I take full blame of this problem and offer my sincere apologies. It’s very stupid to keep the backup system and the database on the same physical storage node. This is a serious misjudgement. Sorry !

Below you’ll find some answers to questions you might have :

Why is this backup so old ?

The reason why this backup is old is because the backup machine as well as trackmypeople database were located on the same storage unit. And that’s the storage unit that is failing.

Why did your answer take so long ?

We opted to try and restore all the data right untill the last tracked timeblock. As we tried all day without a result, we decided not to wait anymore and enable the website with an older backup. We figured it’s better to activate all services now, and worry about the data loss as soon as we have a working database backup.

What will you do in the future to prevent this ?

As soon as everything is back to normal, i will create a more solid backup strategy. With both online & offline backups every hour at least.

So for now everything is back online with all data from last thursday. As soon as we recover the more recent data, we will import these timeblocks for you.

I will contact all owners of a subscription plans with a commercial proposal to try and make up. Sorry.

Comments are welcome here => https://trackmypeople.zendesk.com/entries/255075-sorry-we-screwed-up-again

Project/Client Hourly Rates

From now on you can assign rates to all roles bound to a tracker (client/project/company). To make it super easy you also have the option to set “default rates” within each tracker profile. After assigning your (and your team’s) rate (in dollar, pound or euro) we will be able to convert every timeblock and represent it in a different way.

Budget Tracking

Tracking Time is one thing…It only makes sense if you do something with all these records. That’s why from now on you can set project budgets. As soon as you assigned a projects budget (in total hours or maximum budget), we will show you a progress bar showing you the current situation and every day’s progress.

Timeblock Rounding

Are all those small timeblocks preventing you from seeing the real picture ? Do you want to bill your client by 15 minutes ? That’s exactly what this feature is for. Use the “Timeblocks & Tracking”-tab to active timeblock rounding.

Enjoy !

For all you techies : we are scaling our application horizontally, seperating the database from the web server itself. The specs of the database server : Quad Core Xeon L5410 with 8GB of ram using an SSD powered filesystem (Vertex OCZ).

Any thoughts about this upgrade ? https://trackmypeople.zendesk.com/home

Timeblock Rounding

TrackmyPeople now offers a new level of flexibility by enabling you to set “timeblock rounding” for each client/project/company. Whenever you export your timeblocks we will display the real total as well as the “rounded” total, enabling you to adapt your billing process using the “rounded” totals.

Minimum & Maximum Length for timeblocks

We noticed a lot of you had a whole lot of “mini time entries” in your account. Switching from one project to another, mistaking a project for another or punching time too fast could result in having 1 or 2 second timeblocks. In all reports/graphs/overviews these blocks would be displayed. Not anymore !

Minimum Timeblock Length

From now on you can set the minimum and maximum length for all time entries inside a company/client or project. Want to make sure you never run into these “mini-timeblocks” again ? Just go to your main root tracker, set the minimum length for all timeblocks to “10seconds” and apply to all subtrackers. From then on, your time punching activity will be monitored and all timeblocks that do not exceed the minimum length will be automatically deleted.

Notice you will have to click the “apply to all previous timeblocks” to apply these settings to your current timeblock data.

Maximum Timeblock Length

Before this update the maximum length for a single timeblock was 24hours. In case you forgot to press “stop” before heading home, we would automatically close your timeblock after 24hours. You now have the option to set this time frame yourself. This setting will default to 24-hours, so you shouldn’t notice any difference until you change the maximum length settings.

Both settings can be accessed from the tracker dashboard page. Click a tracker and go to the “time block settings” tab on the right side.

Listing of all User/Client/Project timeblocks

Have a lot of users punching time to your account ? After a while this will result in a huge timeblock listing. In case you just want to check the activity for a certain user or client you would have to filter the “time block  list” to find what you are looking for. Those days are over !

From now on in each user & tracker (client/company/project) profile you will find a tab named “time blocks”. This tab will give you a filtered list of all the time entries for the user/tracker you are on.

Thank you all once again for the tremendous feedback. Rest assured that your emails, bug tickets and feedback is being read and taken into account, thanks !

So, what’s new ?

Multi-Platform Time Tracking widget

We released an “Adobe Air” widget allowing you to easily track your time right from your desktop. Have a look at a video we made showing off the time tracking functionality .

You can download the widget (and some others) from the extras page.

Pricing & Plans available

As of the first of May 2010, TrackMyPeople is now considered ‘production ready’ (I avoided the word ‘stable’). Exactly for that same reason we think it’s time to start charging for our service. We opted for a ‘freemium’ model, allowing you to benefit from most TrackMyPeople features without having to pull out that credit card.

Have a look at our “Plans & Pricing”, and let us know what you think !

Complete Rewrite

As we ran into some performance issues we decided to rewrite TMP from scratch. That was a huge job but we are now on a maintainable & optimised code base. For our users this means improved loading times !

New functionality

A ‘limited’ list of new functionality, readily available from within your account

• User & Tracker Dashboard
• Day/Week/Month calendars everywhere (on tracker & user pages)
• Quick Day/Week time entry
• Improved tracker tree : quickly setup your company structure
• Mass Edit timeblocks
• Exporting Capabilities

Thank you !

Last but not least, we would like to use the opportunity given by this email to thank you all for the tremendous feedback you’ve given us over the last year: exhaustive and mercy-less bug reports, amazing suggestions, super-relevant remarks and deeply hearthwarming encouragements.

Thanks to all of you who helped make TrackMyPeople the lovely experience it has now hopefully become.

This upgrade should improve loading times on all pages making sure you can quickly submit your timesheets and manage your business.

Archiving Trackers

Due to popular request we added some new functionality allowing you to ‘archive’ project/clients/companies. Archived trackers will not appear anymore when you are tracking time (pssst, check out out brand new air widget !).

No data is lost, we only archive the tracker so it’s not being displayed anymore. You can ‘unarchive’ projects as well.

‘Quick-Create’ tracker

To make it even easier to create ‘sub projects’ the tracker tree now contains a ‘new’ button allowing you to create a subtracker for that project without leaving the page. This way you can quickly set-up the hierarchical structure of your company without going through several forms/pages & submits.

Enjoy !

That’s right a “free plan” ! We decided to allow people to use our system for free, with almost all features a premium member has.

Sign up now, and see what the fuss is about.

The most important parts on this page :

• general graph of project activity (all users)
• time totals for today/yesterday/this & last week/this & last month/this year/alltime
• overview of totals er user account
• pie chart time tracking share each user has

Enjoy !