Mark Nemtsas: March 2013 Archives

Timesheets Lite has just been updated to version 3.5.1. There's just a few things to mention about it here. First there was a very minor performance tweak made to the Employee Timesheet report. Secondly, the Detailed Activity Report has been pretty much re-written (again) with an aim to improve performance especially when the database is on a network. The final change is to fix a minor bug with the routines that import data from old versions of Timesheets Lite.

I've just released a minor update of Timesheets MTS taking the software to version 2.5.6. Here's the details of the changes made:

• Fixed a bug that could stop the program starting up properly if it was closed while minimized.
• Removed a rather pointless check when saving a non-billable time when the parent project/task were billable and non-billable fields were switched off via user preferences.
• Adjusted the form height of the add/edit times screen.
• When a project or task is copied the creation date and start/end dates are set to the current date.
• The right click "start timer for selected time" menu now works properly.
• The summary hours reports now only reports on projects and employees with activity during the report period.

I've spent most of the last week working on improving the performance of Timesheets Lite when it's using a network shared Microsoft Access database. Version 3.5.0 is the result. Here's a list of the changes in this new release:

• Much data on the Add/Edit Time screen is now pre-emptively cached to speed up loading.
• Many hours spent improving performance of the timesheet display when multiple times are displayed (think the unlikely case of 50+ times in a single day).
• Much time spent optimizing the process for loading large collections of times. This should result in much improved performance right across the whole program.
• Much time spent optimizing the time data object to pre-emptively cache project, employee, and activity data. Again should result in improved performance.
• Several single table queries have been replaced with cross tab queries to reduce the number of database accesses. Again, should result in program wide performance improvements.
• Most of the queries used by the employee timesheet report have been optimized or changed to cross table queries to speed up report generation.
• Time spent on the generation speed of the Detailed Activity report.
• Filter text box added to the Manage Projects screen.