Daily Time Log (Beta)

Basic IntelliSense and tools for planning Tasks and keeping a daily time log.

The extension is now in beta! (But still expect bugs, inefficient code and more goodies.)

FEEDBACK WANTED

This was originally an internally used extension. As our team has decided to no longer use text-based time logging, the direction of the extension is now more open. I would be glad for any feedback or other usecases to shape the future of this extension: 1nVitr0/plugin-vscode-daily-timelog#4

Usage

After installing the extension, it will offer basic IntelliSense for file of the format:

*.daylog.yml

It also offers some commands, the only ones implemented for now are Daily Timelog: Generate Task List and Daily Timelog: Generate Summary

Summary generation

The Task List or summary can be generated using the above commands. Several settings influence the behavior of the generation. Mainly:

• taskListDurationFormat
• taskListStructure
• taskListTitle
• summaryDurationFormat
• summaryStructure
• summaryTitle
• includeBreaks
• includeBreaksInTotal
• durationFormat
• durationPrecision

They should be self-explanatory with the exception of the durationPrecision. The duration precision controls, as the name says, the precision of the generated durations. But under the hood, the extension uses some fancy balancing to ensure the durations always add up to the desired amount while at the same time being as close as possible to the original duration. There are a few settings to control this, such as durationRounding, floorBelowMinimumDuration or forceMinimumDuration. durationRounding can be set to 'round', 'floor', or 'ceil', it is usually best to leave it at 'round'. When forceMinimumDuration is active, all tasks will have the minimum duration set in minimumDuration. When floorBelowMinimumDuration is active, all tasks below minimumDuration will be set to 0. The two settings are mutually exclusive.

The default summary for the below log would be:

*Today's Summary - 2021-02-12*

- Task 1: 2h 15m (DONE)
- Task 2: 1h 30m (40%)
- Task 3: 1h 45m
- Daily: 15m
- Extra Task: 2h 15m
- Breaks: 1h

= 8h

Intellisense

You can use intelliSense to find out more, but the basic file structure is:

date: 2021-02-03
plannedTasks:
  - Task 1: 1h 45m
  - Task 2: 7h 15m
  - Task 3: 15m
  - Checking Mails: 1h 15m
  - You can also use the !break tag in this section: !break 1h
timeLog:
  - "08:00": !begin Let's Start! (This line must always be present)
  - "08:45": Task 1
    progress: 40%
  - "09:00": Daily
  - "10:30": Task 2
    progress: 40%
  - "12:00": Task 1
    progress: 100%
  - "13:00": !break use the !break tag for breaks
  - "14:45": Task 3
  - "17:00": Extra Task

IntelliSense should offer you reasonably good predictions of durations, times and task names. It keeps track of the task names used in the plannedTasks section as well as the tasks already listed in the timeLog section.

Since Verison 2.1 a new feature "Running Tasks" was added. This enables the creation of a running tasks that automatically resolves to the current time when pressing Enter. This does mean, you can only add parameters to the task task after it's time has been stopped.

timeLog:
  - "08:00": !begin Let's Start!
  - "~08:45": !running Task 1 (When pressing Enter, this task will be automatically stopped)

Commands

Daily Timelog: Generate Task List will generate a human-readable list of your planned Tasks for the active file. The result will be put into your clipboard - ready to paste. Customization is already half-implemented.

Daily Timelog: Generate Summary will generate a list of your completed tasks including ones that weren't planned. Same deal as Generate Task List.

Daily Timelog: Generate Overview will generate a combination of your task list and timelog.

Daily Timelog: Start new Day will create a new daylog file based on the template defined in the settings. You will have to save the file as a '*.daylog.yml' before completions will be available.

Settings

The extension offers a variety of settings. The most important ones configure the format of the task List. Generally, the format for these settings is a string containing the standard double braces notation for params.

Available params will be supplied in the setting's documentation.

Custom Params

Custom Params can be included in the extension's settings. Two examples (goals and achievements) are already included. They will be suggested in the timelog files and can be included in the generated task list / summaries. They will be formatted using the template set in the configuration and can simply be included by using {{}} in another template.