Simple task management and time reporting with MrTickTock

MrTickTock 1.5 has been released and published at http://mrticktock.com.

What's new?

In this version we have focused on several improvements:

• Export time report as HTML document
  Few of the current MrTicktock users asked for that feature. It allows to download visible time report as a single html file which looks exactly in the same way as an online report and makes it easy to share the report with customers and other interesting parties.
  
• Export time report as PDF document
  Some of you prefer PDF over HTML so it is also possible to download report as a PDF file. We use one of the open source libraries so unfortunately there are some limitations. The first is that we do not support Asian languages at the moment. The second is that we had to limit the size of report which can be exported to PDF. That is a side effect of the pdf library performance issues. Nevertheless we think it is still useful and should work for most of you. Let us know when you hit some of the limits and we will try to improve it.
  
• Task management improvements:
• In place task editing
  Both admins and users can easily change task name on the Tick-Tock page and Tasks page. Simple and useful.
  
• Simple task deleteTask delete action is now available not only on the Customers and Projects page but also on the Tasks page. Admins can delete any task. There is of course confirmation box which clearly tells if there are any time reports or notes related to the task. Users  can also delete task but only if there are no time reports and notes linked with the task or they are related to the user who tries to perform the delete action.
  
• Scrum Standup improvements:
• Maximize standup (note) input popupSome of us writes long notes. The standard small text area is not sufficient in that case so we have added Maximize facility - just press the icon located in the top right corner of the Standup (Note) popup or press Ctrl+Shift+Arrow Up to make it bigger.
  
• Week view on the Standup page
  It clearly shows which day of the week is visible on the page. It is also simple to switch between days, look at yesterday's standup or move week back to check what happened there.
• More AJAX
  MrTickTock gains more and more users. We try to make the application as fast as possible but sometimes it takes more than half a second to perform an action. We have added more ajax and progress indicators to make the application more responsive and improve user experience.
• JIRA issue collector
  We switched to trello.com for a day to day project management as JIRA is quite heavy. Trello let us create new task with one just click and move it between backlog and versions with drag & drop. Nevertheless we still use JIRA to keep our long term backlog and collect user requests. Therefore we added JIRA issue collector to the application and linked it with existing Report a problem and Request a feature links. It let our users to raise new issue through simple form containing only one required field. There is also possibility to attach a screenshot. JIRA issue collector is really handy.
  

As usually there are also many other improvements and bug fixes. Try it yourself at mrticktock.com


What's next?

Version 1.6 will bring more task management facilities. We will introduce closed task concept. Actually it is ready on development. It should improve user experience for those of you who plays with tens of tasks. Closed task will disappear from the view to make it more clear.
It will be of course possible to open task.

We will also try to introduce login with Google and remove confirmation in the first step of account creation. It will help newcomers to access MrTickTock for the first time and start using it in just few seconds.

We plan to introduce separate view for start/stop work feature, activity log available for Admins, integration with JIRA and other bugtrackers (task sync), extended User Profile with detailed information on worked hours, vacations, etc., billing and invoices and much more useful stuff.

MrTickTock Android application 1.0 should be available in the Android Market this week. It will allow users to create and delete tasks, report time manually or with start/stop button as well as report time automatically. The last feature is based on the WiFi availability. It will automatically start and stop time tracking if user is inside or outside the office.
Next version will allow to track time automatically basing on the GPS location, add notes (standups), close tasks, mark day as sick/off/non-working and probably more.

If Android app is successful and users like it then we will start working on the similar app for iPhone.

We also plan to create a Confluence plugin to retrieve all Scrum Standups entries from MrTickTock and show them on the wiki page.

That's all for today. You can try all of that at mrticktock.com.

We also publish most recent news via Twitter

Enjoy,
MrTickTock team