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

Recording Time
Recording of time has been designed around the ‘punch in/punch out’ paradigm for most use. First, you select the appropriate date, client, project and task. Having the Calendar gadget and dropdown boxes associated with the fields was a big plus for me, since it made things a lot easier.


Figure 5: Calendar gadget provided for setting the date.

When you start work, you tap the 'In’ button, and then tap the ‘Out’ button when you're finished with that task. Project Clock CE then calculates the time to allocate to the specified task. You can also add any comments to the entry to provide more detail (a specific module being completed, or extra work required).


Figure 6: Adding Time via the Punch-In/Punch Out method.

I tend to work on many things simultaneously, then parcel out the working day into appropriate portions for each task. So, the punch-in/punch-out paradigm doesn’t really work for me. Fortunately, Project Clock CE also provides an Add Hours function (from the Tools menu).


Figure 7: Adding Hours directly to a project.

The interface here is a little kludgy, as there is little description on the screen of how to input the hours (in decimal format, so 2 hours 30 minutes is input as 2.5 hours) and a space is used to separate text to be added as a coment. It's covered well in the downloadable manual, but I would have preferred to see two separate entry fields. Note though that if you use this method of entry, it will assume that the Start Time is midnight (00:00) and the end time is whatever duration you provided. This could look a bit weird in the desktop reports, unless there is a default start time for each day.

A Time History function is also provided (from the Data Manager menu) which will allow you to scroll through all of the records in the database one at a time, and make any changes you require.


Figure 8: Time History Screen.