Agenda view: How many hours did I work today, and on what

Agenda view: How many hours did I work today, and on what

[Daniel Clemente]

Hi,
  I would like to know how others have solved following questions about their work:

- How many hours did I work today? (of course, only time clocked with org does count)
- What have I worked on exactly today? (or any other day)


  I have been trying „column mode“ in agenda view (with Effort and CLOCK columns) and „log mode“ (key „l“ in agenda view), but neither does exactly what I want.

  For instance, if I'm reporting about today's time:
- if I worked today 10 minutes on a task which accounts for 2h of clocked time in the past, I want to count 10 minutes work for today, instead of showing 2h and telling „I worked today on a 2h task“
- my report must show only tasks on which I actually worked today, on not the ones which may have any other relation with today. For instance, a task scheduled for today but with 30min from yesterday shouldn't appear, because I didn't work on it today
- if today I clocked task A for 5 minutes, then clocked in B for 10 minutes, and then A again 30 minutes, ideally I would like to see 2 lines for task A (5+30), instead of just accounting 35 minutes
- the sum of today's hours should be correct: if I have been clocking tasks from 10:00 to 19:00, I expect the sum to be around 9 hours
- the report should be exact and not sum up times in level-3-headings; tasks from all levels should be listed together instead
- ideally, the report would state not only the time per task, but from which hour to what hour; ex: 10:58 to 11:22, worked 24min on task „****** try this“



  My motivation to have these queries are:
- know how much work I clock daily with org and help me to clock more
- be sure that at my job I'm working as many hours per day as I'm expected to (no more, no less)
- do a weekly review to know the tasks I worked on longer at each day from last week
- extract some work patterns: do I work more at the morning, at the night; for how long, …


  Has someone a 100% pleasant solution for this?


  Thanks,

Daniel

Re: Agenda view: How many hours did I work today, and on what

[Bernt Hansen]

Daniel Clemente <n142857@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>   I would like to know how others have solved following questions about their work:
>
> - How many hours did I work today? (of course, only time clocked with org does count)
> - What have I worked on exactly today? (or any other day)
>
>
>   I have been trying „column mode“ in agenda view (with Effort and CLOCK columns) and „log mode“ (key „l“ in agenda view), but neither does exactly what I want.
>
>   For instance, if I'm reporting about today's time:
> - if I worked today 10 minutes on a task which accounts for 2h of clocked time in the past, I want to count 10 minutes work for today, instead of showing 2h and telling „I worked today on a 2h task“
> - my report must show only tasks on which I actually worked today, on not the ones which may have any other relation with today. For instance, a task scheduled for today but with 30min from yesterday shouldn't appear, because I didn't work on it today
> - if today I clocked task A for 5 minutes, then clocked in B for 10 minutes, and then A again 30 minutes, ideally I would like to see 2 lines for task A (5+30), instead of just accounting 35 minutes
> - the sum of today's hours should be correct: if I have been clocking tasks from 10:00 to 19:00, I expect the sum to be around 9 hours
> - the report should be exact and not sum up times in level-3-headings; tasks from all levels should be listed together instead
> - ideally, the report would state not only the time per task, but from which hour to what hour; ex: 10:58 to 11:22, worked 24min on task „****** try this“
>
>
>
>   My motivation to have these queries are:
> - know how much work I clock daily with org and help me to clock more
> - be sure that at my job I'm working as many hours per day as I'm expected to (no more, no less)
> - do a weekly review to know the tasks I worked on longer at each day from last week
> - extract some work patterns: do I work more at the morning, at the night; for how long, …
>
>
>   Has someone a 100% pleasant solution for this?

In the agenda hit 'R' to get a clock report that only covers the period
of time displayed by the agenda.

-Bernt

Re: Agenda view: How many hours did I work today, and on what

[Daniel Clemente]

El dl, jun 08 2009, Bernt Hansen va escriure:
> In the agenda hit 'R' to get a clock report that only covers the period
> of time displayed by the agenda.
>

  I had tried this but found it too ugly and hard to understand and I abandoned it. Now I'm retaking it and searching what changes I should do to make it comfortable. Some notes:

1. I didn't want to group tasks by level-2 headers, but show all tasks instead (at any level). Therefore I should use:  (setq org-agenda-clockreport-parameter-plist '(:link t :maxlevel 99 ))

2. The table is too wide and lines span into several visible lines. I should either learn to trim the table columns, or activate truncate-lines somehow when the table is bigger than the window.

3. I don't understand the table format. It is showing hierarchical information and thus would fit much better in an outline. It doesn't let me expand/contract sections and I would like this because there are too many. It doesn't recognize or highlight the keywords or priorities. Furthermore, the keys to move between cells (left/right arrow) have other meanings in the agenda view (ex: change days).

4. It seems this report can't be easily extended; well, only with :formula lines, which may be complex to write by hand. Useful extensions would be: a) to show the effort estimate for each task (and so to discover whether you did the task in time). Or b) to show the exact time period(s) when you worked on each task.



  So: this clock report mode in the agenda view isn't still comfortable, but seems the base for what I want; I will go on from this.

  Thanks,

Daniel

Re: Agenda view: How many hours did I work today, and on what

[Bernt Hansen]

Daniel Clemente <n142857@gmail.com> writes:

> El dl, jun 08 2009, Bernt Hansen va escriure:
>> In the agenda hit 'R' to get a clock report that only covers the period
>> of time displayed by the agenda.
>>
>
>   I had tried this but found it too ugly and hard to understand and I
>   abandoned it. Now I'm retaking it and searching what changes I
>   should do to make it comfortable. Some notes:
>
> 1. I didn't want to group tasks by level-2 headers, but show all tasks
> instead (at any level). Therefore I should use: (setq
> org-agenda-clockreport-parameter-plist '(:link t :maxlevel 99 ))

I use (:link nil :maxlevel 2).  This gives me totals for level 1 and
level 2 headings only.

My level 1 tasks tend to be categories mostly (Appointments, System
Maintenance, etc) and level 2 and deeper are the clocked items.

> >
> 2. The table is too wide and lines span into several visible lines. I
> should either learn to trim the table columns, or activate
> truncate-lines somehow when the table is bigger than the window.

Keeping task headlines short should help.  The table can get wide but my
lines never wrap.  For me truncate-lines is t in the agenda.  I have a
function key (f7) to toggle truncate lines on and off.

>
> 3. I don't understand the table format. It is showing hierarchical
> information and thus would fit much better in an outline. It doesn't
> let me expand/contract sections and I would like this because there
> are too many. It doesn't recognize or highlight the keywords or
> priorities. Furthermore, the keys to move between cells (left/right
> arrow) have other meanings in the agenda view (ex: change days).

It's a data table of clocked items only.  It's not folded or expandable
(like column mode).

I export the agenda view (C-x C-w) to a text file if I need a copy for
some other application.


>
> 4. It seems this report can't be easily extended; well, only
> with :formula lines, which may be complex to write by hand. Useful
> extensions would be: a) to show the effort estimate for each task (and
> so to discover whether you did the task in time). Or b) to show the
> exact time period(s) when you worked on each task.
>

The clock report in the agenda is mainly for reporting the time spent
working on items.  If you want to compare estimates with clocked amounts
for a particular subtree I would use a dynamic clock table instead.

You can specify block times to limit the range to specific dates.

See http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html#SavingEstimate

HTH,
-Bernt

>
>
> So: this clock report mode in the agenda view isn't still comfortable,
> but seems the base for what I want; I will go on from this.
>   Thanks,
>
> Daniel

Re: Agenda view: How many hours did I work today, and on what

[Daniel Clemente]

> The clock report in the agenda is mainly for reporting the time spent
> working on items.  If you want to compare estimates with clocked amounts
> for a particular subtree I would use a dynamic clock table instead.

  Thanks, dynamic clock tables are useful. However, the table format is still unmanageable in interesting reports like:
#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 99 :scope agenda
#+END:

  I think more advanced visualisations can be obtained from that; even graphs, charts with statistics, etc. (now that we have gnuplot, R, graphviz, even more).
  Mmm... or even interactive and powerful ones with JavaScript and jQuery. I expect to see real-scale time and calendar grids some day in org.


  Back to work,
-- Daniel