Re: Task logging feature

Le Thu, May 08, 2003 at 09:47:49AM -0700, C.J. Collier:
> 
> The reason I got interested in this project was that my girlfriend and I
> are independant contractors.  We want to keep a very close eye on what
> we do throughout the lifecycle of our projects.  Thus, she suggested
> that I write an application that pops up a "what have you done this
> hour" query once per hour.  The data entered into this query window will
> be used along with the project management tool (MrProject) to keep
> detailed notes about the work that was done on the project.
> 
> Perhaps this query window would have a set of drop-down menus that would
> let you choose which aspect(s) of the project you were working on. 
> Notes entered could perhaps be aded to the notes field of the project
> along with the contributer username and timestamp?
> 
> Is this the right place to start implementing this tool?  Or should I
> start a different project which uses an mrproject API to modify the
> notes field?

I would suggest to have a different tool using libmrproject to implement
this, but I don't know if the notes field is a good choice.

I'm trying to write something similar, but on another way. My idea is to
collect data to compare what was planed with MrProject in the beginning
of the project and what was really done. For that I added a new kind of
object to libmrproject, the MrpResuse (resource usage), it's more subtle
that the MrpAssignment.

An MrpResuse have the following informations:
- a resource
- a task
- a date
- a kind (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly)
- a type (plan, real)

The implementation is on it's way: the MrpResuse part in libmrproject
seems to be ok, ans the view to edit those is getting better, but far
from perfect. I guess your tool would just be a perfect add-on. When one
uses it as you described, it adds an "kind hourly, type real, date now"
MrpResuse to the selected resource/task.

For now, the main points to remember are:
- those extensions are not (yet?) part of the official MrProject
- it does have heavy impact on the whole thing, since it adds a new
  element to the XML DTD (a document saved with this extension cannot be
  read anymore without this extension)
- the view is still not as good as I'd like.

Of course, if you want to have a look, I can send you the corresponding
patches against the latest CVS.

Regards,

	Benjamin.