Re: punch-in card for time tracking

[John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Mehul Sanghvi <mehul.sanghvi@gmail.com> wrote:
> What I need to do is the following:
>
>    *  punch-in when I arrive at work
>
>    *  make a notation for one of the following:
>
>            * arrived late
>
>            * working from home
>
>    *  punch-out when I leave work
>
>    * be able to generate a report (weekly/monthly/quarterly) which shows
>
>             * how many days I was in the office
>
>             * how many days was I working from home
>
>             * how many days I was late
>
>
>
> Is this something I can get done using Org ?   How ?
>

Yes indeed (at least the first part). Second part shouldn't be that hard.

---( Approach 1: Clocking )---

Link to how to clock:
- http://orgmode.org/manual/Clocking-work-time.html

What I might do:
- Create headline for current month
- Create headline with current date
- Clock in when you get to work
- Clock out when you leave work

* June
** [2012-06-04 Mon] (C-c ! then return to create that time stamp)

- Now C-c C-x C-i to clock in on that headline
- When you leave, C-c C-x C-o clocks out
- If you're at home, do `C-c C-c home` to tag the headline with the tag :home:
- If you're late, do `C-c C-c late` to add the :late: tag

At the end of the month, you can create a clock table to view your time:
- http://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html#The-clock-table

You can also get the data out and simply figure out a criteria for
late/on-time with some other program. The clock table should be able
to tally your time for the month and you can count the number of
:home: tags perhaps.

I've asked on the list for grouping clock tables by tag and there was
some response:
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2011-05/msg00219.html

--- (Approach 2: Date/time timestamps )---

You could just add date/time timestamps
- Add headline for month
- Add headline for day like above with C-c !
- Add time stamp for in with C-u C-c !
- Add time stamp out with C-u C-c !

* June
** [2012-06-04 Mon]
[2012-06-04 Mon 21:01]
[2012-06-04 Mon 21:02]


The tricky part for both comes with your second part, automating the
parsing of data. I was trying to get at something similar with my
quantified self request recently:
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2012-04/msg01344.html

Note my #4. I don't know of great ways to parse headlines and get out
timestamps into some sort of csv or data table for external analysis.
This would be fantastic.

The above should be quite usable for you, though. You can get a lot
from the clock table and shouldn't have a horrible time figuring out
how to count late/home/office tags if you use them. Someone can
probably chime in about using grep or some feature on the month's
headline to count some sort of occurrences.

Good luck!


Best regards,
John

>
> cheers,
>
>        mehul
> --
> Mehul N. Sanghvi
> email: mehul.sanghvi@gmail.com
>