Congratulate you on new wave of quality and simplicity which LazyCure 3.7 brings to us! It contains a set of improvements and new features, comparing with 3.6 version.
New features:
- Subtasks. Select menu Show->Task Manager and create a tree of projects/tasks/tags/areas which you want to use for grouping activities during analyzing your time logs.
- Possibility to customize hot-key. Now you can use not only Ctrl+F12 but any imaginary combination of keys in order to activate LazyCure window and fix activity switch. Works only in Windows, but if you know how to do it in other OS, I’m appreciate your comment. In order to customize hot-key, go to menu Options and press button ‘…’ under ‘Hot key to activate:’ text.
- Split activities by comma (‘,’). This is the feature which I love very much, because it helps me to save a lot of seconds and make time logging process more enjoying. When I forgot or didn’t have an ability to mark activity switch, I specify all activities in one ‘Now you..’ text field via comma and press ‘Done!’ After that the magic happens – each activity appears in time log separately with time equally spitted up. It is not too much accurate, but if I don’t remember actual time of switch activities (or even if I was doing all of them simultaneously), it is accurate enough. And more important – it is very fast.
- Possibility to disable option to switch time log at midnight. Automatic switch time log at midnight is a useful feature, if you practice continuous time logging, like Russian scientist Lyubishchev. But if you log only the current day and it ends after midnight, it is useful to turn off automatic switch at midnight in order to keep all activities in one place. So now we have an option.
- Possibility to close TimeLog Editor, Summary, Task Manager by ESC. All for the sake of speed
. - Possibility to copy data via context menu from Time Log Editor and Activities Summary. Possibility to copy data via Ctrl+C and paste, e.g. in Excel, was always in LazyCure, but nobody knew about it. Now it is possible to do via context menu + small additional improvements of data representation in clipboard.
- Possibility to rename activities on Activities Summary. The feature I was dream about for years. Record activity with mistake, record the same activity without mistake, then go to activities summary, rename misprinted activity – and see the magic.
+ fixes of the following bugs:
- An exception when invalid time is entered on Efficiency tab.
- An exception when activity is longer than 64 symbols on mouse over tray icon.
- Post to twitter is not working.
Quality of LazyCure 3.7 release is proved by 303 green unit tests.
Enjoy!
а по-русски есть где почитать?)
For Russian guys and venture especially
:
Пока можно через Google Translate – http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Flazycure.com%2Fblog%2Flazycure-37-a-bunch-of-new-features&sl=en&tl=ru – довольно весело
Who is also waiting the next version of LazyCure?
Здравствуйте.
Спасибо за отличную фришную программу! Я был приятно удивлен ее весом и возможностями!
Единственно в чем я не разобрался, так это в том, как заставить программу отслеживать время по заданиям из таск менеджера.
Если Вас не затруднит, объясните пожалуйста. Можно е-мэйлом.
Заранее благодарю.
С уважением, Константин
Константин,
Отслеживание времени по заданиям из таск-менеджера делается следующим образом:
1. В течении для репортаешь просто выполняемые активности
2. В конце для заходишь на Activities Summary и в колонке таск проставляешь таски, к которым относятся активности через двойной клик по ячеке.
3. Заходишь на закладку Tasks Summary – находишь там отчёт о затраченном времени по таскам.
Здесь можно более подробно ознакомится с возможностями – http://lifeidea.org/2009/06/what-lazycure-can-do/.
Желаю удачи в личном развитии!
Миша
What is absolutely essential for the TM program is analysis of the time recorded. I found absolutely no tools for this (efficiency coefficient is quite contradictory and not always useful function). It is necessary to analyse time spent for certain periods (e.g. determine the time losses or work time for the past month, last 5 days, last year, etc.; see the dynamics of time losses reduction or increase). A free tool AceMoney can give an example of this, in reports section. It is good to have analytics both in graphs and in lines.
Of course it should be available from the main menu, not by opening files from folders (as it is now).
Otherwise it is difficult to use it as a real TM tool.
Anyway thanks for the program!
Another curcial feature – is a version for Windows Mobiles and other portable devices. With PC syncronysation, of course. This will make coverage absolute and more convenient (paper is another time-waster and out of date) and will make LazyCure a leader among similar programs.
Alexzzzander, thank you very much for the feedback – we will try to implement this in future LazyCure releases.
Mikhail, thanks!
Actually I tried to find Russian-language time-tracker. It appeared to be a challenge! I spent about 10 hours in search and review. Now I chose English-only Klok 1.5 beta (http://klok.mcgraphix.com).
Strengths:
1. Graphics is pleasant
2. Projects and subprojects may be arranged and re-arranged by dragging
3. Can be hidden to tray (as LazyCure)
4. Time actually spent is displayed like in Outlook calendar. Very convenient since you may compare what you planned and how does it look like in fact. You may choose a colour for every project.
5. The best thing is that you can create your one categories and subcategories
Downsides:
1. Do not remember the last projects you worked on after being closed
2. Cannot arrange report for subcategories or selected items (e.g., if you want to exclude some categories like sleep from the analysis).
3. No Windows Mobile version and synchronisation.
Will try to use it. But Klok is projected for billing goals (invoices and so on). Therefore, still no reliable and easy-to-use TM chrono tool (not to mention Russian version).
I wish you good look in creating such a tool!
Alexzzzander, thank you for the review! It seems that LazyCure localization is must-have feature, and by the way it will not be hard to implement. It is interesting that LazyCure 2.x was in Belorussian language (do not remember exactly about 1.x).
Do you know that 5th Klok strength is also presented in LazyCure (Menu Show->Task Manager)? But agree, that graphics differs
.
Developers who wants to receive experience in TDD with NUnit and C# – please, contact me at http://lifeidea.org/contact – I fluently communicate in Russian, English and Belorussian.
Mikhail, surely LazyCure has the 5th Klok strength
What I actually meant is that you can change places of every category and subcategory by dragging it in Klok. In LC once established the order will remain the same, you won’t be able to change it, to drag a subcategory to another category, etc. Every beginner (not even a beginner) in TM will definitely change classifications after he started time tracking 
Yes, changing categories is a common thing, so reorganizing task tree via drug & drop will be useful.
As for me, when I decided to change categorization, I usually delete everything and create the tree from scratch in order to highlight and improve specific aspect of my tasks.