Taglog tutorial - More about Projects
Taglog uses the term Project
to mean a label by which you wish to measure chunks of time.
In conventional usage a project has a beginning, a middle, and an end - but in Taglog there may also
be 'projects' which are ongoing. For example your company may want to account for time spent on
Safety activities seperately from work which is directly charged to particular customers.
Attributes of a project
Start and End Dates
By default when you add a project the start date is set to the current date
and the end date is not specified.
If you are working beyond the end date of the project then it is 'Closed' - which means that it
does not show up in the Project selector in the central menu bar for booking time to it.
It will still show up when picking entries by project in the File/Open... selector.
Booking Code
It may be that your projects have useful titles, such as 'New Computer Suite', but that you are
supposed to book to, for example 'P0152'. You can use the Booking Code field to record the names
your time booking system wants you to use for projects, and use a more meaningful name for your
own use.
It could also be that your administrative processes generate the official booking code some time
after you are expected to start work on the project. As long as you have a booking code by the
time you generate the Time Bookings Report taglog will work quite happily on just a title.
Breaks
Projects which are labeled as 'Breaks' are ones which are not working time. If you have, for example,
a lunch break which is not part of your working hours you could create a project called Breaks, and
'book' your lunch times to this project.
Breaks projects are counted seperately in the reports.
Overheads
You may have activities which can not be associated directly with an
individual chargeable project, but which should be spread in an
equitable manner across your other projects - for example filling in
your timesheets.
You can create one, or more, projects which are flagged as Overheads.
Active Projects
If you have a large number of projects which are Open (that is, the
current date is between their Start and End dates) then you may find
that they become difficult to manage. By flagging the ones you are
actively working on as Active they are moved to the top of the
Project selection list.
Projects which are marked as Active also always appear in the
Project Times display invoked through Projects/View.
Immutable Projects
Projects which are flagged as Immutable are (like Breaks projects) not eligible
to have Overheads time spread into them.
You might wish to use the Immutable flag for projects such as Bank Holidays, Leave,
or Sick Leave which should not be 'bulked out' with your administrative overheads.
Working with Projects
This is done through the Projects/Add menu item.
Editing a Project
This is done through the Projects/Edit menu item. You are presented with a scrollable
list of all the projects, and can use this to, for example change the Active flag on
a project - if you start actively working on it - or possibly if your involvement with
it is largely over. This is also where you set the end date of a project - usually to
todays date, to indicate that it is Closed, and hence no longer available for new
time bookings.
Note that you might have Actions which are associated with a project - and if you
close the project before you have finished all the actions (there is no check for
this yet) then you will still accumulate time booked to those actions as booked to
that project.
Deleting a Project
Projects can be deleted through the Projects/Edit menu entry. There is a 'Delete' checkbox
at the end of each project line. Select the Delete checkbox for each project you
wish to delete and click OK.
You may want to keep projects around for a while after they are closed so that they
still appear in the dropdown lists for the File/Open... selector.
Importing projects from a central server
It is also possible to set up a central server from which you can
import information on the available projects.
This is covered in the next section of the tutorial and is what the Projects/Update
menu item does.
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Author: John Lines
john+taglog@paladyn.org