Eternity 1.7 released

Eternity 1.6.1 is available on App Store with the following new features:
Favorites/Recents
Activities color coding
Automatic seconds rounding
Custom reports
Per report row log entries listing
Native email client support for reports exporting and feedback
Logs presentation ordering
Landscape mode support for notes editing
Favorites/Recents
You can add activities to Favorites when editing them, you can add from the Favorites edit screen. You can also auto-generate your Favorites list from the top 10 most frequently used activities in the last 7 days. Our lifes are usually structured around weekly rhythm so I think it makes sense. If you add manually you’re free to add as many as you like, of course, and reorder to your taste.
Recents list is generated automatically from the 10 recently started timers. I hope it’s a nice addition to the Favorites.
This way you can have deep hierarchies and still have quick access to the ones you choose, use most and used recently. Favorites auto-generation is an easy way to refresh the list when your activity patterns change over time.
Eternity remembers which of the Activities/Favorites/Recents you used before exiting the app and will show it automatically when you open it again. Just to save you some seconds when you’re in a rush :) It does not apply to Logs, Reports and Settings screen however. I assume that what you want to do quickly after opening the app is to start or stop a timer. If you want to analyze logs or reports, you probably have some extra seconds for it ;)
Activities color coding
When editing activity, you can now assign a color. It will be used on all activities list and on pie charts. It should make it easier for you to highlight some of your activities on the lists and find them. Colors are now also consistently shown on pie charts. Whether an acivity has a color assigned explicitely by you, or not, it will not change when you navigate pie charts (shift or change presented interval). That was a main complain related to charts so now it’s gone too ;)
Automatic seconds rounding
If you like your log entries to be nice and round now Eternity can make them so for you automatically :) As long as a timer goes, it will be exact to a second. Once it’s stopped, seconds will be rounded.
Example: projectA started: 08:10:23 stopped: 08:15:46 will be rounded to 08:10:00 – 08:15:00 after the timer is stopped. The only exception is when the entry is started and stopped the same minute: projectB 08:20:15 – 08:20:44 will be rounded to 08:20:00 – 08:21:00.
Start time for in progress timer is not rounded on start so you don’t jump with “Gee, I’m 44s behind!” when starting something at 08:30:44 ;)
This feature is disabled by default and can be enabled on Settings.
Custom reports
This feature is only available in the paid version. You can access it from Reports>Top-right icon>Custom report. Just select any date range and a report will be generated for it. You can go back and forth using arrow buttons besides the date button and the interval will be shifted by the amount of days in your original cutom report. Change dates by tapping on the date button. Easily go back to the last shown daily/weekly/monthly report by tapping on the button at the top. You can of course see a pie chart for a custom report by turning your iPod/iPhone to landscape position.
Per report row log entries listing
Tapping on a report row, presents a list of all log entries related to given activity hierarchy and time interval. To change hierarchy level you now tap on a (>) button in a given report row.
Native email client support for reports exporting and feedback (iPhone OS >= 3.0)
Eternity now supports native email client interface on devices with iPhone OS >= 3.0. Up to 1.6 update Eternity used my server to format and send emails since 3rd party apps on iPhone OS < 3.0 could not send emails with attachments. This had its drawbacks: if server was down, you could not send report, some email servers have black and white lists for incoming email servers because of spam. Now you can edit email content and send emails using native iPhone email client and email servers you have defined on it. No single point of failure, more power to the users.
Logs presentation ordering (earliest/latest first)
Some users like to have their logs presented earliest first, some latest first. The best approach – make it configurable. Now you can change it with tapping on one button and Eternity will remember it. This applies to “Insert/delete” mode also. The “Earliest/Latest first” presents action, not state (so it tells you what will actually happen when you tap, not what the current mode is). It’s always a tricky choice, but just to make it consistent with the “Insert/delete button”, which obviously must be action oriented, I decided for it.
Landscape mode support for notes editing
This will be a welcomed addition for heavy noters, I hope :) There had been some troubles in 1.6 related to device orientation handling and disappearing keyboard but they were solved by 1.6.1 bugfix update.
What’s not in the update?
Initially I wanted to include calendar-like logs presentation in this update. It would be pinch-zoomable, touch-adjustable and absolutely fantastic in any way you can imagine ;) It worked beautifully! But only on an iPhone Simulator, on my MacBook  :-(. On real devices there were graphical glitches and artifacts which would not be acceptable in a final product. I invested quite a lot of time implementing it but was forced to put it on a back burner just to push this update out the door. But I will get back to it!
That’s all folks :). Big THANK YOU to all users who provided feedback and helped in testing! Enjoy :).

Eternity 1.7 is available on App Store with the following new features:

Log entry tagging 

Log entry tagging adds another level of flexibility to time tracking and reporting. In addition to defining any activities hierarchy you like, you can now also tag your log entries across hierarchies. Tags are not only notes on steroids for repeatable texts but also work with report filters (new in 1.7) for advanced and flexible reports.

So now you have activities hierarchy for general structure, tags for cross-hierarchy classification and reports with filers to make it all work together.

eternity tags - timer screen eternity tags assign

Tags are accessible in two ways. You can add and assign tags to any individual log entry from a timer screen or log entry edit screen…

eternity tags - edit eternity tags - rename

…or you can go to “More tab”->Tags to add, rename or delete any tag. If you try to delete a tag that is assigned to an entry, you’ll get a warning.

eternity tags - search and add

To add a new tag, just tap on the search bar, start typing and you’ll get search results based on the “Starts with”, “Contains” or “Ends with” criteria. If you find the desired tag, use it. If you don’t, add it.

Searching works this way for selecting/unselecting, deleting and renaming as well. Just start typing and work with the search results.

Log entry continue with note & tags

eternity log entry continue from timer eternity log entry continue

Since now you can have notes and tags assigned to your entries, you can reuse them to continue your activities without re-entering the same data. If the last entry on the timer screen had a note or tags assigned you can tap “Continue” to run a new timer with this info assigned or “Start” to run a fresh one without note and tags. You can also do that from any log entry on Logs tab.

Report filters

Filters are menat to add more flexibility to report generation. They can also let you learn about your daily habits and patterns.

eternity filters eternity filters report

You can define your report filters on Reports->top-right-icon->Filters. You can give a filter a descriptive name like “Weekend work”, “Workday evenings” or “Projects – design”. There are 4 filtering criteria to choose from: activities, tags, weekdays and hour ranges. You can enable/disable each individual criteria or make it inclusive or exclusive any time. Once you apply a filter, it’s shown as the first row in the report. Tap on the filter row to select another one or tap (>) to modify the filtering criteria.

eternity filters criteria eternity filters activities

Defining criteria should be really straightforward.

Example 1 “Weekend work”: activities – include “work”; weekdays – include Saturday and Sunday.

Example 2 “Weekday evenings”: weekdays – exclude  Saturday and Sunday; hours – include 6:00 pm – 00:00 am.

Example 3 “Projects – design”: tags – include any tag: design

You can modify this of course. Like excluding sleep activity in Example 2.

WiFi backup

Eternity database is backed up every time your backup your device in iTunes. You can restore from itunes backup and Eternity data will be restored as well. But restoring the whole device is not always convenient. For example when you want to restore your device to a clean, fresh OS installation or just move Eternity data from one device to another. WiFi backup and restore can help you in such situation. You’ll need your device connected to a local WiFi network and a PC or Mac with a web browser.

eternity backup

To backup or restore your data go to More->Bakcup and tap the Backup button.

eternity backup eternity restore

Tap on Backup and Eternity will prepare a backup file and let you know when it’s ready for download. Open a browser on your PC/Mac, type the address and click the backup link to download the file.

Similarly, when you want to restore from backup, go to More->Backup and tap Restore. Type the address in your browser and follow the instructions to upload the backup file to restore from. Once uploaded, the file will be verified on your device and you’ll be asked for final confirmation.

Don’t close the screen or lock your device during the backup/restore operations.

The backup mechanism uses port 27000 for Eternity<->web browser communication. If you have any problems accessing the backup page in the browser, please make sure you have this port open in your PC/Mac firewall.

Support for iOS 4, retina display and other minor improvements

Eternity 1.7 adds support for iOS 4.0 Fast App Switching and it has updated artwork to look better on your iPhone 4 retina display. There are also some small improvements in log entry editing and report generation.

Enjoy :).

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