© 1999 Steven Young
Documentation
Introduction
These are the (brief) instructions for using the Time Machine software for Palm Pilot. This is beta software, meaning that you, the user, will be helping me to iron out the bugs (or "features"). I have been using this software for some time now, and it does at least appear to be stable. I make no promises, however (or guarantees, or warranties, for that matter). I wrote this program to help me keep track of my billing at work as automatically as possible. This program will export time in a format which is readable by the DTE billing program. Although my billing is not yet as automatic as it can be, I am still working on streamlining the whole ugly process.
This software is being released subject to the GNU Public License. This license can be found here. In short:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA.
Feel free to contact the author, Steven Young at:
s d y @ l o o p y w a r e . c o m
Now, on with the documentation...
Installing
If you are familiar with installing programs into your Palm Pilot, this should be a piece of cake. Look around in files you received for one called "timer.prc". That is the program, the whole whopping thing. Install that in your pilot, and installation is finished.
Now, if you are not familiar with installing software in your Palm Pilot, this will take a little longer. As I mentioned above, find the file called "timer.prc". Now, if you are using a fairly new version of the Pilot Desktop software (if you have a Palm III, you probably are), then try double-clicking on the icon for "timer.prc". See that dialog box that appeared? Just select which user's Pilot the program should go in, and you are done. Next time you HotSync, the Time Machine program will be loaded.
Now, what if you don't have a recent version of the Pilot Desktop software? Well, you really should get a newer version, 3Com distributes this software free. Look around their web-site, you should be able to find it. Otherwise, look around for a directory called "pilot" in the root directory of your hard-drive. If you don't know what that means, I just can't help you. In the "pilot" directory (ok, call it a "folder" if you must), there should be a program called something like "instapp.exe" (I am going from memory here, so give me a break if I didn't spell it correctly). Run that program. It will ask you where the program is you want to install. Hopefully you remember where the "timer.prc" file is -- find it and select it. Close the instapp.exe program, and the next time you HotSync, Time Machine should be on your Pilot.
Using Time Machine
When you start up Time Machine, you will see a screen that looks like this:
Before messing with anything you see here, you should first enter some information that will allow this program to export your time to DTE. Hit the menu button (it is on the lower left-hand side of the "graffiti" space). When the menu pops up, hit "preferences". That should bring up a screen like this:
There are two fields to be filled in. The first is your timekeeper number. If you don't know this, ask your assistant, or open DTE and double-click the timekeeper box for a list. The second field is your timekeeper name. For some people this is the first initial of the first name, followed by the last name (mine is "syoung"), but for others, I think three initials may be used. The only surefire way I know to find this is to export some time from DTE and take a look at the exported file using a text editor or word processing program. The first thing in the exported DTE file will be your timekeeper number. After that will be a vertical line "|", then your timekeeper name. This is what you enter in the preferences screen in Time Machine. When you are done, hit the "OK" box.
Now, going back to the main screen, what you are looking at is a blank timer. You can add as many timers as your Palm Pilot has free memory for (you should be able to have one timer for each project you need to keep time for, i.e. each client-matter number). To fill in the necessary information, just tap on each blank button. The one in the upper-left corner will ask for a client number, the one in the upper right will ask for a matter number. Below these are buttons for the client name and the matter name. Finally, the lines in the middle of the screen are where you write the description of the task you are working on -- this is the description that will show up in the client's bill. For example, a filled out timer may look something like this:
To add new timers, just hit the "Add" button. You will be presented with a blank timer to fill in. The newly added timer will be at the "bottom" of the list of timers. You can move between timers using the up and down arrows on the screen (below the total button), or using the up and down buttons on your Palm Pilot (between the address book button and the to-do list button). Timers can be deleted using (of course) the "Delete" button. Be aware that when a timer is deleted, any information (including accumulated time) in that timer is deleted as well.
To start a timer which is not running, just hit the "Start" button. Once the timer starts running, you should see time accumulating in the long bar below the description field. While a timer is running, the button which had been the "Start" button becomes a "Pause" button. Hitting the "Pause" button stops the timer. Any time you turn a timer on, any other running timer stops (you cannot bill on more than one project at a time). When switching from one project to another, just go to that timer and hit "Start". Timers will continue to run and accumulate time when the Palm Pilot is turned off, or another Palm Pilot application is running. When you return to Time Machine, the timer which had last been displayed will be displayed. A running timer is shown here (you can'tell it is running because the "Pause" button is present):
If you leave the timer running when you don't want it running, or if you forget to turn it on when it should be running, you can manually adjust the amount of accumulated time in the timer by hitting the long bar that shows the amount of accumulated time. A box will appear at the top of the screen with three sets of up and down arrows. The sets of arrows allow you to increase or decrease the number of hours, minutes and seconds accumulated in the timer. An example of such an adjustment screen is shown here:
The "Active" button will take you directly to the timer which is currently running (if any are). Remember, only one timer can run at any time.
The "Total" button will display a screen showing you how much time you have billed in the current day, and how much of that time is billable. One oversight in this program (which will be fixed shortly) is that any client number that starts with a letter is assumed to be non-billable. This overlooks the fact that pro-bono matters and holding accounts both start with letters, and are both (generally) billable. Mea culpa. For now, Time Machine will under-report your billable time if you have pro-bono or holding account matters. The "Total" screen is shown here:
Exporting Time
There is still one important point to cover: exporting your time. It doesn't do you a lot of good for your Palm Pilot to know how much time you have billed if DTE doesn't know. That is what the export function is for. As you may have guessed, hitting the "Export" button will invoke the export function, although in normal operation you don't need to. When you start up Time Machine for the first time in a given day, any time left over in timers from a previous day are automatically exported to the Memo Pad application in your Palm Pilot. If you want to export your time to Memo Pad before the next day, just hit the "Export" button. You will see the accumulated time in all of your timers disappear (the descriptions are not cleared). If you switch to Memo Pad, under the "Unfiled" category, you should see a memo called something like "Time Machine - 5/1/1999". The contents of this memo will look something like gibberish. This particular form of gibberish, however, is the format that DTE expects when you import time to it.
When you perform a Hotsync, your memos (including the Time Machine memos) get downloaded into your computer. From here you (or you assistant, if your assistant has access to your Pilot Desktop program) can copy these Time Machine memos to a text file using copy and paste. In the Pilot Desktop program, go to the Time Machine memo you want to import to DTE and do a right-click in the memo portion of the screen. Pick "Select All" from the menu that pops up. Then right-click again, and pick "Copy". Paste this information into a text file (I generally use Notepad, which you can get to from the Start button by going to Programs, then Accessories). Remove the first line which reads "Time Machine - 5/1/1999", and save the file on your hard-drive as a text file with an extension of ".tim". From DTE, select "Import Time" (one of the buttons with an arrow). Go to the file you just created. If DTE asks you whether you want to import for the current date, say no -- the import file will tell DTE which date the time is for.
You can export more than one day of time at a time (thereby reducing the number of times you must import time into DTE). Just keep adding to the Notepad file the text from the Time Machine memos corresponding to the dates you want to import, deleting the "Time Machine - 5/1/1999" line each time. The resulting file should be a series of lines, each line starting with your timekeeper number.
This method of getting time into DTE is not as streamlined as I would like it to be. I am working on a conduit that will circumvent the necessity of copying and pasting from a Memo Pad record. This new method should automatically create files on your computer which are ready for importing into DTE. I may also add a button to the Preferences panel to allow a user to select an export option where Memo Pad files are created detailing the day's time in a human-readable format. The idea would be that the Time Machine memos could be printed from the Pilot Desktop program and given to an assistant for manual entry into DTE. I personally don't like this method, since it seems redundant for someone to have to type in information which is already in computer-readable form.
Tips
If you go to the "Prefs" application in your Palm Pilot, you can remap the physical application keys to different applications. By selecting "Buttons" from the list in the upper right hand corner of the screen, you are presented a screen with each button and the application it launches. You can change the application which is launched by each button by tapping on the application name next to the button. I like to be able to go directly to Time Machine (since I am starting and stopping timers all day long), so I have remapped my Memo Pad button to Time Machine. I selected Memo Pad because it is the least used of all of the hardware buttons on my Palm Pilot (if you assign it to the Calculator button, you have to turn the Palm Pilot on before launching the Time Machine application). An example of the button-assignment screen is shown here:
Another useful feature of the "Prefs" application is the "Shortcuts" feature. You select "Shortcuts" from the list in the upper right-hand corner of the "Prefs" screen. From here, you can create shortcuts for commonly used words. After entering a shortcut, you can use it in any Palm Pilot application, including Time Machine. For commonly used words in descriptions, I have created shortcuts. Look in your Palm Pilot Graffiti manual to see how to create the shortcut character (it is sort of like a cursive letter "l"). After making the shortcut character, you can write the shortcut and the operating system will substitute the longer word (or words) you want. I find this saves me a lot of time in writing descriptions of my day's activities. Here is an example of the "Shortcuts" screen:
I like to build up a list of commonly used timers, and just change the description each day to match what I am working on that day. If there is a timer which I have not used in several days, and I don't think I will use that one again soon, I just delete it.
After importing your time to DTE, you should select the list of time entries for each day and do a spell-check. The spell-check function can check through all of the entries for one day at the same time. I find that I misspell words more often on the Palm Pilot than I do on my computer.
Future Improvements
In addition to changing the things mentioned in this guide, I am planning several enhancements to Time Machine. One of these is an easier method of getting to the timer you want. At any given time, I can have as many as fifteen timers. To get to the timer I want to use next, I have to hit the up or down arrow until I get to the one I want. I have a better system in mind that allows you to select the client you want from a list, then select the matter number from another list. This enhancement should be available in the next release. I also hope to improve the efficiency of the code, so that future releases should be more memory-efficient than this one.
Please let me know if there are any additional features you would like to see in future releases of Time Machine.
Steven Young