What is Va Temps?

Va Temps is a time-tracking tool running on PalmOS version 3.5 or greater. I use it daily on a Tungsten T5 with PalmOS 5.4. It uses approximately 85K of memory and is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Why use Va Temps instead of another time-tracking tool?

Because you find out that sometimes you do several things at the same time and no other application than Va Temps can track such a behavior. How? Imagine that you are monitoring a compilation and fixing the bugs of an application, call it "Lamba". During this work, when the compiler prevents you from doing any changes on your code, you check your emails and answer to some users of Lambda. In this situation, you would like to know how many time you spent answering emails and how many times you spent programming Lambda.

Va Temps offers you two easy ways to track that kind of cases: On a one hand one you can track that approximately, on the other hand you can track it exactly.

First, you can start a counter for the compiling task. Then, each time you answer an email, you can start a counter for the answer and stop the counter when you've finished. Setting the counter as exclusive will prevent the compiling tracking to accumulate time. When the compiling task ends, just stop the counter. Both counters express the real time passed on both tasks and the sum of them is equivalent to the time spent since beginning the compilation until you stopped it.

You can also start a counter for the compiling task and stop it when you have finished. Then, estimating that you have passed 2/3 of your time compiling and 1/3 answering emails, you can duplicate the time record, set its name to "answering emails", and assign it the 1/3 rate (through a priority feature). In this case, the sum of both activites is equivalent to the total amount of time spent since you started until you finished.

What else is Va Temps good for?

When you need to track time of different nature. For instance, when you're developing an application, you need to read a manual, check a book,or an article, whatever. At the end, you would like to know how many time you spent on the project as well as the time used to learn. The first information is the apparent time to complete the project and the second one is the hidden time included in the project developement. The first amount may be interresting for you as a statistical value whereas the second is a mandatory information for your boss!

Speed and efficiency

Obviously, a time tracking tool must be as simple and as fast as possible. The logging must be quick and Va Temps has been thought and designed close to this constraint. Few shortcuts and simple clicks are needed to start, stop, duplicate, or delete a time trace (the time record).

Moreover, Va Temps can also give quick answers about spent time. A very powerful filtering mechanism can answer questions like "How many time did I spent on the project Lambda the last 10 days?", or "How many time since november the 1st did I really spent on the project due to the fact that I want to retract the time spent on readings?" You can set a date range to display and hide the records of a certain kind based on their beneficiary, project name or activity type.