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fathomssen / redtimer

RedTimer - Redmine Time Tracker
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
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Ability to pause the timer #102

Open russ3ell opened 7 years ago

russ3ell commented 7 years ago

It would be really great if I could pause a timer instead of just the start and then stop and record issue

fathomssen commented 7 years ago

Hi @russ3ell

Why would you want to pause the timer? If you pause it, resume and later stop the timer, it will upload confusing data to Redmine.

For example: You start the timer at T, pause it at T+1, resume it at T+2 and stop it at T+3. RedTimer will upload the time diff(T, T+1) + diff(T+2, T+3) starting at T and ending at T+3. So the recorded time is shorter than the start and end time would suggest.

Furthermore: What benefit would you have by not exactly recording your time? What is the disadvantage of uploading all recorded times to Redmine?

Best regards Frederick Thomssen

russ3ell commented 7 years ago

When we use the timer we are interested in the actual time spent on the issue in preference to the elapsed time. So, when we pause a timer it means that we are no longer working on that issue, but will work on it a bit later. This can be for several reasons, including:

· You are waiting for an event to complete before you can continue on the issue

· You are taking a break (lunch etc)

· A more urgent issue has arisen and you have to put your current issue on hold

· You have to answer the phones as well as work on issues

I think the main reason for not just stopping the timer and starting it again is client visibility. It is much clearer for the client if they see a single comment on the issue and can associate that with a specific amount of time. The more timings per comment there are the more difficult it becomes for the client to associate comments with the time taken. I also believe it appears more professional to the client if there are not multiple time entries for a single comment. It might seem to the client that we are not particularly interested in fixing the issue and only bother to work on it when there is nothing else to do.

All the best

Russell

fathomssen commented 7 years ago

So what you want is that the RedTimer remembers paused times locally and resumes at that time when the issue is resumed unless it is stored to Redmine?

This would require a spooler as suggested in #6. I admit that it is a useful feature but will be complicated to implement. I will look into it in September (or we find someone else to implement it 👍 ).

Best regards Frederick Thomssen