One of the advantages of being a regular reader of Achieve-IT! is you just never know when I’m going to surprise you with a useful piece of software. Today is one of those days. TaskBlaze is a small, fast, efficient and easy to use application that keeps accurate track of your time dedicated to your tasks.
There are a couple web timer applications out there I know, but I couldn’t bring myself to launch a web browser, log into a site and then write down my task and start the timer. The only other option I knew of would be using Outlook’s built in Journal, which I can’t stand.
So instead I put together this simple stand-alone application which does much same thing as the others with several added advantages. First, it’s simple. There’s only 3 easy things for you to do and you’re off! Next, it tracks your time precisely and once you end a task it exports the task to your Outlook schedule so you have an exact measurement recorded for time management, billing or general reporting. Finally, it’s a stand alone application, so you don’t need a web connection to use it.
How to use:
First Download TaskBlaze.zip (127.0K) to your desktop computer and unzip it.
Launch the program and at any time hit the green “Start” button
Enter the name of the task you want to work on now
Enter your tags (i.e. categories) with a comma separating each one.
When you have completed your task, hit the red “Stop” button and your task will be automatically entered into your Outlook schedule reflecting the precise amount of time you spent working on it. Pretty cool, no?
It’s in beta so I’d really, really, REALLY appreciate feedback. My systems are running Office 2003, so I am unsure if it’s working with prior versions of Outlook. It should, but I haven’t been able to test it yet – let me know.
Link: Download TaskBlaze.zip (127.0K)
Technorati Tags: productivity, gtd, Goals and goal setting, task management, time management
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This is really cool!
I downloaded a tril of something a while back that was supposed to do a ton of stuff with OL tasks, but it was so cumbersome. All I really wanted to do anyway was track my time.
Thanks!
Thanks for the followup. What version of Outlook are you running?
I wonder if you could make a version that gives the information to Excel or a text document instead. I’m not a regular Outlook user, but if I was I’d definitely grab this. Good job!
Hey, this is a great addition to my toolbox! Unforunately, it doesn’t seem to work with Outlook 12 Beta. I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time! Thanks for taking the time to work on it.
Jeff,
Can you search your computer for Interop.Outlook.dll and drop that into the taskblaze folder? That may fix it.
Works fine with Office 12, all I did was add Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll to the TaskBlaze directory.
Works great! Thanks. I’d love for it to be launched as a right click option from withing Outlook though. I now use the GTD Outlook Add-In and have my task list with Project/ Subproject and Category set. If I could select a task in Outlook, right click, launch TaskBlaze and it copies the name of the task, its categories, and possibly project/ subproject (though not necessary) into TaskBlaze fields that would be great! There would be no need to retype the task again! Thanks for sharing your app! Chris
This is a great app for tracking how much time I spend on things (and therefore how much time I waste). Does it still work even if Outlook is closed? I guess I can find out on my own.
Can you allow it to have a default category, perhaps everytime you click Stop it will leave the last category entered in the category field?
Also, how about a history list? The Task field could also be a drop-down menu of the last 10 entries.
Can you allow it to have a default category, perhaps everytime you click Stop it will leave the last category entered in the category field?
FekketCantenel and Andy,
Thanks for the feedback and the suggestions. I’ll see if I can add those features without making it too cumbersome or complex. My programming philosophy has always been K.I.S.S. – keep it simple and sexy…LOL
Chris,
Thanks for the words of support and another good suggestion.
Brad, can you provide any more detail? Do you mean that you had both Interop.Outlook.dll and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll in the same directory? This isn’t working for me.
I’ve also tried renaming Interop.Outlook.dll to old.Interop.Outlook.dll and renaming Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll to Interop.Outlook.dll, but that gave me errors. Any suggestions, or is this just one of the vagaries of OL12 beta?
Jeff,
I’m not running Outlook 12 beta (yet).
Are you getting an error message or is it just not producing a schedule entry?
I have both Interop.Outlook.dll and Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.dll in the same directory. It works for me.
My big feature request would be a way to import something either from the Outlook Tasks list or from Outlook Calendar so if I work on the same task several times, I don’t need to retype the name of the task or any associated categories. Otherwise, this little timer rocks!
Okay, I got it sorted out. To be perfectly honest, I misunderstood what I was looking for. Somehow I thought this was adding tasks to the Task list, not the Calendar. My bad. I didn’t read you description closely enough. Sorry.
How many TEST TASKBLAZE appts ended up in your Outlook? LOL I made the same mistake and had alot. at least it keeps good track of how long we tested
great app Brad thanks
I second the calls for exporting elsewhere (Excel, Thunderbird, .txt) and think a history would be nice. Praying for pocket pc support?! Terrific app Brad! Tremendous! Thanks
Works on Outlook 2000.
Any chance we can have it minimize to tray?
Thanks!
Very cool tool! I love it so far, have to get used to it still though. I think a great feature would be if you had a checkbox option for “Round time to nearest:”, with a couple options (nearest 5- 10 or 15- minute increments). I don’t know about anyone else, but I hate figuring out exactly how many minutes elapsed.
I understand the point of this software is to help be more precise in our timekeeping, but for those of us that don’t measure time down to the exact minute, it would be a big help to auto-round to the nearest increment.
Just a thought – thanks again for the great tool!
I really like this little app. It would be good if it had a “Pause” and “Restart” option, to account for the fact that you may get distracted from what you are doing.
I’ve got it working on my Win ’98 laptop running Office 2000. thanks Brad this will be helpful
Hi Brad,
Thanks for this. Working great on my machine running Outlook 2002 SP2.
Can you develop a pocket pc version?
Cheers, Hezahonker
I support the idea of being able to save to Excel – I need a way of adding up all the time I spend on a project during the day whether that is in 1 chunk or 10.
The pause/restart option someone suggested would not work for me – I need to know what distracted me!
The drop-down list would be great, too!
This makes a nice addition to Achieve-IT! for understanding what is happening in my life and creating ways to improve – keep up the great work!
Rod
I am thinking through how to best implement many of these without making the app too clunky or difficult to use. In other words, if it takes you 5 minutes to enter a task, that’s a waste of time. If it’s too complex, you won’t use it.
Brad,
MY GOSH! I have been looking for this or somethign similar for YEARS! Sweet little piece of software. THANK YOU!!!
Truly,
Royal
Post Script: Thoughts? – Pause/restart good idea then also can Category Tags pull from Outlook categories via drop down or other?
Looks like a great addition to Outlook!
I have been using DevPlanner (www.devplanner.org) for the past 2 years to track my work time.
It is not bloated – just enough to allow me to keep my personal tasks organized, and it is excellent at time tracking
Drag a task down to today to start it. Drag the next one down when I start the next one. – or use the start/stop buttons if needed.
And it is capable of tracking original estimates and producing some very nice reports for time or project reporting.
Highly recommended,
Steve T.
TaskBlaze is something I’ve been thinking I need for a long time, and so far works great. ( Only used it for this morning )
A great improvement would be to have a drop- down available for the Task; with some possible filter criteria to ‘minimize’ the ‘domain’ size if desired.
Alternatively, maybe just a ‘right click’ from an Outlook Task window or selected Task in a list of Tasks would be easier.
I also like the idea from Royal Salt on Category pulldown.
Nify, but too big, and too manual, and kinda ugly. A Yahoo Widget type design would be nice. How abuot a display showing elapsed time, not just the start time. Maybe once you hit “start” it minimizes to just the time, so you can leave it on top of applications with a nice small formfactor, with some sort of opaquness setting. Now I hide it, and often forget about it. Also how about automatic tracking, if it could see the program I am currently typing/working in, and also note that, all by itsself that would be more useful.
I like a lot of Jeff’s suggestions. A Yahoo Widget would be great, and may even be easier to program.
I tried the TaskBlaze and like it because it is simple and useful. To really take advantage of it though, I would need to use it on my PocketPc as I am on the road…a lot! One other tid bit that might be useful is to mention that it goes directly to “Outlook Calendar” and not “Outlook Schedule”. I mention this because my wife asked me where Outlook Schedule was when she used TaskBlaze. Cheers! gg PS: I even put my travel/road time in now!
George, I am going to break ground on a Pocket PC version this week. Just getting my priorities in order.
Jeff and Andy, Yahoo widget? I know virtually nothing about the widgets, they look fun though. Do either of you have any quick links to quick start guides or anything?
I really want to try this, Brad, but I can’t seem to install/run it on my WinXP laptop. I’ve downloaded and unzipped it, but I keep getting a (Taskblaze) error message: “Failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Help?
Tom,
Try updating Microsoft’s .NET framework on your laptop.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3559.html
The official tutorial for Yahoo Widget Creation is here : http://widgets.yahoo.com/gallery/dl_item.php?item=Widget_Creation_Tutorial.pdf
I don’t know if there are other good starter guides but if you look at existing widgets, it’s not to hard to start programming them.
Looks very cool. Is it possible to export to the Palm Desktop insted of outlook?
This could be useful…the only suggestion that could make it more useful:
have another small input window for comments that would be placed in the calendar event comments input box. This would be very helpful for phone conversations being tracked, etc…
Thanx…
Brad, great application! Thanks.
How about:
1. Allowing users to hit Enter or Ctrl-Enter to start tasks
2. Changing the Tab order so the Start/Stop button comes immediately after the Category Tags field
3. Adding an option in Settings: “Minimise TaskBlaze on task start”
4. Adding an option in Settings: “Flash TaskBlaze taskbar button every [numerical field] minutes while task in progress”
?
Sam
Sam,
All great suggestions – I should be able to implement most of them when I get some taskblaze dev time.
I use Agendus for Windows: Outlook Edition, and prefer the calendar view to record time rather than Outlook journal, so I have found this a handy tool as well.
A couple more suggestions:
1. Drop-down menu list for category selection from imported Outlook category list or favorite list
2. Start and Stop buttons available when minimized to Task bar (as with Windows Media Player)
FYI. I am getting an error message that config.cfg cannot be found in my documents.
Clicking continue, the program seems to run ok.
you should be able to redownload the .zip file and copy the config file from the zip to your Taskblaze directory.
I cant wait for this to work. However, I am getting the following error…
application has generated an exeption that could not be handled. Process id=0×950(2384), Thread id=0xe68.
In the Microsoft CLR Debugger, I get : “… An unhandled exception of type ‘System.TypeInitializaionException’ occured in TaskBlaze.exe. Additional information: The type initializer for “_.&” threw and exeption. …”
I am now updating my system using windowsupdate.com. I am running XP Pro, Version 2002 SP 2 with Office Outlook 2003 SP2.
great little utility
thank you
it would be nice to have another field to add a quick note
As Outlook doesn’t have a Project field and I don’t like to use a Category, I usually llike to add a codeword into the Notes section like:
$proj:MyProject1
to mark an item for easy find and retreival later.
Brad,
You are AWESOME! I am a technology consultant and I have been using this app for about 3 months now and I absolutely love it! Are you still working on a PocketPC version? That is the only thing that could make TaskBlaze better in my opinion. Thanks again for a great contribution.
Excellent app! I want to reiterate a couple of requests from above:
1. Allowing users to hit Enter or Ctrl-Enter to start tasks
2. Changing the Tab order so the Start/Stop button comes immediately after the Category Tags field
Thanks Brad
Very useful app, Thank you!
I’d like to echo several suggestions for the following features:
-Export to Excel
-Task dropdown
-Category dropdown/selection
-Press to start
-Remember last task/category
-Minimize on start
-Flash taskbar every x-mins
-Note/Comment added into body of appointment
-Round to nearest 1,5,10,15,or 30 minute
Quite a list of feature requests, but you have a great base app that is primed for expansion.
Thanks again for your dedication to helping keeping track of what I do during the day
-Mike
hi
dont know about programming but i tell u waht would help me – if opening a file could automaticaly trigger a start time associated with the file. & when one exits the file the time could be recorded. by grouping various files together one can know time spent on various projects etc.
thanks, M
Some screenshots showing what entries look like in Outlook might have sold me on this.
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