Sunday, November 29, 2009
New release (1.0.1131) and x64 support for Linux
It finally happened. After attempting for as long as possible to have a single deb/tgz for 32 and 64-bit on Linux, I gave in and created a 64-bit package.
If you install the PAM module, the keyring will be unlocked on login, otherwise the keyring software will prompt you to enter your keyring password when you launch Worklog Assistant.
So now, time tracking for JIRA just got a little bit better on Linux ;-)
There is also one bug fix due to the recent change to group worklogs by issue in the pending worklogs screen.
Thanks for your time and happy time tracking!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
New release (1.0.1128)
The next improvement is one of my favourites: on Mac, the dock icon now contains the total of all the pending worklogs as well as the current active task. See the screenshot below:

There are also some minor but useful improvements to the idle time detection. Previously, when you returned from idle, say to check email or the time, Worklog Assistant would pop up and ask you if you wanted to apply the away time to a task. This behaviour has not changed.
However, the dialog would previously assume that if you returned, you were back for good. Now, when you return, you can leave the dialog open and Worklog Assistant will continue to track your away time. When you finally return and accept, the correct away time will be used.
This is very useful for those cases where you are doing a software build, or a run of tests and just come back to check if they are done. From now on, you can just leave the notice open and your away time will continue to be tracked.
JIRA 4.0 support
Thanks to the awesome backward compatibility work by Atlassian, Worklog Assistant always maintained JIRA 4.0 support. However, I can finally say that JIRA 4.0 is now officially supported. This includes the server side plugin as well as the desktop client. As an aside, I have officially switched to using JIRA 4.0 internally and it is at least 100 times better than JIRA 4.0. My favourite "new" features:
- Dashboard - Awesome!
- Activity stream - What issue did I just change?
- Greenhopper!
Last but not least, there is now a new "thin" installer for Linux. Basically, you untar+gunzip and you are ready to go. This should help on non-Ubuntu platforms.
I hope you find these new changes to be useful, I know I have. If you find any issues, please let me know.
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
New beta available
This beta has a bunch of minor improvements and one really cool new feature for Mac: a badge label for the Worklog Assistant application icon. Now, when you are tracking time and have pending worklogs to submit, the Worklog Assistant icon will show a label with the sum total of the elapsed time. Here is an example of what it looks like:

Sunday, October 4, 2009
New release (1.0.1123)
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Monday, September 21, 2009
New release (1.0.1122)
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Monday, September 14, 2009
New release (1.0.1118)
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
New release (1.0.1115)
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
New release (1.0.1113), logo design contest
The main change is a fix in how the view state for the list of JIRA issues is stored. Due to the nature of the problem, you will have to reconfigure your view. Please let me know if you have any issues.
Logo design contest
TheWorklog Assistant logo design contest on crowdSPRING has been concluded. I have a week to make my decision. There are some really good entries there. I am not certain on which one I will choose but if there are any that stand out, please tell me which ones in the comments!
Running the contest on crowdSPRING has been great. The one thing I've noticed from other contests is that people tend to submit multiple variations on the same theme. I'm not sure why the designers do this but I was explicit in my instructions that they should not do this. Some of them did comply but others didn't.
I notice that none of them tried to do a tree log based logo like my daughter did. How creative are these creatives anyway? ;-)
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Monday, July 27, 2009
New logo competition
I know some of you have not been entirely happy with my choice of logo so far and I've heard you. As a result, I've created a competition for a new logo on crowdSPRING. What is cool about it is that all of the design takes place as a competition, so you can choose the best one.
The competition is here: http://bit.ly/ihfVC
What can I do?
- Comment here on which one you like best
- Leave a comment on crowdSPRING (will require registration) - This way, the designer can get your feedback.
- If you are a graphic designer or know one and want to make some money, submit a logo!
Why?
I think this is probably the one thing people have been most vocal about publicly and privately! I'm happy to give you an avenue to choose the route that will make your life a bit easier :-)
And if I don't care?
Don't say I didn't warn you!
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
New release (1.0.1111)
Sorry for any inconvenience!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
New release (1.0.1108)
Previously, Worklog Assistant would happily track the time against the JIRA issue when you left your desk. That would still result in accurate timing when you are trying to look at the "average time to close", for example. However, some practices might require the user to book this time separately.
Enter "idle time detection."
Now, when you are away from your desk for a configurable amount of time (default is 10 minutes), Worklog Assistant stops tracking against the active JIRA issue and tracks how long you have been away. Upon your return, you are prompted to book the away time to a specific JIRA issue. You can see how this works in the sequence of screenshots found in the documentation.
The second major change is to do with the ability to create an ad-hoc filter by replacing the "other issues" field with a field that will search JIRA for issue keys as well as text searches. You can see this field in action in the screenshot below, along with the tooltip help:

In addition to these two feature changes, there have been numerous minor bug fixes along with a couple of serious ones for Mac. I hope you enjoy these changes and please let me know if you have any comments/issues about these or any other features.
Have a good week and happy time tracking!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
New beta with idle-time detection
Well, now you no longer need to remember! The new beta of Worklog Assistant automatically detects when you are away from your machine and stops the timer on the active task. On your return, Worklog Assistant will tell you how long you were away for and ask whether you want to apply the away time to a JIRA task. This works great for those persistent little interruptions.
You can see the workflow in action here.
I think this is quite possibly the coolest new feature, especially the workflow upon return, and I would be very happy with feedback.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
New release (1.0.1105)
My favourite long-time issue has finally been solved: http://gsfn.us/t/3xak . Now Worklog Assistant will correctly detect multiple instances and prompt you. However, as always, this can still be improved further. One such improvement is here: http://gsfn.us/t/8oln . Basically, don't prompt at all, just launch the original instance. If you would like this, please add a vote!
A special thanks to some adventurous users for testing last week's beta. Although no issues were reported, I would not have been able to be as confident as I am now. So, thanks again :-)
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Monday, June 22, 2009
New beta (could use some eyes)
Please download it and report bugs if you find any.
There will be no stable release this week as I work on stabilizing the beta.
A little story
As I was doing my final testing (ahem, after publishing the beta) I noticed that the Mac version had become completely messed up due to some minor but tedious misconfiguration. As a result, it would work just fine on my test machine, but not for anyone else! I stayed up till ~2am fixing it and uploaded a new beta.
This morning, my wife said she was sorry that I had to stay up late working on it. I told her that this is what dreams are made of! I have created something that whole companies use regularly and users that actually seem to care**.
For me, it was a thank you to those customers and users. For me, software development is less about software and more about solving problems. I would like to avoid all serious problems for my users if I can help it. Indeed, I was not even tired afterward and found it hard to fall asleep.
This has been my best month so far (2x anything else) so that was an added motivator. But I'd like to think I have not changed from the month where I had a single lonely sale, at least in how I approach solving problems for customers.
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
** Some users don't care about what it's called but really care that it works. For example, one user calls it "Weblog Assistant" in multiple, unrelated emails. I thought that is so awesome!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
New release (1.0.1103)
There is also a rewrite of how the project and issue links were being rendered to fix a small bug. I think I've stomped out all the bugs with the rendering but if you have any issues, please let me know ASAP, preferably with steps to reproduce.
The tray icon and tray icon context menu have also had a bit of a revamp. Please let me know if you like :-)
As always, happy time tracking and have a good week!
Monday, June 1, 2009
New release (1.0.1011)
Thanks and have a good week!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
New Atlassian plugin site
You might even find a little surprise there :-)
By the way, I'm pretty sure it's ok for me to link you from here but if it isn't, you didn't hear it from me!
New release (1.0.1099)

There were also some licensing related changes which were mostly to do with update notification when your license cannot be upgraded. If you experience any problems with licensing, please let me know ASAP so we can resolve it.
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Sunday, May 17, 2009
New release (1.0.1095)
There are also minor UI-related changes: when the reminder balloon pops up, the elapsed time is now shown as the current elapsed time + any pending worklogs. Previously, the pending worklogs were not included. A context menu for the tray icon has also been added.
Thanks and have a good week!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
New release (1.0.1083)
I've been concentrating on performance improvements for Worklog Assistant, specifically when it comes to filters with hundreds of issues. Hopefully this will be done in the next week. As always, if you do have some suggestions, please let me know!
Finally, an interesting link I just came across from the JIRA mailing lists: Tempo. This might be of interest to people who are not happy with the time reports of JIRA when it comes to integrated billing.
Have a good week and happy time tracking!
Friday, May 8, 2009
If you are interested in some technical behind the scenes stuff
Sunday, May 3, 2009
New release (1.0.1080)
Despite the short lifespan of Worklog Assistant, there are quite a few user-suggested modifications to Worklog Assistant. This past week, I've come to greatly rely on one specific feature: the time tracking reminder balloon. This was a feature added last week. I've come to rely on these other features as well:
- Tracking notes
- Hyperlinked access to a specific issue
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Editing a wiki page and then it hit me...
You can visit the new page here. For comparison, the original page is here.
The surprising thing is that as I was writing up the copy for the page, I realized how many people Worklog Assistant is affecting these days. I had set a few quantifiable goals for the first year of Worklog Assistant and I'm totally surprised to have met and surpassed all of them in 3 months since the official release.
Thank you for trusting in me and most of all, providing honest feedback. I am really excited about the future of Worklog Assistant and it is great to have you along!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
New release (1.0.1078)
One is a little message balloon to remind the user to track time. By default, the balloon pops up every 15 minutes but this can be changed in the configuration dialog. You can ignore the balloon or click it if you want to bring up Worklog Assistant and switch the JIRA task you are working on. An example of the message is below:


Sunday, April 19, 2009
New release (1.0.1075)
If you are curious, please visit the deployment guide for Worklog Assistant.
Thanks and have a good week!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
New release (1.0.1074)
The release also contains a feature which allows you to specify the visibility to use when submitting worklogs. Sometimes, you only want to restrict visibility to a certain project role. Of course, JIRA lets you do this but it is supremely annoying because you have to manually remember to set it every single time you submit a worklog. Well, with Worklog Assistant, now you just set it once in the configuration dialog and forget about it! See the screenshot below for an example:

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions or issues, let me know.
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Sunday, April 5, 2009
New beta
There are a bunch of fixes for some minor issues a well as some fixes for potentially major issues.
One new feature is the ability to restrict who can view the worklogs in JIRA by project role. So, for example, if you wanted to prevent the Customer role from viewing the specific worklog entries, you can always submit worklogs so they are only visible to Developers. That is pretty cool, now that I think about it! Note that JIRA still aggregates the worklogs so you cannot completely prevent others from seeing the progress.
I will make a stable release with these features next week. Please let me know if you have any issues with this beta and I will do my best to solve the problems as soon as possible.
Have a good week!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Lucky Cat release (naming releases is fun)
- Support for custom fields
- Mac support
Happy time tracking and have a good week!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
See, I wasn't lying (Mac beta)
Details:
- This is a beta
- Identical to Windows and Linux
- Universal binary (Intel or PPC)
- Tested on OSX 10.5 - should work on 10.4, let me know if it doesn't
Please submit all feedback about anything that you love or hate about it.
Thanks again to the early testers! If there are no show stoppers, this will be released next week along with a bunch of other updates.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Stable release delayed until next week
If you are pining for custom field functionality, please do try the beta version which is always available at http://next.worklogassistant.com/download.html
Mac update: The icons show up now! I've also been studying other Mac software disk images and I hope that WLA will have a first-class Mac experience as a result. That beta will be available some time this week.
Thanks and have a good week!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Custom fields (new beta uploaded)
If you install the plugin, you will also see values for a few new fields relating to time estimates: remaining estimate, original estimate and time spent.
This is quite possibly the biggest release in terms of number of people asking for this feature so I am happy to put up a beta. Please give it a run through and let me know of any problems. If no problems are found, I will make a formal release next week.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
New release (1.0.1062)
My favourite new feature is the ability to add an arbitrary set of issues to any returned filter. This feature was suggested by a user (thanks Sarah!) and I managed to go through a couple of iterations with a user online who was very helpful in pointing out issues and potential improvements (thanks Andy!) I can already tell you how useful this feature has been for me:
- I marked TRACKER-118 (the above feature) as completed
- Andy informed me of some usability issues
- I typed in TRACKER-118 into the field, hit Enter
- Right-clicked issue -> Workflow -> Reopen issue
- Double-click to start tracking time again
Support for custom fields (the biggest feature request) are almost completed in a branch and I hope to upload that to the beta site in the next few days. If you are interested in custom fields, please do try it out. I will make an announcement here when it is available. Note that support for custom fields (as well as some other features) will require installation of a RPC plugin to JIRA.
The Mac port is so close to complete, I am pretty upset that it isn't. The only issue is that I cannot get the darn icon to show up as the icon for the app bundle. If anyone reading would like to help me with that, send me an email and I'll send you the bundle. Otherwise I expect this to be uploaded to the beta site as well in the next few days once this issue is solved.
Thanks and have a good week!
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Beam me up! (New release + Mac)
This week has some updates to make Worklog Assistant work nicely with enterprise ("Beam me up!") deployments. The main changes are:
- Ability to restrict visible filters via an "admin" console
- Fully scriptable deployment including license installation
WLA is almost Mac capable (just got the Mac yesterday!) so if you are willing to help test on the Mac, send me an email. Please specify your version of the operating system, Intel v. PPC, as well as any suggestions you may have that would make it more "Mac-like". Though I'm also told I have to yet make it "Windows-like" :-)
Right now I'm thinking I need the following:
- Universal binary
- App Bundle
Thanks and have a good week.
Update: Here is WLA running under Mac. Got my work cut out for me...

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Enterprisey beta
One new feature is the ability to restrict which filters users can see. For example, if you have a requirement that you can only log work against issues in specific states, you can ensure that users only ever see the filters corresponding to these states. This is in direct contrast to the current behavior which is to use whichever filters the user wants.
Enjoy!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Inappropriate checkin comment (new WLA release)
Release notes:
- Make checking for updates optional (see configuration dialog)
- Really fix bug where column visibilities would randomly reset to defaults (show all)
$ bzr log | grep FRIGGIN
FINALLY FIXED THE FRIGGIN BUG!
A few days back, I noticed that if I cycled through my filters, occasionally, the column visibilities would be reset. That meant that all the fields I *didn't* care about would start showing up in the main window. I found it annoying but it did not happen too often so I filed a JIRA and continued working on other features.
I don't know what it was, but it started happening more and more often this week while I was using WLA. This was the most annoying bug in any piece of software ever written. And I wrote it! I could not rest until I fixed it. I made many false starts and even thought I fixed it at some point. I stared at the code for hours.
Finally, late last night I found the magic 8 lines needed to make it work.
So I am making a new release.
If you have had a problem with your column visibilities being reset, I strongly suggest you download this release.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
New release (1.0.1047)
The release notes cover all the major changes but my favourite new features are:
- The new "notes" section. You can add notes while logging time and these get sent to JIRA when you submit a worklog.
- Set the remaining time estimate when submitting worklogs
I'd just like to say thanks to the people participating in the GetSatisfaction forums (hi!) and those of you who have sent me suggestions or comments by email. I am very grateful!
Remind me to tell you how the version numbering goes at some point :-)
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Updated WLA::Next
- A new favourite feature: adding notes while logging time. This way, you don't have to wait until you are actually ready to publish your worklogs before entering the notes. You can see a screenshot here.
- The update button is made invisible by default. When an update is available, it is made visible and a system tray message is shown. Hopefully this should be a little less jarring than: HEY YOU STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND UPDATE RIGHT NOW! It is also better for those instances where the "check-for-updates" code fails due to proxy issues.
A new stable release will be made in the next week if no show stoppers are found here.
Friday, February 6, 2009
The best part
This post has some things I've been really wanting to say but I thought that I might seem too giddy. Today, I will take that risk because I feel that people should know why I will continue to do this.
Worklog Assistant is a boring application to most people but I have a strange tendency to want to solve boring, repetitive problems.
But that's not the best part.
I've even managed to snag paying customers (thank you!)
But that's not the best part.
The best part is the interaction with people who are using it. I love messages that start with:
"Hi, I find Worklog Assistant to be very useful, but it would be really nice if it could do XYZ"
Usually I respond with something along the lines of:
"What are you trying to accomplish?"
The conversation that results is like gold to me. They haven't always resulted in sales or modifications to the software but what they do is give me insight into organizational processes that I would never be able to experience otherwise.
That's the best part.
Thank you.
Alright, alright, maybe the insight is tied with the paying customers. But if the title of this post was "The tied-for-best part", that would be less interesting!
Thursday, February 5, 2009
New WLA::Next
Unfortunately, I have had to revert the custom field code because it was giving me grief. I apologize for any inconvenience. I will add a better version soon.
Please yell at me in the comments if this affects you :-)
Monday, February 2, 2009
Out of beta (and announcing perpetual beta)
Worklog Assistant, the only sane way to do time tracking with JIRA, has reached the all important milestone: build 1.0.1021 aka, I'm-not-in-beta-anymore-Mom! I've sent out all the thank-you licenses to beta testers who provided feedback so if I have missed you, please let me know ASAP!
For the impatient among us:
- Download latest WLA::Stable (for the subdued among us)
- Download latest WLA::Next (for the adventurous - see below for explanation)
I promise to have a proper change log on WLA's website in the near future, but for now, here we go. Changes in this build were mostly stabilization-related and improved support for Linux/Windows.
- Notify the user when the SOAP API is disabled (would save a few days of back and forth!)
- Support for Windows 2000 (yes, really)
- Better support for Ubuntu 32/64-bit
- Various bug fixes
One of the things I've really enjoyed with the beta test period is the ability to push out updates whenever I feel like. Now that I am claiming that WLA is no longer in beta, I must try and make sure that the release is as stable as possible. However, I still have this urge to push out the latest and greatest.
Therefore, I've pulled a Google and set up http://next.worklogassistant.com
Every piece of functionality that I implement will be posted here before it makes it into the stable release. Fortunately, since I have automated pretty much every single thing except the coding, this isn't very much work for me.
Once you install the "next" build, all the updates will based on the "next" branch. So be warned that there is no going back!
What you can expect to find there right now:
- Ability to set remaining time estimate when submitting a worklog: See here.
- Custom fields - NOTE: JIRA only allows retrieval of custom fields by an administrator. So if you are not an administrator, you will not see this. If you are interested in this feature and this makes it useless to you, I have a planned workaround posted here. Please tell me if the workaround is acceptable and I'll see what I can do.
- Use CTRL+Page Up/Page Down to change between the issues and pending worklogs tab
- Adding comments. In the context menu for an issue (right-click an issue), there is now an "Add Comment" entry. I love this functionality. I find it so useful.
- Various bug fixes (and new bugs?)
Thanks for all your feedback and here is to much more!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A short word on Linux support
Ubuntu x86_64(done)- Debian (testing) x86/x86_64
- Redhat x86/x86_64 /RPM support
$ apt-get install ia32-libs
# Depending on your distro
$ apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk
$ dpkg -i --force-all WorklogAssistant-<version>_i386.deb
My intent is to eventually remove this manual step. The native Debian support looks like it will be a 1.1 thing. I expect the Ubuntu x64 to be fixed up by release time, providing an interested user gets back to me ;-)
Update: said user got back to me and we are good to go!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Fixing up some first-time-use problems
Yikes.
I am not sure how many users have gotten this message before, but I'm not sure I want to know. Fortunately, enough of them got in touch with me to let me know that they were experiencing this error.
Some hmming and hawing eventually zeroed in on the cause: SOAP was diabled on the JIRA instance they were trying to connect to! Doh.
So now the first thing WLA tries to do when connecting to JIRA is determine whether SOAP is enabled and points you to a resource you can use to enable SOAP:

This addition will be in the upcoming release.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Feeds moved to Google
Feedburner feeds have been moved to Google. I really hope that there is no interruption as my feeds have yet to show up in my Google account. However, I can access them at the new URL so hopefully that is just some oversight on Google's part.
I had no choice but to move.
This will affect the 30 day feed, this feed and my personal blog. However, as the old feeds will be redirected, you should not need to change anything.
Cross your fingers.
Update: Feeds now show up in Google. Phew.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Mo' useful features
- Add worklog as a comment
- Enter elapsed time directly as a JIRA time string
A screenshot of both in action is below. In it, I am entering the elapsed time as a JIRA time string by typing in "1.5h". WLA automatically converts this to the canonical <

- 1.5h
- 1h 5m
- 5m
- 1h
- -1h
- 1.5h 5m
As for the second feature, by checking the box in the rightmost column, a comment is added to the issue which looks like the screenshot below:

Enjoy (and let me know how you like these updates!)
Monday, January 12, 2009
Ok... one more (and extended release date)
The main thing I wanted to be sure of was that if the update logic was broken, I could fix it without requiring an upgrade. The way I did this was to hit up a server controlled by me that would send the client's app version and the server would send a HTTP status code. 200 for new upgrade, 404 for nope.
I also wanted to be sure that if the client could not contact the update server for whatever reason, that it didn't impede the usage of the application.
Since this feature needs a while to bake, I'm extending the beta by two more weeks to end Feb 2, 2009. If you find any issues with this new feature which make it a misfeature or you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
RC2?
Why did I release a Linux build? Well, I developed WLA on Linux so it's kind of odd not to do it. Additionally, almost every third question I get is "where's the Linux build?" Almost exactly 1/3 of the traffic to the site is Linux (and yes, I do exclude myself in these stats.) Mac is about 3% and their surfing habits do not make me think they are really interested yet.
The Linux build is really alpha in the sense that I'm not sure what to expect from the deb package. Once you manage to install it, you should be good to go though.
Download it and give it a run!
http://worklogassistant.com/download.html
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Release candidate + date - 1.0.938
Version 1.0.938 of Worklog Assistant for JIRA time tracking has been released. This is the first release candidate. This means I don't plan to add any features until release.
- Proper Unicode support - Please let me know if you experience different
- Multi-line edits in a worklog comment are now enabled
- Pending worklogs column geometries are also saved
Thanks to those of you who have sent your general feedback and any bugs you've encountered. Your licenses will be on their way at release time! If your trials have run out, please let me know.
What's next
As I am not adding any features, the main thing remaining to do is to implement the Ubuntu installer. I am unsure whether there are any Mac users who are needing WLA so I will hold off until there is a need.Looking at the list of stuff to do, a few things jump out at me:
- When publishing a worklog, add the same worklog as a comment - Likely, this will be implemented via a checkbox column in the pending worklogs tab.
- Ability to update the estimate when publishing a worklog.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
New support channel

Next Gimp skill to learn: How to draw proper arrows.
Store in beta - 10% off
About this blog
We strongly believe that tracking your time properly is the first step to deterministic software development. If you feel that you have been guessing or you can't be bothered to remember to log time, Worklog Assistant might be for you!
Give it a try!
Please download a free 30-day trial today by clicking on the link below: Download