Orgzly as time tracker?

[rkoe]

I love Orgzly (thanks!), and in addition to using it as hierarchical todo-list, I'm also using it as (hierarchical) time-tracker -- since I don't know of any hierarchical time-tracker-app available, and love to have the time-tracker integrated into the todo-list, and the search/filter functions of Orgzly.

It would be great, if the time-tracker-feature, which I currently implement with an external script, could be integrated.
I'm a developer, so I could theoretically help implementing it, but I unfortunately don't have any experience with developing Android apps.

What I'm currently doing for time-tracking:

1. I've added a state "NOW". When I start an activity, I set the state to "NOW" in Orgzly; afterwards I set it to DONE/TODO/...
2. Then, I have to track (incl. timestamps), which activity goes into and out of state "NOW". For this, I currently use termux and a Python-script. The Python-script monitors my orgzly-files via inotifywait (or fallback: sleep + manually check), looks for changes in the files to/from state "NOW", and logs the name of the note (incl. hierarchical path) with a timestamp into a logfile.
3. For time-tracking analysis/summarization, I have a Python-script, which reads the logfile, extracts the NOW-durations, and shows them summarized for days/weeks/months and up the hierarchy, and can also export it in different formats.

Point 1 works already well in Orgzly, point 3 should probably always be an external script. But I would love to eliminate the need of a script for point 2, since this is not so reliable (starting the script on boot, inotify-problems on background apps etc.).
As far as I see it, Orgzly already logs some timestamps into some properties, e.g. CREATED, LAST_REPEAT or when an activity is DONE. It would be great, if Orgzly could also log timestamps for e.g. the state "NOW", since this would eliminiate the need of an external script for point 2.

So, I would suggest/wish:

• Orgzly should log a timestamp, each time a note goes into state "NOW" and out of state "NOW", and add it to a property of the note, e.g. NOW_TRACKER. Either both changes into one property with some flag indicating if it was switched to or from "NOW"; or two properties NOW_TRACKER_START and NOW_TRACKER_STOP, each being a list of time-stamps.

I would then adapt my analyze-script and publish it on my github account, so others could use it, too.

Would you be interested in this, and is there a chance for this to get implemented? Or do you maybe know a better way to achieve the same?

[amberin]

Hello @rkoe, thanks for your interest in Orgzly. Are you familiar with OrgMode's clocking commands and the "log time" feature in Orgzly? There is certainly a lot of room for improvement in this this area, but we should definitely integrate with these features.

[rkoe]

Thanks for your reply.
I noticed the OrgMode clocking commands when I started to use Orgzly years ago, but then it wasn't implemented in Orgzly.
It's nice that it's now partly implemented (orgzly/orgzly-android#15, orgzly/orgzly-android#691).
Is there some configurable "log time" feature, apart from this?

But unfortunately, the current clocking-command-implementation does not really solve it:

• Quickbar-Buttons: I cannot find any button in the quickbar for clock-mode, although they are mentioned in pull-request 691. I can only access clock-in/out via menu-button -> Clock -> Clock In/out/cancel, which is cumbersome.
  Is there any option to enable the quickbar-clock-buttons, or have they been removed again?
• Display: Is there any way to see/show which note is currently clocked-in? Ideally in a well visible way, like the states?
  That would be essential in my opinion.
• Search/Filter: Is there any way to use the clocked-in-state in the Orgzly search expressions?
  That would also be essential in my opinion.
• "done": It seems that marking a task as done does not clock-out. (as defined in https://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-Work-Time.html)

So, I think:

• There should be quickbar-buttons, at least for clock-in.
• There should be an automatic clock-out if a task is marked as done (and maybe if an other task is clocked-in, so that always max. 1 task is clocked-in).
• The current clocked-in-state should not only be retrievable from the logbook, but also be stored in a property, tag or state. Since the search expressions cannot use properties, that only leaves tag or state. I still like the idea of using the normal state for the clock-in-state, since it then can be seen, searched and filtered easily; but I understand that others may use the state differently.
  So a special tag -- maybe with a clock-icon shown in front of the note -- would probably be best.

[amberin]

Without looking into the details, as I remember it, all of the things you mention remain to be implemented. So I think this is where any development efforts should be directed.