Re: Contracts in Orgmode

[Markus Heller <hellerm2@gmail.com>]

On 12/24/2009 10:35 AM, Markus Heller wrote:
> On 12/24/2009 1:22 AM, David Maus wrote:
>> At Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:49:07 -0800,
>> Markus Heller wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> After some more googling and having a closer look at the org manual, I
>>> came up with a solution that might work. It uses dependencies and
>>> org-depend.el. I've pasted it below, and as usual, I'd appreciate any
>>> comments/improvement :)
>>>
>>> I realize that this is not exactly an elegant solution, but it might
>>> work for me. I'd still like to see a way in orgmode to allow clocking
>>> in on certain tasks only during a specific period of time, maybe
>>> something like
>>>
>>> ** Contract for Client A
>>> :PROPERTIES:
>>> :START: 01-01-2010
>>> :EXPIRY: 03-31-2010
>>> :END:
>>>
>>> Then, when the START date is reached, the task state gets changed to the
>>> TODO or STARTED, and once the expiry date is reached, it gets marked
>>> DONE, and cannot be clocked in anymore. I'm not sure if this is a
>>> feature that would be of general interest ... But what do the experts
>>> think?
>>
>> With regards to closing expired items you may take a look at
>> org-expiry.el in the contrib directory. It provides a function to
>> check for and act upon entries that are past their expiration date.
>
> Thanks. I'll have a look at it.
>
>> What I am not quite understanding is the wish to be unable to clock in
>> a closed item: Isn't clocking in something you do deliberately?
>
> Work should only be done if a valid contract exists (no valid contract,
> no payment, right? :) ). Right now, my work flow is to bring up an
> agenda view with all STARTED items, and then I'd clock in on the
> Contract. I'm not aware of how to check if the contract is valid or not,
> so I might be clocking in on an expired contract.
>
> Is there a way to include an expiry flag in the agenda view? Maybe there
> can be a regexp in the PROPERTIES that checks if the actual date is
> before the expiry date? If that was the case, then that would let me see
> right away in the agenda view if I'm about to clock in on an expired
> contract.

Please disregard the last paragraph here.  David already answered this 
question already.  Looks like I'm already in Christmas mode ...

Markus