Task Coach

Merge

Asked by Roney Eduardo Rodrigues

When I try the Merge tool all get is the second file, i.e., the one I merge into the first open file.

I open file A, click File>Merge, navigate and select file B, but instead of having the sum of time spent in each file for all individual tasks, the result is only file B. It's pretty much just like opening a file, except that on the top bar of Task Coach the file name disappears.

I'm running Version 1.3.16.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

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Frank Niessink
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Frank Niessink (frank-niessink) said : 		#1

Hi Roney,

Are the tasks in file B a copy of the task in file A? In that case the tasks in file B may overwrite the tasks in file A.

Cheers, Frank

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Roney Eduardo Rodrigues (roneyrod) said : 		#2

Hey Frank, thanks for your reply.

Short answer, yes, tasks are the same. The difference between both files is the amount of hours each tech spent on each task. In other words, each tech has their own tsk file, and we need to sum up all the time for each task.

Perhaps I'm not getting quite right the goal of Task Coach. This is how we are trying to work in our office: we have around 10 to 15 projects being executed simultaneously by six employees. For each project we define a tree of components (tasks in TC) and their tasks (sub-tasks in TC), estimate the amount of time each task will take and submit the proposal to the client. Once we get approval and start working of the project, we track the time each employee spent on each task of each ongoing project. Once a week we need to merge all the efforts for each project to make sure everything is running smoothly, meaning we need a sum of the time the techs spent on each task, within each project.

If all tsk files have the exact same tree structure, sorted the same way, I can just export it in csv and open them in excel, copy/paste the columns and have what I want. That's what we have been doing so far. The problem is when a new task or project comes up we necessarily need to update all tsk files, for each employee, so the files will have the exact same tree structure.

One option would be to import the exported csv files into some database software, considering "subject" (tasks and sub-tasks) the key field to join all tables. But in this case TC would be just a chess clock.

Sorry if my reply is too long.

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Best Frank Niessink (frank-niessink) said : 		#3

Hi Roney,

Task Coach is currently a single-person tool, there is not support for multi-user usage. The next major release (1.4), hopefully available later this year, will support multi-user access of one task file.

What I would do in your case (until 1.4 is out) is give everybody a copy of the same task file, as you also have done, and then when a new project gets added, put that in a separate task file and let everybody merge that file into theirs. So like this:

1.Base file contains Project 1 (with subtasks) and Project 2 (with subtasks).
2. Every body uses their own copy of the base file (this allows for adding personal sub-subtasks, etc).
3. To add up efforts, use export to CSV or some other means to collect the data in a spreadsheet.
4. When project 3 starts, create a project3.tsk file
5. Everybody merges project3.tsk into their personal copy.
6. Go to 2.

Hope this helps?

Regards, Frank

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Roney Eduardo Rodrigues (roneyrod) said : 		#4

Now, that's a great use for the merge tool!! It definitely helps in the sense we won't need to add the tasks for new projects manually!

:o)

I'll keep an eye for version 1.4.

Thanks!

Roney

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Roney Eduardo Rodrigues (roneyrod) said : 		#5

Thanks Frank Niessink, that solved my question.