Windows Phone Thoughts: Punchin' In -- Time Recording with Project Clock CE

Setting Up
Before you start recording time, you’ll need to set up something to record time against! I have to admit that I had a bit of difficulty getting things set up in Project Clock CE to work for me. First of all, there was the problem with the missing ADOCE .dll, which I thought was my fault in not installing or initializing the product properly. Once we got that all straightened out, I was able get to the Add Client/Project/Task screens through the Data Manager menu option.


Figure 3: Adding a client in Project Clock CE. The same process is used for Projects and Tasks.

Without reading the manual, I was able to guess that the buttons on the bottom of the screen provide record-by-record navigation through the contents of the database and the function of most of them (beginning of file, previous record, next record, end of file, add record, delete record). But I couldn’t figure out what the tilde (~) meant, nor could I get a record to actually add to the database, no matter what sequence of buttons I used. OK, back to the manual. I hate to admit defeat like that, but I was stumped! :helpme: Well, it turns out that adding a record is actually a two-step process. First, you tap on the + button to get a clear record. Then, after filling in the information in the fields, you tap the ~ (accept change/modify) button to update the record with the new information.

Unfortunately, CyberMatrix has fixed the position of the buttons at the bottom of the screen, so every time you access an input panel to put information in the fields, the buttons are covered up.


Figure 4: The Record Navigation buttons are hidden by the Input Panel.

Thus, there was a lot of button tapping required to get in a couple of clients, projects and tasks for testing. According to the documentation, when Project Clock CE is synchronized with the desktop version, all this information is automatically loaded.

Project Clock CE does not support an imbedded hierarchy of Clients, Projects and Tasks. Thus, any Task can be applied to any Project which can be attached to any Client. This can be advantage when you have similar tasks that you carry out on a number of projects (such as Project Management, Business Analysis, or Document Review). But it means you have to be careful when you make selections during time recording.