Desktop Timer App on the way

For the last few weeks I've been busy working on our first Desktop app for Teamwork to make logging time faster and easier.

Using the web app, you can only have one active timer running at any one time. This was by design. We wanted an easy to use tool within the app to help people measure the time spent they spent working on a task or project.

As Teamwork is used by a multitude of different businesses and teams, we wanted to also offer a more advanced, flexible and feature rich add-on using the API that could benefit from technologies not available to a web app. Features such as minimizing to the System Tray (on Windows) or the Dock (on Mac), auto-pause when the computer is idle (and resume when user is active again), multiple account support (for people jumping between Teamwork accounts), multiple timers etc

In the first version due to be released in late December or early January the following will be available:

- Multiple timers and fast switching between them
- Select your Teamwork projects
- Optionally choose a task from the current project
- Auto-Pause and Resume when the computer is idle. You can decide how long the threshold is in the settings.
- Always on top of all other windows setting
- Minimize App to tray or dock
- Automatic saving/loading of timers when app loads or quits
- Edit/Add/Delete timers
- Pause/Resume timers
- Log time to your Teamwork account

I built the app using AIR and Flex so this is going to be a cross-platform app for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The API must be enabled for your user account in Teamwork to be able to log time.

Future plans include the ability to update your Teamwork status from within the app. We have some changes to make first to the way Status messages work in the main web app and this Desktop version will compliment the planned changes nicely.

Dan.

Billing Beta with Freshbooks Integration

Every once in a while we like to post up a sneak peek at what we're working on. As we're pretty close to a final version of the new Billing tab on a project, I'd like to give people the opportunity to test drive this new feature. In this round of Beta testing, we are looking for people who use Freshbooks.

If you use Freshbooks and would like to export your Teamwork billable time and expenses, send us a Feedback message from within your installation and we'll enable the tab for you.

When we enable the Billing tab, you will now be able to turn on Billing for existing projects and any new projects you create.

Once you create an invoice and add time or expenses to it, you will be able to export it in various formats.
  • PDF
  • Excel
  • Freshbooks

To connect with Freshbooks, you will need to enable the Freshbooks API in your Freshbooks account and grab 2 bits of information we need:
  • Your Freshbooks API URL
  • Your Freshbooks Authentication Token


The first thing you will be asked when you authenticate successfully is to choose a client from your Freshbooks account. We'll pull these back and allow you to choose the client from the drop down. Once you pick the client the new invoice will be posted to Freshbooks. Simple and cool.

We are currently working on 2 more integrations:
  • BlinkSale
  • Harvest
Once we have finished this round of Beta testing, we'll release this to everyone and it will be available to all customers of Teamwork. We'll post up a full blog post of how it works and how best to use it.

Dan.