I wrote a project timer awhile ago. After I had done that (in Flash 8) I needed a task list that could be split up by client and project, so I combined the old time and a new task list into what I called creatively the Project Tracker. I’ve been using it since Apollo preview release. I just added a new feature for myself that rounds the times to the nearest half-hour or hour if desired (since that’s how my company bills clients), and I thought that I’d share it. It allows you to keep track of time spent on tasks, project, and clients as well as let’s you check off any of them when complete. You can also store notes about each of them.
It doesn’t use any AIR specific features, just SharedObject, but I sure like to have it as a desktop application rather than in the browser. I always close browser versions on accident.
This application is provided as-is with no documentation, support, or guarantee of anything. Hope you find it useful. You can view Project Tracker in your web browser before you download it.
Update: Republished for the AIR 1.0 release and updated badge install.
Update 2: Found and fixed the problem reported in comments. Using a relative path in the badge installer for AIR apps results in some of the errors reported.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
from which beta version is it? i ahve beta 3 installed on a mac and i get an error trying to install it..
January 13th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Hey, wait a sec. I remember this app!
I was actually browsing RSS feeds and saw this title’s summary and I thought someone was ripping off your work. Nice job!
January 13th, 2008 at 3:03 am
am: It’s beta 3. What is the error you are getting?
Cahlan: Yeah, I’ve added a whole feature to it and of course published it for more recent versions of AIR.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hi Jacob …
i got this error and i ‘ve got air beta 3 :
The application could not be installed. Try installing it again. If the problem persists, contact the application author.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
What can I say, it’s beta. Try downloading AIR manually and the Application separately.
Please click on each link in the order above to complete the installation process.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Had the same issue , let me try to install the above
March 4th, 2008 at 12:49 am
This program would be wonderful. someone please get this to work. I get this:
This application requires a version of Adobe AIR which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author for an updated version.
What I’d really love is this or the “smaller” version on my blackberry. I spend alot of time talking and in inpromptu meetings with designers and developers…I’ve been looking for something, a stopwatch with memory…something, anything to log this time better….
March 10th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
UPDATE: This has now been updated for the full AIR 1.0 release. Hopefully any bugs are worked out with the badge install. I tested it and it is working fine. Let me know if there are any issues.
Jac
March 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Where is the data stored? How can I extract a datafile for reporting?
March 15th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
The data is stored in a SharedObject file. It actually isn’t extractable. It would probably be quite useful huh? I’ll have to add an export feature for that in a later build.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:03 am
Nice tool, simple & easy to use… don’t make the common mistake by adding tons of unnecessary features. ;)
However, an export feature could come in handy. And the most important feature of them all, is changing the dock icon (on Win, but especially OSX) to show the status. Play/pause icon, or change the color of the icon, that would be enough to know whether or not it’s tracking time.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
logicalunit, good ideas. I’ll have to make some time to do that! What sort of format would you expect from the export feature? CSV file?
July 17th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Hi Jac,
Nice app. I wonder how did you create the date component?
I like the fact that it allows user to manually key in dates (usefull if the dates are wayyyyy back to the past).
Mind to share some tips :)
Great Work.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:08 am
[...] Click here to get Jacob Wrights Free Project Timer [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Jac,
I love your project tracker. I use it for everything. I am acutally tracking how long it takes to post this comment to your site. One of my favorite features is that the sub-tasks aggregate automatically up to the projects and to the clients. It makes it really easy to see what everything comes to as a whole and send out quick reports.
I love your Project Tracker so much I posted on my blog and hope that many people get to experience the benefits of this tool that you so graciously have given away for free.
http://curtismorley.com/2009/02/12/the-best-free-project-timer/
Thanks,
Curtis J Morley
March 18th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
P.S. 3:21 for the last post.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Jac,
I have started using your Project Tracker to track my time when consulting with various people. Did you ever do an update that allowed for the export of the data collected? A csv file or tab delimited file would be just fine. Thanks for a great tool!
June 12th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Hi there! Great tool!
Is there a way to manually edit the elapsed times? (Or where is the data stored and can it be edited there?)
I forgot to close it down and left my PC running all night – Don’t think the client wants billing for this!
June 12th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Randy: no, I haven’t released any updates. Sorry.
Paul: You can edit the times by clicking on the Edit Item button with the specific task selected. It allows you to see all time-stamps for that item with the most recent at the top. You can edit it there and fix your mistakes.
I sometimes forget to track client time or am on the run doing something for them. So I just choose the task, start then stop the time, and then go in and edit the stamps to the correct time I spent. You can also delete time periods in there.
August 26th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
I have moved to another computer. How can I get the data from Project Tracker on my old computer over to the new one?
August 30th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Hi Jac,
First off, thanks for this project tracker–it’s simple, easy, and does the job. I just started AS3 recently, and I was supposed to come up with my own simple project management software using AS3 until I saw this. Anyway, pardon me for the this noob question, but I was wondering, what are the advantages of using AIR over projector in this project? It seems to me that this project can be achieved by the latter, without the additional step of having to install AIR.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:37 am
Paolo, a projector app would have been sufficient for this, however, most non-flash developers don’t have the desktop version of Flash, just the browser version. The desktop version is installed with Flash CS3/4 and Flex. At least, that’s how it used to be. So either way, they’d have to download something new in addition to the project tracker. I just chose AIR.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:06 am
can you please add the ability to minimize to tray?
September 8th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Thanks for clarifying, Jac. I always thought that creating a projector would create a standalone flash application that would run even without the user having flash. Seems to defeat the purpose of a “standalone” app.
Regardless, I sniffed around for reasons to use AIR, and I think the “true” cross-platform characteristic of AIR which allows different OS to run exactly the same file is enough reason to use AIR over projectors. I’m starting with it as well.
Anyway, thanks again for this project manager!
*In case you find time to update this project, I would also like echo the request for import/export.
December 4th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Jac,
GREAT tool! I love it. Any way to delete an item from the “Client/Task” tree? Not just the name of the item, but the entire item? Thanks.
December 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Just select the item and press Delete!
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Hay Jacob,
Nice app :), was just wondering how you are storing the project data? Is there a file I can copy from one comp to another?
cheers.
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Ah never mind I read up ^^
March 12th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Jacob, I want to thank you for sharing this. I’m a freelance web designer and I’ve searched and searched for project trackers over the years and all of them seem to have way more features than what I want/need.
With your project tracker, I can easily track my open projects and record time for each task to go back and check at the end of the project my time estimates.
As far as the timing of tasks… it’s perfect. I couldn’t tell you how many apps give me individual time breakdowns and then I have to add them all up.
I appreciate being able to see time spent today and over a month or date range, but I also want an easy way to reference the time I estimated I would spend on a task compared with the total actual time spent. That’s exactly what you’ve given me.
The only thing that I would like is and option to be able to minimize it to the system tray or the taskbar.
Thanks again for your great work!
December 16th, 2010 at 2:45 am
Dear Jacob
Thanks for this little useful AIR app. I add my voice to those asking for an “export” feature.
I assume you’re too busy to add this functionality, so why don’t you just open source this project?
I’m open to contribute. Meaby the easiest path would be to store data in a SQLite db so that any SQLite manager can access this data, and then add the export & minimize functionality.
There would be a lot more features we can think of, like Basecamp integration to get tasks/todos as subitems in your PT, and so on.
I hope you consider my suggestion, thanks for all the work already done. :)
December 16th, 2010 at 9:55 am
I’d be happy to open source this project. I’ll have to see if I can dig up the code somewhere. You can email me to remind/bug me to do this if it doesn’t happen soon.
January 7th, 2011 at 6:21 am
Hey Carlos, I was able to find the files and zip them up quickly here:
http://jacwright.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/FlexProjectTracker.zip
I don’t have time to set up an OS project on github or google code but feel free to do so. I license this under the MIT license. And please report back on any updates you make so all can benefit. Thanks!
January 20th, 2011 at 12:39 am
Cool app. Looking forward to using this as an IT consultant to track my time spent on various tasks. So far I like it.
September 26th, 2011 at 7:27 am
Sorry Jacob
I didn’t get any notification for your post on last January, and the code isn’t online anymore. :)
I came here once again to download your little app because I got a new computer… And again, lurking c:\Users\Documents and Settings\Application Data\xxxx to find my existing data…
Could we try again? If you still are interested, please drop me a line this time. :)
Regards,
C
October 10th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Hey Carlos, sorry, took the “blog” out of the url.
http://jacwright.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/FlexProjectTracker.zip
Will email you to make sure you know.