by
>> hour. While I'm somewhat proficient at elisp, that sounds like a steep
>> wall to climb.
>>
>> Is there an iterative way to review items in an agenda view so I can
>> do the math to produce a report?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Russell Adams                            RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.com
>>                                     https://www.adamsinfoserv.com/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> The Kafka Pandemic
>
> A blog about science, health, human rights, and misopathy:
> https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com
>


-- 
The Kafka Pandemic

A blog about science, health, human rights, and misopathy:
https://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com