

Show HN: We just released + open sourced our internal time tracking app Hours - jurre
https://happyhours.io

======
JazCE
Ok so i'm trying your hosted version of the app. New user. I get taken to the
New Entry page...

I haven't got a project, i can't create a project on the new entry page so i
have to go round the houses to add a project.

I haven't got any categories... where do i add categories as i can't do it
from the New Entry page... oh it's under my name... so round the houses to do
that...

once i have done that, adding an entry on todays date (the 8th) then shows a
popup that says "Jared worked for 5 hours on blah yesterday"

hmmm

~~~
jurre
Totally agree that the onboarding experience sucks, we need to improve that

Tracking this here:
[https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours/issues/132](https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours/issues/132)

------
jwrigh13
This seems like it would be good use of the new heroku button:
[https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/7/heroku-
button](https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/7/heroku-button)

I'm sure some people would like a one-click deploy of this app to their heroku
account.

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mschulze
My company also open sourced our time tracking application (it can do more,
like vacation requests and invoices). Right now only the backend API is open
source, you can find it here [1] and documentation here [2]. It is a REST API
secured via OAuth.

In the next few weeks we also want to open source our main client application,
an AngularJS app.

It is probably a little too much tailored to our needs to be used somewhere
else.

[1] [https://github.com/techdev-solutions/trackr-
backend](https://github.com/techdev-solutions/trackr-backend) [2]
[http://techdev-solutions.github.io/trackr-api-documentation/](http://techdev-
solutions.github.io/trackr-api-documentation/)

~~~
jurre
Oh that's also pretty cool! Props for open sourcing it

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davidkatz
First impression: feels undifferentiated. It doesn't seem to be particularly
quick on the data entry, or particularly powerful on the analysis and
reporting side. Perhaps there's something great about it, but if so at least I
didn't get the message.

~~~
Void_
I don't understand why do people keep tracking time through web apps.

I built Zone ( [http://rinik.net/zone/](http://rinik.net/zone/) ) because I
couldn't find any product where you could track time really quickly.

~~~
jbrooksuk
I love Zone, I just wish that it could track what applications I'm using and
for how long.

Thanks for your work!

~~~
Void_
Thhanks. Have you tried RescueTime?

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the-dude
Haha, this is funny.

I interned 1 week at this company in 1991 as a 'snuffel-stage' while in high-
school ( Kraneweg at the time ).

Congrats on the App!

~~~
jurre
That's awesome! :D

~~~
the-dude
It was awesome, they really went out of their way and teamed me up with
someone every other day:

Monday: Desktop publishing with Ventura and LASER printers. Yes:
laserprinters. Tuesday: Hit the road to install network at a client site with
Coaxial cables. Wednesday & Thursday: Let me sit in with the dev guys:
TurboPascal. Friday: Assembling PCs.

Still wondering if they pulled a trick on me with the mystery customer showing
up.

Fond memories & have been in IT all my life.

~~~
jurre
That's exactly how I imagine that era, feel free to drop by for a coffee if
you're ever around (we're @ zuiderpark now)

------
jurre
The github project is over at
[https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours](https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours)

~~~
epaga
Would be helpful to have license information in the readme. What license is it
under?

~~~
jurre
You're right, totally missed that! Let me double check at work in a few
minutes but I'll probably add an MIT license with a disclaimer to please don't
be a jerk and offer a paid hosted version yourself

~~~
gokhan
So you'll give us the permission to go commercial with your code and call us
jerk if we actually go commercial?

~~~
haar
He grants the rights to go commercial with their code, but reserves the right
to call us names for doing so. Still sounds like a good deal to me.

~~~
rjtavares
Name-calling rights are far too often forgotten in modern day contracts, I'm
afraid...

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aruggirello
I too am developing an automatic time tracking application (for the Linux
desktop, but I think it might be made to work cross-platform): the idea is
that, you just install it, you might then optionally choose apps or files to
identify your project activities, and it will auto-detect time spent within
those apps; it will come with a pre-populated database of known apps so that
it can handle most common activities automatically.

It works by monitoring current processes, and checking the title of the
currently focused window, applying a number of regexes to identify an
activity, and saving results to a database. It should be able to handle screen
savers, visited URLs, and automatically take snapshots of unidentified windows
so that you can later map them to a known activity.

I envisioned this tool for personal use; however, it could be deployed to
monitor employees in a centralized manner, though this might even be illegal
in many countries.

~~~
jurre
I can imagine that could be nice especially for freelancers or just to track
your own productivity!

Our use case was more that we have a lot of different projects and we didn't
really have any insight on how we were spending time within those projects.
For example we wanted to know if spending more time on prototyping would cut
down on development time or why one project took a lot longer than another.

~~~
welder
For programmers this is a time tracker built into your text editor
[https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com)

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timc3
I think this would have a lot more value if integrated with ticket tracking
systems which already contain a little of interesting information - type of
tickets, type of work, component etc..

~~~
onion2k
The problem with integrating time tracking with other business systems is that
outside of software development the tools utterly suck for integrations.
Integrating with calendaring apps or task management or CRM is either really
hard because there isn't a public API or the tools are very basic because the
API has to easy to use, or the system is expensive to develop for being the
API is complex. Plus the API ends up dictating how you organise the data
rather than the business choosing how to use the tool - eg 'every job must be
part of a project that's owned by a client' .. that sort of limitation quickly
makes the tool inflexible and hard to use.

If you look at integrating with software development tools like ticketing or
bug tracking you have to remember that in the majority of companies, even if
you only look at software companies, most people aren't developers once you
get to more than about 10 staff. You have sales and admin and managers. What
that means is that you either end up with a time tracking tool that does very
little outside of tracking time or a time tracking tool with a raft of
features that don't apply to most of the people using it. Both of which are
bad for some of the users.

All of this is compounded by the fact that most people don't want their time
to be tracked. Even if you love your job, having someone reviewing how you
spent your time feels like you're being micromanaged and watched over. That
just isn't a good feeling.

Time tracking is a _surprisingly_ hard problem to solve once you get past just
a log of 'On A/B/C worker X worked on Y for Z hours'.

------
fsiefken
BUG report in trial: when i click on edit profile or categories i get signed
out (latest Chrome on Linux). Probably the click is registered as a sign out.

~~~
jurre
Looking into it, haven't seen that before! Thanks for letting me know!

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fsiefken
It's really nice that one can host it on their own server, what are the
minimum requirements? For example, 1 GB ram? Gitlab, another rails app, for
example is a bit better with more. Are there any features that Hours offers
that Harvest doesn't?

~~~
jurre
We're hosting this on Heroku, I think you should be fine on their free
instance which has 512mb I think? :)

------
NicoJuicy
Haha, i noticed "Intern Overleg" on one of your screenshots. It's probably a
strange word for non-dutch speakers ;)

It looks okay though, but i haven't tested it just yet.

Hello from Belgium ;)

~~~
jurre
Haha yes you're right! It's a screenshot of our actual instance of Hours,
maybe we should update it ^^

------
bold
Also noticed the two different icons being used (compare the 'clock' in the
logo and the favicon), doesn't seem to a lot of thought is put into it. It's
these little details that users like me - who are usually willing to pay for
services like these - are put off because most probably these details are just
the ones on the surface. I'll probably stick with
[http://www.tickspot.com](http://www.tickspot.com)

~~~
jurre
Oh that also looks great! :)

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perfunctory
"Time registration that doesn't suck" \- is an oxymoron.

------
bold
No privacy policy at all? That's an absolute 'NO'.

~~~
jurre
You're right, tracking this here
[https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours/issues/135](https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours/issues/135)

------
aebersold
I'm sorry, but your app lacks a lot of required functionality. Even for a
lightweight time tracking app.

The statistics are very pretty but not very useful. The lacking of printable,
full reports on project bases, is a dealbreaker for me. Also add a text field
to the time entries, tags are often not sufficient. Also no date filtering?
Only full hours, no half hours? The sidebar says I logged time for yesterday,
if it was actually today. The edit userprofile link doesn't work.

Haven't you tested your app at all?

~~~
jurre
Thanks for your feedback, yes we've been using it for about six months now and
it's been working for us. Feel free to submit a pull request with anything you
think is missing :)

The sign out on edit is a new bug, we're tracking it here:
[https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours/pull/131](https://github.com/DefactoSoftware/Hours/pull/131)

~~~
aebersold
I'm not going to help you build missing features, so you can profit of other
people's work by hosting the paid app.

What you have at the current state is not an MVP, it's a buggy prototype. Why
should I use a time tracking app when I can't export my hours to write an
invoice?

~~~
linuskendall
The code is MIT licensed, so your contributions would be too. Sure they can
make money off it, but so can anybody else who feels like forking (or even
just pulling) the code.

If you find it a good base to work on, submit pull requests. If it's not for
you, just move along.

