July 09
Time frames in mobile version
Time entries with time frames are now supported by the mobile version of mite. On the iPhone / iPod touch and on smartphones running Android or Web OS, you can now not only specify the bare number of the hours you’ve been working, but also a time frame featuring a starting and ending time.
Hence, all input options known from her big sister, the standard desktop version, are now available on smartphones as well. If you’re looking for an overview of all supported input options, please head over here. We hope you like the update, all the best with time tracking to-go!
June 10
Some Excel love for time entries with time frames
For over a year now, you can not only specify the bare number of your working hours when adding a time entry, but also a time frame featuring a starting and ending time.
If you want to track this additional information, just enter a time frame in the »Hours« field. E.g., enter »8 to 10« or »8 10« if you worked from 8am to 10am. mite will calculate the 2 hours then and save the starting time as well as the ending time as a note, so you’ll be able to keep that information for later reference.
Today, we improved the handling of those time frames when you export reports from »Reports => Time entries« to Excel or as a .CSV. Now, starting and ending times get their very own colums. mite extracts those time frames from the column »Notes« to separate cells. We hope that this new handling simplifies the further processing of your data!
If no single time entry in your export file contains a time frame, nothing changes for you. mite will then automatically hide those new extra columns.
June 02
Beta release: Time tracking for smartphones running Android, WebOS or Opera Mobile
Always on the go, from the office, to a business lunch, to a conference, to a meeting, to a client’s office? Why not leave your notebook at home, and track your working hours on the go? mite is mobilizing!
Until today, mite to-go was iPhone only. Since today, mite serves a handy, simplified version to a couple of other devices as well:
- smartphones running Android,
- the Palm Pre and
- all BlackBerry, Nokia smartphones etc. browsing mite on Opera Mobile.
You don’t have to download anything from an app store. Just start your based browser and point it to your familiar login address (http://yourteam.mite.yo.lk) – done. mite detects your device automatically and serves the simplified view, optimized for a fast mobile experience. With this mobile version, you can track your hours manually or with a timer. Time entries can be edited, deleted or moved to another date.
Please note: Today’s release is a so-called beta version, which means that it’s a first approach, a test version. Of course, we did check the little sister of mite on all emulators available, but we did not check it on every single mobile device on every single operating system. There are too much combinations – it’s a jungle, honestly. Thus, design and function won’t be running 100% smoothly on every smartphone, we’ll have to assume that.
And that is exactly why we’d love to ask for your help: please tell us if you stumble upon a bug! Get in touch by e-mail, leave a comment right here on the blog or send a tweet. Any medium is perfect, but please never forget to include some information about the mobile device you are using, your operating system as well as your browser. Thanks to those details, we can find a bug much faster – and get rid of it. A huge thanks up front for supporting us!
Update, June 24th: Thanks so much for your helpful feedback! We just pushed two updates based on your comments. One, you’ll now find a link in the footer of the standard browser version as well as the mobile version which lets you switch to your preferred version. Two, in the mobile version, we changed the icon to edit a time entry. Now, it’s the crayon you know from the standard version, we skipped the »>«. Hope you like it!
April 27
Time entries with multiline notes
If you have to specify in great detail what you’ve been working on, or if you’d simply like to structure your notes in a better way, today’s update is for you: the note of a time entry can now be multiline.
The first point that was important to us while crafting this improvement was to keep the input form tight. Adding a time entry should be possible in no time, that’s for sure, but furthermore, the form itself should reflect this rapidity visually. Therefore, we kept it streamlined: now, it’s a two-liner by default. When entering more text, the text area simply grows accordingly. When entering more than six lines, a scroll bar will appear.
The second point crucial to us was not to break the current workflow of many users: by hitting the Return key, you were able and you are still able to send the form, to add the time entry. To prevent collisions, we therefore taught mite to trigger a line break within the notes field as soon as somebody hits Shift+Return or Shift+Enter. We updated existing text areas, e.g. when adding or editing a new customer, project etc., accordingly. We do know that this solution is not a perfect one – we think it’s the best though. Please give yourself some time to adapt to this slightly modified behavior.
Along with this obvious update, the multiline notes, we released some minor enhancements as well, all dealing with adding time entries, such as:
- Hours first: The most important field of all, »Hours«, now holds the top position within the form as well. This improves the time tracking process if you navigate by keyboard. You can now tab through all attributes smoothly.
- Advanced arithmetic: More complex operations such as »2:15+0:30*1.5«, input in the field »Hours«, are now interpreted as well.
Thanks to all users who sent us feedback to push those updates forward! We hope they’ll help you – and all the other mite.users – track your times in a better way. Keep it coming, please, we love to learn from your experiences.
March 29
Upgraded: DynaMite, the mite.client for Mac users
Hear hear, Mac users: version 2.0 of DynaMite was released today. With DynaMite, you have full control over your timers directly from the menu bar of your operating system – it’s kind of a remote for your mite.
Thanks to the new version, time entries can now be enriched with notes. Plus, stopping a ticking timer became a whole lot easier: just right-click on the orange icon in your menu bar to stop the timer.
Features
- Always keep an eye on ticking timers; And never forget to switch ’em off, ever, again.
- Start, stop or switch timers with a single click.
- See the total working time of your last working days at a glance.
If you’re tracking your exact working hours throughout the day, DynaMite makes time tracking so much more easy. Really – we’ve been using it ourselves.
Installing DynaMite
DynaMite makes use of our open data interface, the mite.api. To setup the connection, you’ll have to activate the mite.api within your account first. You’ll find this option by clicking on your user name in the upper right-hand corner in mite. Please activate the corresponding checkbox there and save your changes.
During set-up, DynaMite will ask for your account name: that’s the subdomain of your mite.account. E.g., if you login at http://testteam.mite.yo.lk, the account name is »testteam«.
Later on, a window will pop up, asking for your e-mail address and your password, or, your Mac will ask you to allow using your mite.credentials stored in your key chain. Please enter the credentials asked or allow access to those infos in your key chain. DynaMite needs those credentials to connect with your mite.account.
Trial vs. full version
You can give DynaMite a try for free: the only limitation of the trial version is that timers won’t run for more than 30 minutes at one go.
A single license of the full version of DynaMite can be purchased within the external application. DynaMite is €10 $15, support by MediaAtelier included. Mac OS 10.5+ is required.
Merci, MediaAtelier
Adding notes to time entries in DynaMite was feature request number 1 since the first beta version. But, this feature wasn’t trivial to add. Stefan Fürst, developer of DynaMite, had to rebuild DynaMite from scratch to make this happen. Therefore, we’re double grateful he took this step. Thank you, Stefan!
Last but not least: Stefan is also the brain behind GrandTotal, the invoicing app for Mac users that integrates with mite. We’re happy to inform you that this hint might be special to you. There’s a promotion going on: If you buy GrandTotal and DynaMite bundled, you won’t pay a Cent for DynaMite. The bundle costs exactly the same as a regular license of GrandTotal.
January 18
Trac2mite, a plugin to connect web-based project management with time tracking
Trac users, this one’s for you! Thanks to this plugin developed by Thomas Klein, time entries tracked on tickets within Trac can now be sent automatically to your mite.account.
Trac2mite joins the team of two other issue tracking systems that play well with mite already: Mantis and Redmine.
About Trac
Trac is an open source issue tracking system for software development projects. Besides issue tracking, it provides an interface to Subversion or other version control systems as well as an integrated Wiki. Trac is written in Python and actively developed since 2005.
Trac2mite: Features
Trac2mite connects your Trac account with your mite.account. Track your time on tickets within Trac and get them send automatically to mite. Within Trac, you might specify which projects and services from mite should be available to select in Trac. Furthermore, dynamic comments are available: you can specify if information such as the title or the ID of a ticket should be added to the notes of your time entries.
Setup
Trac2mite makes use of our open API. To setup the connection, you’ll have to activate the mite.api within your account first. You’ll find this option by clicking on your user name in the upper right-hand corner in mite. Please activate the corresponding checkbox there, copy your API key and save your changes.
Additionally, the TracHoursPlugin is required.
Currently, installing Trac2mite is a little bit tricky: Until this issue is resolved you’ll have to install the plugin in development mode as described in the Readme file, so please follow those instructions.
Download
Please head over to GitHub to get the latest version of Trac2mite. Thomas Klein who developed the plugin published it under the free MIT license. Help yourself, grab it, fork it, improve it! And please don’t forget to get in touch with Thomas or a leave a comment here if you’re missing anything or would like to help by giving feedback. As the plugin is clearly beta, this would really help a great deal – thanks so much!
January 08
Launch: mite.go, the app for iPhone / iPod Touch
Now that’s a headstart for 2010: two 3rd party developers, Daniel Rinser & Victor Saar, released an app to bring mite to the iPhone / iPhone touch! The native app named mite.go joins the official version for the iPhone browser. From today on, you might choose to use the faster and more feature-rich iPhone app.
With mite.go, time entries can be added very easily. A timer is available as well; you’ll find it on the dedicated timer view. A smart icon right within the menu bar allows you to make sure at a glance if a timer is ticking. Furthermore, customers, projects and services can be managed with mite.go – a feature which is not available in the official browser-based iPhone version. The interface adapts graphical elements known from mite; it’s well-arranged and useable.
You can find more screenshots, system requirements, the feature roadmap and support details on the site of mite.go. The app is $4.99 (3.99 €, 5.50 CHF), you can download it from the App Store. Please note that you’ll have to activate the mite.api, our open data interface, first: You’ll find this option by clicking on your user name in the upper right-hand corner within mite.
The developers are definitely looking forward to improving mite.go based on your feedback. So please take a minute and tell them how it’s working for you! You might even want to add a review on the App Store? Other users would benefit from your opinion, for sure. Thanks in advance to you, and of course to Daniel & Victor for developing this great app!
December 05, 2009
Bulk edit time entries
Managing your team’s time entries? Thanks to today’s update, that’s a piece of cake. From now on, you can bulk edit time entries. Finally!
Of course, you can edit the project, the service, the user or the »locked« state of one or several time entries with a click. Notes can be edited very flexibly: search & replace is available. Furthermore, hours can not only be set to a fixed quantity, but also rounded up or down to quarter, half or full hours. Finally, you might not only edit time entries, but also delete them.
If you are an administrator or the owner of the account, you’ll find the new bulk edit feature under the tab »Reports => Time entries«. Co-workers and time trackers are not authorised to bulk edit time entries.
Have a look at the short video screencast (1:25) to see the feature in action:
December 05, 2009
Lock time entries
Have you been looking for a way to flag those time entries that have been invoiced already, or those that have been checked and approved by a responsible team member? You weren’t the only one. And yes, we heard you!
Now, time entries can be locked. Locked time entries cannot be edited anymore. The feature is available for administrators and the owner of the account. Co-workers and time trackers will see if an entry is locked or not, but won’t be able to switch this status.
You’ll find this option under the tab »Reports => Time entries«. By clicking on the corresponding icon at the end of every line, the lock, a single time entry can be locked or unlocked. If you’d like to lock / unlock several time entries, bulk edit will be at your service. Of course, you can filter and/or group by this status.
December 05, 2009
New user role: the administrator
Managing user rights and responsibilities in mite got a little more elaborate today. You can now choose from four roles instead of three:
- the time tracker,
- the co-worker,
- the administrator and
- the owner of the account.
The time tracker corresponds to whom we used to call the user with limited rights. We simply re-named this role to a more self-explanatory one. Time trackers are only allowed to track time on projects they were granted access to. They only see their very own time entries. They’ll never see revenues.
The co-worker corresponds widely to the former default role, the regular user. Co-workers are authorised to manage customers, projects and services. They see reports of all projects including time entries of other users. What changed with the update is that co-workers are not allowed to edit other users and account settings anymore.
New: the administrator. Admins hold extended rights to manage the account and the team: they can add new users or edit existing ones. They can download invoices and backups. Furthermore, they are authorised to edit time entries by other team members and lock / unlock time entries – both of these features launched today as well.
The owner of the account is the most powerful user role in mite. He’s responsible for managing payment data. Only the owner of the account is authorised to cancel the account.
You can find a detailed overview of all roles & rights here.