Can't search in tasks' comments

[bra-fsn]

I couldn't find a way to search in tasks' comments.
We use this feature a lot in clockingit (maybe this is the most used feature).

[ari]

Yes, that would be a good feature to add. Liu, we already have "keyword" in the search. Perhaps we could change that to "title" and add "comment".

[liufengyun]

I prefer to add the feature to the search box at the top. What do you think?

2013/1/11 Ari Maniatis [email protected]

Yes, that would be a good feature to add. Liu, we already have "keyword"
in the search. Perhaps we could change that to "title" and add "comment".

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/399#issuecomment-12147023.

[bra-fsn]

In clockingit, it works that way. So yes, for myself.
Thanks,

[ari]

The main reason I don't like that is that in a large db (like ours) the results will be cluttered with lots of bad results. Searching through comments will be slow as well. The top search box works really well for defined/controlled data, like person names and task titles.

ClockingIT had ferret (which is a bit like a poor man's lucene) for this. We ripped out ferret a long time ago since it regularly failed. At least with putting this feature into the side search box it will only be invoked if you explicitly ask for it.

[bra-fsn]

I don't know how much data makes a large DB, my team has been logging its work for more than four years into clockingit and it still works like a charm (nearly flawlessly and fast). With a lot of comments.
I haven't notice the absence of ferret and its possible implications until now, thanks for the clarification.

I've started to experiment with jobsworth because:

• clockingit seems to be abandoned
• we have some small glitches with native (accented) characters in the e-mail processing path, which wasn't a problem until now, but we want to rely more on this feature
• jobsworth seemed to be an advanced clockingit with new (additional!) features

But the first thing I got from colleagues after logging into jobsworth is: it doesn't offer the same thing (timer window, search, etc, which made it productive). It has a seemingly modern interface (clockingit was also fine), but when we tried to do the same thing, in which clockingit was good (was out of the way as much as possible, accounting tasks/work is rarely about increasing more time spent on the interface, it's quite the opposite), we realized it doesn't work. (or there must be a hidden "restore old productivity mode" configuration option :)

For example starting the timer for a given task takes:

• start to type the task's name in the timer window, and press the timer button with mouse (no page loads, no nothing, just a simple timer start request) - in clockingit
• start to type the task's name in the search window, click on its name, press the small red pin (which seems to be a small difference, but this also takes lot more communication -hence slower- in the background, with page reload(s)) - in jobsworth

There must be some other problems too (eg. I can't modify widgets' settings), I'm not sure whether this is because I'm following the dev branch now, or some local problems.

I largely appreciate your work in it, because it's a really nice piece of software, but for the first glimpse it seems that jobsworth is less, not more. :(

What do you recommend for us? Will jobsworth re-introduce the missing clockingit features?

Thanks,

[ari]

This is an open source project. So you are able to adapt it to your needs if you have something you want to do with it. You can also contribute to the mailing list or write up specific feature requests here with constructive suggestions.

However "restore old productivity mode" is not particularly helpful. If you want ClockingIT exactly as it is, I suggest you install it and pay someone to fix the bugs in it. Just as a warning though, it has such major unpatched security holes that I have access to everyone's data (and so does anyone else who puts in a slight amount of effort).

Again, I'm happy to engage with you on useful improvements and am open to any helpful suggestions. I have poured a huge amount of time and money into this product over 5 years and if my direction results in a product which is "less" for you, I suggest you engage a developer to give you what you want. I'm not interested in snarky comments about a product I give away for free.

[bra-fsn]

I'm just a little bit disappointed because some nice ideas and features of CIT seems to be gone.
What I mean (in no particular order):

• the UI seems to be modern for the first glance, but for the second, I would say there's a lot more unused space, making it less readable. For example on the timeline page I can see 8 of our currently logged work entries (with multiline comments), while I can only see 6 test entries (single line comments) in jobsworth. Also, howering above the task name, CIT shows useful info about it, while jobsworth doesn't. The CIT UI seems to be more concise, and I feel a lot more page loads in jobsworth, making it slower and synchronous in some places (I often work on a high latency network connection).
• I really miss the timer window as mentioned previously. It is a real help, if you have a lot of tasks (we have more than 300). We have to switch between tasks rapidly, and currently jobsworth makes this a lot harder. In CIT, you start to type (browser feature, CTRL-f, find in page) something in the task's name, start to work on it, then finish it after you've written your comments in the appearing text box. No page reloads, searches, all very effective. And if you want, all tasks are there, so searching with "eyes" (if you don't know yet what to search for) is easier.
• also mentioned the universal search, which made CIT a great knowledge base. If somebody did something, he logged it, and it could be found easily even years later.
• task browser (task list): first, the table in jobsworth seemed nice, then I took a look at CIT's, which shows the task name, project, participants, all work done, the hover-info, the readyness, todos (which can be set as done, removed and added without a page reload) and tags, all in one page, which is still OK for our 300+ tasks.
• maybe the git head from the dev branch doesn't work perfectly, or I'm just on the wrong track, but I could find how to make task views, because I couldn't make any filters.
• after started to work on a task and stopped it, the new log entry page shows the task's description in the notes text box. I don't know whether this intentional (why?) or just a bug.

Hope this helps. I've only played with an empty system, so this is nowhere exhaustive.

[ari]

I've moved this discussion to our mailing list where we can have a better conversation. Let's leave this task for one thing: adding searching on comments.

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/jobsworth/KiJ1rlfGGUA/discussion

Please join us there.