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Announcing Sundial
Sundial is a widget for Mac OS X that makes Basecamp time tracking as simple as click, click, type, type, click. Click: Select a project. Click: Select a to-do item (optional). Type: Enter a description. Type: Enter the number of hours. Click: Save your time to Basecamp.
We are excited to offer this handy-dandy widget to the Basecamp community, free of charge. We are a Mac shop that uses Basecamp to share information with clients, manage projects, and to track our time. There are other Dashboard widgets out there that let you view projects, but until now there was nothing that let you easily track your time.
I will post a “making of Sundial” blog post “real soon now,” but for now, go get Sundial, try it out, and let us know in the comments below what you think!
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Nice work guys! Thanks for addressing one of Basecamp’s few design flaws..
Due to the Nature of Basecamp’s functionality and flaws our company decided to track time through the “to-do-list” feature rather the “time” feature. Going this route we create a private to do list which includes all roles on an account. We track our time by adding hours under a role type. When we run reports we can clearly identify who did what on what day, organizing time by person, and role. How does your dashboard widget work and will it work with the way we use it?
Anthony Armendariz
Creative Director
Behavior
www.behaviordesign.com
Anthony Armendariz
Creative Director
Behavior
www.behaviordesign.com
Hi Anthony,
Thanks for looking into Sundial. If I understand your process, then yes, Sundial should work for you. It allows you to book time either directly to a project (like you would through the “Time” tab of a project on the website) or linking it to a to-do item (like you would through the “To-Do” tab).
Sundial was designed to make it easy to log time against projects. To generate reports, you will still need to go through your project website.
Let me know if you have any further questions. Thanks,
-Andrew
Thanks for looking into Sundial. If I understand your process, then yes, Sundial should work for you. It allows you to book time either directly to a project (like you would through the “Time” tab of a project on the website) or linking it to a to-do item (like you would through the “To-Do” tab).
Sundial was designed to make it easy to log time against projects. To generate reports, you will still need to go through your project website.
Let me know if you have any further questions. Thanks,
-Andrew
We have several projects for different customers that have the same name. It would be great if the projects dropdown indicated the customer (like the projects dropdown in basecamp, or the todo dropdown indicated todo list in sundial).
thanks,
-chad
thanks,
-chad
Hi Chad,
Thanks for your feedback. Grouping projects by project name is planned for a future release. Use the version checking on the back of the widget or subscribe to the RSS feed to get notified when new releases are available. Thanks!
-Andrew
Thanks for your feedback. Grouping projects by project name is planned for a future release. Use the version checking on the back of the widget or subscribe to the RSS feed to get notified when new releases are available. Thanks!
-Andrew
Hi there, Been looking for something like this since the basecamp API was released, good work. Just wondering, we normally enter our hours at the end of each day, so viewing the days entries and making sure they roughly add up to your days work would be great. it seems at the moment I can only view by project and not by date. I often work on a number of different projects each day and would like to see the day rather than the project if you see what i mean, let me know your thoughts. Would this be possible?
Thanks in advance
John Sinclair
Us Two
Thanks in advance
John Sinclair
Us Two
John,
That’s a great point. Yes, you can currently only view one project’s time entries at a time. We’ll look at how this other view might fit into the interface and consider it for a future release. We’ve just about wrapped up version 1.1, so this would have to be in a subsequent release.
-Andrew
That’s a great point. Yes, you can currently only view one project’s time entries at a time. We’ll look at how this other view might fit into the interface and consider it for a future release. We’ve just about wrapped up version 1.1, so this would have to be in a subsequent release.
-Andrew
I love your widget...too bad I don’t use Basecamp. I use SQL-Ledger, which is a Free web based Accounting App with a postgresql database. Any thoughts of having a ver of Sundial to link into Sql-Ledger?
Hi Mark,
There were two factors that contributed to us building Sundial: 1) we use Basecamp ourselves, so Sundial is something we needed internally, and 2) Basecamp has a published, fairly robust API (Application Programming Interface) that made it pretty simple to put the widget together. In quickly looking around the SQL-Ledger site, I didn’t see any mention of an API. You might ask on either the SQL-Ledger forums or on one of the widget developer websites about whether someone would want to take this on.
-Andrew
There were two factors that contributed to us building Sundial: 1) we use Basecamp ourselves, so Sundial is something we needed internally, and 2) Basecamp has a published, fairly robust API (Application Programming Interface) that made it pretty simple to put the widget together. In quickly looking around the SQL-Ledger site, I didn’t see any mention of an API. You might ask on either the SQL-Ledger forums or on one of the widget developer websites about whether someone would want to take this on.
-Andrew
Just discovered and tested this widget - many thanks for releasing this! This certainly enhances Basecamp.
Alistair
Alistair
I have been waiting for something like this! I am so happy to have found it.
One enhancement that would be nice is if it had a stop watch feature where you could pick the project/task and hit “Start”, then post the time to Basecamp when you’re done. The timer should be able to round time off at an arbitrary rate (say 15 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever). That would help with all the little interruptions during the day that should be billable but I can never remember to log.
Also, is the code available if I wanted to contribute?
Also, is the code available if I wanted to contribute?
Please consider this another vote for a tally of the days hours... Thanks!
Great work, guys. It’s great when a widget it more than just eye candy.
Does not work in Leopard :(
Any chance of a new version?
Any chance of a new version?
What I like most about Sundial is that it is really easy to log time to TODO-lists, much easier than in Basecamp itself.
But ever since we upgraded to Leopard (10.5) Sundial stopped working. Network permission issues?
Is there a 10.5-compatible update in the works?
But ever since we upgraded to Leopard (10.5) Sundial stopped working. Network permission issues?
Is there a 10.5-compatible update in the works?
Is Sundial compatible with OS X Leopard 10.5.4? I keep getting “Error: Unknown Error” every time I attempt to log in. Quite frustrating! :(
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In case you missed our announcement, we recently released a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that allows you to track time in Basecamp. It’s called Sundial, and, despite having built several widgets before, I learned a ton from working on it.I want to shar
Tracked: Sep 19, 10:52