Excel Time Keeping "Application"

Mrock1

Board Regular
Joined
Oct 7, 2014
Messages
78
I have an Excel based time keeping application that allows the user to record the tasks that they work on regularly, that I'd like to share. In a nutshell, it pops up a selection menu of those tasks every 15 minutes (or a time period of your choosing) at which time you would select the task or tasks you had been working on since the last popup. Each task is recorded by a unique combination of task code (e.g. project, cost code, work breakdown structure number, or any other short identifier) and a more verbose description. In addition, when selecting a task, an arbitrary comment can be recorded to facilitate more detailed periodic reporting. It also has a feature to snapshot the current Windows application window locations, to be used before undocking and to be used to restore those windows after docking. It works with desktop Excel on Windows (up to O365), but not Excel Online, which doesn't support the underlying VBA macros. While I've not used it on MacOS Excel for a couple of years, the version has not changed significantly since then, so it should also work on a Mac.

TBH, this is an application I started developing in 2012, after which it has undergone multiple functional and feature enhancements and bug fixes. I have used this personally ever since. It's original intent was to capture my effort in real time, recording my time usage by projects and customers, so that on a weekly time writing, for billing, I could accurately and quickly record and report my effort across the week without having to resort to diaries or electronic calendars. It is capable of recording years' worth of records allowing quick recall of all activities in a period of 7-days ending on any date when records are available, should questions of time writing and billing ever arise.

I believe my approach is quite unique. There are many time recording systems available, most of which require you to manually record the cessation of one task and commencement of another. This application allows to you to do that dynamically as the popup appears, either choosing to continue with a current task or change tasks (start a new task), with the simple click of a mouse or pressing or Enter or ESCape. At the popup, you can also add new tasks and remove from the selection list, but not the records, old unused tasks.

Why an Excel workbook app? While there have been prior incarnations of this concept written in C+, I find the most organizations prevent installation of unauthorized apps through locked down workstations. Unless your organization prevents the use of macros, this app is just a macro-enabled workbook and can be stored and run standalone. It is not multi-user and this, IMO, would be a significant rewrite, but quite feasible. It is intended to be a personal productivity tool to help you do your time writing quickly and accurately. At the end of each week, you need only bring up the underlying workbook, right-click on a designated date cell and all you time for that 7-day period will be displayed. You can then, if needed, expand each task record to see individual comments.

Why give it away? I'm no longer that attached to it and have determined that attempts to secure the VBA code, through compilation etc. is not easy and ultimately time consuming and sometimes comes at a cost. Of course, if someone knows of an easy way to easily and effectively secure the code, while allowing the application to run properly, I might be interested.

Is there somewhere on Mr Excel to share such workbooks or other forum where such workbook applications can be published?

Thx
 

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