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Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

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Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#31

Post by Sir_Substance »

overshard wrote: post #12

Hello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host myself. There is a lot to do on this project still and I wanted to see what the reception was for the start. Timestrap currently does fully support time tracking and CSV exports for multiple projects and tasks. It has a full REST API and admin panel. Invoicing…

Hey, I've just deployed it to my little self-hosted stack, I look forward to taking it for a spin this week.

Initial thoughts are that it's easy to deploy, but you need to be more explicit in the doc about what people need to do to create the admin account. People who aren't at least passingly familiar with django will get lost at this step.

The minimalism is great, and the UX seems pretty smooth. I intuitively expected a timesheet selection dropdown on the home and entries pages, but once I made a timesheet and added some tasks to it, I could see why those dropdowns weren't actually needed.

It'd be nice to package all the js files and have the option to serve them from my server, rather than hotload them from the internet every time. It's both more private and kinder on the hosters.

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#32

Post by overshard »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #31
overshard wrote: post #12

Hello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host myself. There is a lot to do on this project still and I wanted to see what the reception was for the start. Timestrap currently does fully support time tracking and CSV exports for multiple projects and tasks. It has a full REST API and admin panel. Invoicing…

Hey, I've just deployed it to my little self-hosted stack, I look forward to taking it for a spin this week. Initial thoughts are that it's easy to deploy, but you need to be more explicit in the doc about what people need to do to create the admin account. People who aren't at least passingly familiar with django will get lost at this step. The minimalism is great, and the UX seems pretty smooth. I intuitively expec…

I'm adding additional documentation for creating an initial user now!

I agree with the packaging all JS files comment, for a truly self-hosted solution one should have this option and I plan on doing this for 1.0. Since we use django-compressor it will compress everything down to a single JS file too. Right now for the alpha phase I'm rapidly adding and removing JS libraries so I didn't want to bother with this.

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#34

Post by sycora »

overshard wrote: post #20
jaggederest wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automate it! Set up a browser test that screencaps the important pages for the documentation (and checks them for basic errors like 500 status or no text). In the long run you can diff the images and assert that they haven't changed more than N% from the reference, but for now, it makes evergreen documentation.

Good idea, I've already automated most everything else for testing and pushing to Heroku. I may as well!

Nightmare is great for this: https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#35

Post by hashkb »

overshard wrote: post #12

Hello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host myself. There is a lot to do on this project still and I wanted to see what the reception was for the start. Timestrap currently does fully support time tracking and CSV exports for multiple projects and tasks. It has a full REST API and admin panel. Invoicing…

Is this backed by Timetrap? I couldn't tell from the readme but hope it is.

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#36

Post by zaroth »

Are there people interested in following the development of this app? What's the best way to "watch" a project like this come together?

I see some great suggestions in the comments, I thought the idea of automating the screenshots that go into the documentation was kind of interesting. The idea that it's cost effective to automate something like that, and further the idea that if the UI changed the documentation would, in a way, automatically update...

I always think when I first see these types of Shows, I'd really live to see an animated gif walkthrough. Ideally, buttons beneath the walkthrough that are labeled '30 seconds', '3 minutes', '15 minutes'. Or some variation on this theme. Does anyone do product demos this way?

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#37

Post by nodejsbangalore »

jaggederest wrote: post #17
overshard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some screenshots would be useful but I'm still rapidly developing Timestrap and the interface is getting stuff added to it every few hours so I feel like it'd be a wasted effort on my part right now. EDIT: Added some screenshots to the bottom of the readme

Automate it! Set up a browser test that screencaps the important pages for the documentation (and checks them for basic errors like 500 status or no text). In the long run you can diff the images and assert that they haven't changed more than N% from the reference, but for now, it makes evergreen documentation.

http://trinityradar.com/ can do this.

Full disclosure: I work on this project.

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#38

Post by pbreit »

drcross wrote: post #2

Would it really hurt to include a screenshot of what it's like to use? Sorry for the grouchy comment but we're all busy people, there has to be a modicum of convincing on a programmers part to encourage us to divert us attention to their project.

Full functioning demo seems more than sufficient.

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#39

Post by nodesocket »

I have a DevOps consulting company (shameless plug https://elasticbyte.net) and been on the lookout for a time tracking solution. I've been using AirTable and just adding in hours manually into a table, but it has really been limiting.

How is the reporting in Timestrap? Can a run a query like give me the sum of hours for client Acme Inc from March 23rd to April 23rd?

Re: Show HN: Timestrap – Self-hosted online time tracking

#40

Post by nodesocket »

jefflombardjr wrote: post #18
overshard wrote: post #12

Hello HN, developer here. I started this Friday night because I wanted something much simpler than all the options I was given and something that I could host myself. There is a lot to do on this project still and I wanted to see what the reception was for the start. Timestrap currently does fully support time tracking and CSV exports for multiple projects and tasks. It has a full REST API and admin panel. Invoicing…

I don't know if I speak for other users, but rather than focusing on invoicing, why not tie into Quickbooks? Or similar services. i.e. There's already invoicing software. If the integration between the timesheets is the only differentiator, why rewrite the invoicing part?

Agree I don't need invoicing, already use Simple Invocies (https://simpleinvoices.io) which integrates with Stripe.

Focus on the time tracking, reporting, etc.

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