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Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking
- nh2 9y agoWhat service is running the test instance? It is so slow that I first thought the app was broken, but after 8 seconds TimeToFirstByte after clicking "Add" in the "Tasks" window, my entry finally appeared.
- drcross 9y agoWould it really hurt to include a screenshot of what it's like to use? Sorry for the grouchy comment but we're all busy people, there has to be a modicum of convincing on a programmers part to encourage us to divert us attention to their project.
- bdcravens 9y ago"I've setup an instance on Heroku of Timestrap that resets every 10 minutes if you want to play with it."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jlgosse 9y agoI mean, did you expect better from a user named 'drcross'? Also, if you took the time to click through the link you quote yourself, you would see the following, mostly useless message: "If you don't have a user yet create one via the CLI. If you need more users add them via the admin panel."
- bdcravens 9y agoThe next line after what I quoted: "The username and password are set to the same as the Quickstart ones." (admin/changeme123)
- largehotcoffee 9y agoAgreed. That should be the bare minimum to show something like this off.
- overshard 9y agoSome screenshots would be useful but I'm still rapidly developing Timestrap and the interface is getting stuff added to it every few hours so I feel like it'd be a wasted effort on my part right now. EDIT: Added some screenshots to the bottom of the readme
- keehun 9y agoYou could show off mock-ups you've done in Photoshop (and perhaps add a disclaimer) if you don't have a stable UI right now!
- overshard 9y agoI don't have any mock-ups. I'm literally just creating the UI as I go since I just started making this on Friday and wanted to get something working.
- jaggederest 9y agoAutomate it! Set up a browser test that screencaps the important pages for the documentation (and checks them for basic errors like 500 status or no text). In the long run you can diff the images and assert that they haven't changed more than N% from the reference, but for now, it makes evergreen documentation.
- overshard 9y agoGood idea, I've already automated most everything else for testing and pushing to Heroku. I may as well!
- sycora 9y agoNightmare is great for this: https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare
- nodejsbangalore 9y agohttp://trinityradar.com/ http://trinityradar.com/ can do this. Full disclosure: I work on this project.
- pbreit 9y agoFull functioning demo seems more than sufficient.
- tedmiston 9y agoYeah but a video is always nice on mobile where some of the functionality is a little rough around the edges right now.
- gnud 9y agoThis looks nice! I fail to see any use for the dashboard, though - especially as you can't drill down into the timesheets from the pretty graphs. I think the quickest, most prominent action should be to start tracking a task - or change which task is currently tracked.
- overshard 9y agoI agree the dashboard is pretty worthless, I made it because I wanted to fiddle around with some Charts. The best thing would be what you're saying is tracking tasks.
- overshard 9y agoHello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host myself. There is a lot to do on this project still and I wanted to see what the reception was for the start. Timestrap currently does fully support time tracking and CSV exports for multiple projects and tasks. It has a full REST API and admin panel. Invoicing will come after I get the dashboard more fleshed out, more export options and better security.
- jefflombardjr 9y agoI don't know if I speak for other users, but rather than focusing on invoicing, why not tie into Quickbooks? Or similar services. i.e. There's already invoicing software. If the integration between the timesheets is the only differentiator, why rewrite the invoicing part?
- overshard 9y agoI do plan on supporting things like Quickbooks via the export system and creating an actual workflow around that past just an "export" button and then "import". For my own use case I would like to have one location to enter time then select a range, hit "invoice" and be able to send that to a client with a very simple credit card payment system.
- rukuu001 9y agoThis app fits a use case I had a few years ago. I was travelling and doing odd jobs (WordPress tweaks and the like) and needed something I could use to track time and generate an invoice. QuickBooks & Xero et al were waaay more than I needed or wanted to pay for. I ended up using the free tier of Toggl, doing a CSV export and generating a butt-ugly invoice from Excel. If this tool were available, I'd have used it.
- overshard 9y agoWhat you're describing is the exact point of this project!
- Xoros 9y agoServer error 500. Well too bad then.
- overshard 9y agoIt resets every 10 minutes or so, it's bound to break with HN hitting it and doing whatever they want to it.
- kfrzcode 9y ago"meh"
- sctb 9y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- high5ths 9y agoThanks for sharing! I've used Kimai [https://github.com/kimai/kimai https://github.com/kimai/kimai] for a while, which offers similar functionality. Timestrap is MUCH nicer to look at, though the feature I use the most on Kimai isn't as well-implemented: the big stopwatch that adds entries quickly.
- overshard 9y agoKimai does handle the stop watch functionality much better than I do right now. This is a huge feature for me personally so I do plan on making it much better.
- welder 9y agoAwesome! Now all you need is to import from WakaTime to automatically fill the Tasks/Entries for me.
- zaroth 9y agoAre there people interested in following the development of this app? What's the best way to "watch" a project like this come together? I see some great suggestions in the comments, I thought the idea of automating the screenshots that go into the documentation was kind of interesting. The idea that it's cost effective to automate something like that, and further the idea that if the UI changed the documentation would, in a way, automatically update... I always think when I first see these types of Shows, I'd really live to see an animated gif walkthrough. Ideally, buttons beneath the walkthrough that are labeled '30 seconds', '3 minutes', '15 minutes'. Or some variation on this theme. Does anyone do product demos this way?
- tedmiston 9y agoA 30-second product demo video would definitely be a nice to have.
- nodesocket 9y agoI have a DevOps consulting company (shameless plug https://elasticbyte.net https://elasticbyte.net) and been on the lookout for a time tracking solution. I've been using AirTable and just adding in hours manually into a table, but it has really been limiting. How is the reporting in Timestrap? Can a run a query like give me the sum of hours for client Acme Inc from March 23rd to April 23rd?
- overshard 9y agoIt has the ability to do this at the API level but not on the interface yet. All the reporting functionality is coming over the course of the next week since that's pretty critical to time tracking.
- nodesocket 9y agoRight on. You going to charge (hosted solution)? I'd like to support you.
- overshard 9y agoI don't really have any interest in making money on this project and I feel like a hosted solution defeats the purpose. The best support you could give is writing some issues on GitHub, testing things, helping with documentation, or submitting some features.
- nodesocket 9y agoWill do. You should think about charging, it is a forcing function and prevents you from working on the wrong features (developer creep)
- dyu- 9y agoPaid feature requests. If the user (like the GP) wants a certain feature and don't want to implement it himself, accepting his offer to pay would benefit both parties.
- tedmiston 9y agoThis is super nice and much simpler than all of the other software I've been using to cobble together work logging + time tracking + invoicing this past year. After trying Toggl, Harvest, and everything else I totally understand why you built it. The only changes I'd like to see are: allowing one to log the time work is started (not just the date), a confirmation before deleting data that can't be recovered, and a way to filter the hours charts by day / week / date range.
- overshard 9y agoThe time work is started is something I'm debating with myself on. I think I will add start + end date + time since it would help with making a timer persistent across pages/connection issues. Confirmation is a must, mistakes happen! Filters/reporting is coming over the next week, also a must, what's the point of time tracking if you can't compile reports of your time.
- tedmiston 9y agoSounds great — this is off to an amazing start. Not sure if you intend to turn it into a business but with a little polish and the features you described it's simpler / better than several competing paid products on the market today (as you probably noticed).
- sne11ius 9y ago+1 for start/stop times because that's how I keep my data now. I have been looking for a simple solution like this for quite some time. Also: thank you OP
- icc97 9y agoHaving start and end dates I find is much more easy to add in. But they all need to be part of the same task for one day. If I've forgotten to start a timer, it's easy for me to look at my browsing history and make a good guess when I started / finished. Figuring out duration when you stop and start on a task multiple times becomes a pain.
- beilabs 9y agoif anyone wants a nice CLI tool then Timetrap is pretty awesome, been using it for years. https://github.com/samg/timetrap https://github.com/samg/timetrap
- patrickdavey 9y agoYup, that's what I've been running. Really like it, especially after I made a very simple little "on off" widget to display on my tmux status line. No more forgetting I have a timer running :)
- blauditore 9y agoKinda off-topic, but the screenshots were (probably) made on Windows 10 while you write that Ubuntu is your primary OS. Do you use Windows for work/coding and Ubuntu for other stuff? Because I do it more or less the other way around.
- overshard 9y agoI'm using a variety of operating systems at the moment. My primary OS is Ubuntu, I happen to be on my home desktop which is used for gaming at the time of these screenshots. (Ubuntu gaming is still mediocre.) I use OS X at my office quite a bit but my primary laptop that I use at home and work is 100% Ubuntu. I'm fairly OS agnostic and sync all my systems very well and use whatever I'm sitting at.
- lapoozza 9y agoThanks for sharing. Loving it.
- Odenwaelder 9y agoAwesome, exactly what I was looking for for a long time. I'll see if I can contribute something.
- r3bl 9y agoAh, what I really miss about time tracking software isn't necessarily something where I manually type in what I've been working on, as much as it's something like a self-hosted RescueTime[0]. Instead of manually adding things to it, it allows you to mark certain applications and websites as you doing something productive (for example, if you're running Atom and visiting StackOverflow and GitHub, you're probably doing something productive) and then tracks that via its clients and shows you a nice overview of how much of your time is actually spent on doing something productive. Now, of course, the fact that RescueTime is centralized and hasn't released the source code of its clients makes me instantly dismiss it as a software I would use, but I would love to find a certain self-hosted solution that does pretty much exactly what RescueTime does. [0] https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/
- SyneRyder 9y agoIf you're on the Mac, Timing might be similar to what you're looking for (one of their selling points is that your data is stored locally and never leaves your Mac): http://timingapp.com/ http://timingapp.com/ And on Windows, Mac & Linux, it looks like ManicTime will also store data locally if you don't use the Server component: http://www.manictime.com/ http://www.manictime.com/
- r3bl 9y agoAh, I'm on Ubuntu, and ManicTime would be an awesome choice, but their Ubuntu version is for tracking only, and requires a server to actually view the reports[0]. Seems like the same thing applies for macOS, so I would call it Windows-only solution in the serverless mode. Alternatively, you could run the server[1] on some always-on Windows machine, pay for the license(s) and use the server under your control to store the data. [0] http://www.manictime.com/linux http://www.manictime.com/linux [1] http://www.manictime.com/teams/download http://www.manictime.com/teams/download
- mrmage 9y agoHi, Daniel, developer of Timing here. Thanks for the mention! FYI, we will be releasing a new version soon, with a completely revamped interface, productivity tracking, easier task creation, better reports, and more. You can check it out at https://2.timingapp.com https://2.timingapp.com
- Kluny 9y agoThis is great, I've been looking for something just like it. Once invoicing is included I think I'll try using it, I'll donate as well.
- peter_retief 9y agoHuge thanks from me, I been looking to develop something to keep track of my own development hours for invoicing purposes. From early look it seems like you nailed it. Thanks!
- vbernat 9y agoWhen I was freelancing, I have looked at many services for online time tracking. As an Emacs user, I finally settled for org-mode: - http://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-commands.html http://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-commands.html - http://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html http://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html
- janvandenbroeke 9y agoWe also tried to create a super simple time tracking app. We will give it for free (also biz version) very soon. https://tokkapp.com/ https://tokkapp.com/
- cholantesh 9y agoMoving between days seems to be broken; I moved from April 23rd to 22nd and then tried to go back to the 23rd and didn't work. I couldn't advance beyond that either. Despite this; great idea and looks beautiful. Seems to fill a bit of a void among task trackers I've used.
- mycloud 9y agoLooks really great! Would love to see a cloudron package for it. Not sure how hard this would be as there doesn't seem to be a dockerfile in the repo.
- vladsanchez 9y agohttps://taskwarrior.org/docs/timewarrior/ https://taskwarrior.org/docs/timewarrior/