Re: Clock tables and two ways to categorize tasks

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> here's the problem I'd like to solve.  I clock various tasks, and then
> generate a clock table.  So far, so good.  But now I'd like to know
> better where my time goes.  Most tasks I do have a few similar
> components: discussion/research, writing code, testing, etc.  I thought
> that I could create subheadlines under each of the tasks and give them
> tags like :discuss:, :code:, :test:, :debug: and so on.  (Not very
> convenient, but doable, maybe with a bit of Elisp to automate the
> process.)
>
> Now, I'd like to prepare two clock tables: one where I see how much time
> every task took, and one where I can see how much time I spent coding,
> testing, debugging, emailing etc.  I can see in the docs that there is
> the ~:match~ option, but if I understand it correctly, it can only
> restrict the table to /one/ tag, so I'd need to have as many tables as
> I have tags - not optimal.
>
> Any ideas?  Should I use something else than tags for that?
>

Although I haven't tried it, I think you can have multiple tags. You
should be able to do something like

+TEST+DEBUG-DISCUSS

which would give you those tasks with tags :TEST: and :DEBUG: but not
:DISCUSS:

Have a look at the 'Matching tags and properties" section in the manual
(under the agenda section).

Another approach (actually the one I use) is to put things at different
levels. So at level 1 is the Tasks heading, at level 2 is each TODO at
level 3 is each subtask and at level 4 are the task activities (****
Research, **** Code, **** Meetings, **** Testing, **** Documentation).

My main clock table has :maxlevel 4, which shows a complete breakdown
while the table I use for invoicing (where I only want to show total
time, main task time and sub-task times, but not the level 4 stuff) has
:maxlevel 3.

Actually, I lie a bit. My current invoicing approach actually uses a
custom :formatter function so that my invoice clock table has columns
for rate, amount and total amount. However, the :maxlevel approach was
where I started!

--
Tim Cross