New Feature: See Your Planned Time Visually
Timely is just as much about planning, as it is showing what you’ve actually done. You already plan in some fashion, and if you do it in Timely, you’ll only spend seconds logging time.
It wasn’t easy incorporating planning time on the calendar in an uncluttered way, but we think we’ve finally solved it.
As you can see on the image above, if you add any planned time to tasks, that time will show up below the logged part, with a blueprint-ish background.
The height will work as it already does in Timely, so this is a great way to visually see what you’re supposed to spend time on. If you go above your planned time, you’ll now also see that inside of each entry. Any time above the planned amount will be a little darker.
It’s very important for us to keep Timely simple, so if you don’t plan your time, this will never show up.
Launch: Timely for Apple Watch
We’re ecstatic to finally show you Timely for Apple Watch! We’ve spent a ton of work on this and think it might be the best way to use Timely yet.
What product would be more natural to keep track of your time on – than a watch? We couldn’t think of a better product fit, which his why we were thrilled when the announcement from Apple came regarding the Apple Watch. It was simply the best product we could build for.
Thus, we absolutely had to make sure to be ready on launch day. The app is simplicity at its finest. Here’s how it works;
When you open the app, you’ll find two buttons at the top;
- The plus button on the left is for logging hours. Tap it and choose a project, then your time (and optionally planned time). That’s all you need to do to log hours. It will literally take you a few seconds.
- The timer button on the right is for starting a timer. Tap it and a timer will be started with your last used project. And that’s all you need. One tap.
The watch is built around interactions that shouldn’t last more than a few seconds, and we’ve designed Timely around this concept everywhere.
Task page
If you tap a task, you can see all the info regarding that task. You can change project, edit the time, complete and open a task, as well as start a timer. You can also use the new Force Touch here, which will give you options to delete task or move it to tomorrow.
Glances
Glances is a big part of the Apple Watch experience and a great way to check your current status. We have two in Timely;
- The first is for when you’re running a timer. You’ll see your progress and a timer running in the actual Glance.
- The second one is for when you’re not a running a timer. It will show you a general status of your day so far. How much you’ve worked, how much you’ve earned and how many open tasks you have left.
Notifications
Notifications is another big part of the Apple Watch, and we’ve made sure to implement a few to begin with.
- The first is when you’ve reached the planned amount on a task that you set. Right from the notification, you can use custom actions to Complete Task or Pause Timer.
- The second notification is for when a timer has been running for one hour. Same actions here as well; complete task or pause timer.
We hope you get a chance to try out Timely for Apple Watch. We’ve had a blast building it and would love to hear your thoughts! Download Timely on the App Store.
Wanted: Full-time AngularJS Developer
We’re looking for one AngularJS developer to come on board on a full-time basis.
You can be anywhere in the world, all we require is that you’re damn good at your job. You should love going that extra mile to get that one feature just perfect. This position is for an AngularJS expert, not someone “who have used it in the past”.
Previous experience with Firebase is a plus. Any experience working with AngularJS in a rails environment would also help, but we’re not looking for a rails developer.
The position come with lots of freedom and you can choose your own working hours. You will be payed by the amount of hours you work, so any extra time you put in will obviously be fully compensated. We do require a general minimum amount of hours per week.
You’ll be working in a small team and have big opportunities to contribute with your own ideas and thoughts on how things should be done.
Please email mathias@timelyapp.com with the subject “AngularJS”.
Introducing Tasks and Logged vs. Planned system
Timely isn’t just about tracking time. It’s about working better and smarter. About getting things done and about being productive. And it is – just as important – about understanding how you spend your time and let you learn from it. We’ve just scratched the surface, but today we’re making some changes toward the core way Timely works to fulfil that kind of promise.
Tasks
First, we’re introducing Tasks. Every entry in Timely is now a task. Some of you already called them tasks, and sometimes we did the same. But now they actually work as tasks as well. You can complete tasks, you can uncomplete them. Tasks feels much more natural to us as a concept for completing things, than the old mark as logged. It’s a great way to keep track of what is done, and what isn’t.
All your previously logged entries will be marked as completed. Any tasks you add in the past will be auto completed. Any task you add today or in the future will be open.
Estimated system is being replaced
The estimated system is going away, or rather it’s being replaced. The new system is called Planning, and it works a little bit differently. Instead of marking entries – now tasks – as logged or estimated, you can now set both the logged and planned time on each entry, separately, as shown on the image below.
If you don’t want to set a planned amount, you don’t need to. But if you do, you’ll be able to see an indicator telling you how much time you’ve spent compared to your plan. Then, down the line, we’ll be able to tell you things like how much you actually spend compared to what you plan.
Previously, estimated time totals around the app would decrease as you marked entries as logged. So if you had 30 estimated hours one week, and marked entries as logged, that 30 number would decrease. That is no longer the case. The planned amount is always the total amount you have planned. That way, in a few months, you’ll be able to see that you planned to work 150 hours on Project X, but you actually spent 180 hours. It’s a great way to learn from your data, and in the future, do better planning.
We hope you like the new tasks feature and the updated Logged vs. Planned system. We have some cool more cool stuff coming around both of these two concepts, so stay tuned!
Subdomain Removal
Up until today, each account in Timely has had its own subdomain. You would login on that page, and every subdomain was also “closed”, in the way that the user you had on one subdomain had nothing to do with a user you might have on a different account, even though they might use the same email.
This weekend that changed, and we have now fully removed subdomains. It’s much simpler. All you need to login to an account is an email and a password, no matter if you’re logging in on the web or the iPhone.
A single user can now also be used on multiple accounts, without having separate passwords. In the top right corner of Timely, you can click “Switch Accounts”, which will list all the accounts you’re currently a part of.
Also, on timelyapp.com, by clicking ‘Sign In’ in the top, you’ll be taken directly to the login page, instead of the old page which tried helping you find your subdomain.
All old subdomain url’s will still work – you’ll simply be redirected to the new url.
PS: The iPhone update hasn’t been released yet, so if you still see the subdomain field and want to login, just enter whatever you want in that field.
New Feature: Custom Colors
Today we’re launching a feature by popular demand; custom colors. A project can now have any color you wish. Remember to not go too light, as the text we use on top of entries are completely white.
When creating a new project, or editing an existing one, simply click the color button and you’ll be see the custom color field. Clicking that will let you choose any color you want visually, or copy in an existing color code.
Introducing Tags
Today we’re launching a new feature that will let you get a better and more detailed overview of where your time is going. Starting today, when you add a new entry, you can add tags in the notes section using the hashtag symbol.
Under each project, your time will be split into these categories.
For example, you could add #meetings, #design and #programming, and know how much you spend on each part.
Adding tags to entries are really simple. When you’re writing a note for your entry, simply write #, and your existing tags will show up. If you don’t see the tag you want to add, just write it out. E.g. #phase-one. The next time you add a new entry, you’ll see that tag.
An entry can have as many tags as you want. The only special characters you can use are underscores (_) and hyphens (-).
We hope you like it.
PS: Tags aren’t supported on the reports page just yet, but this will be coming later.
2015 Optimisations Completed
Happy New Year! We hope you had a great Christmas. We started 2015 with some new optimisations we’d like to tell you about;
- New Database server. We filled up our old database and had to move to a new one that is many times bigger. Feels like a nice little milestone.
- New DNS server. Our old DNS provider was not fit for a mission-critical application. We had two large downtimes last year because of it, something that is very frustrating when you’re not the one that caused it. Anyhow, we’ve now moved to Cloudflare after much consideration. In addition to DNS, it provides protection for DDoS attacks among other things.
- iPhone updates. We’ve also released a new app update with more optimisations and bug fixes.
Thanks for being a customer! We’re looking forward to launching some new features shortly!
A New History View and Lots of Bug Fixes
Our major spike in growth a few weeks back also brought with it some bugs. Hopefully most of you didn’t experience them. We won’t go into detail of every bug, but we’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks making sure we got to the bottom of every single one of them and got them squashed.
We’ve also released three new versions on iOS these last two weeks and 3.0.4 is coming this weekend, with additional syncing and offline fixes.
Entry History View
Today we’re also launching a new Entry History view, which you can see below. This view will show you every single change done to an entry, split into each day.
Click any entry, then More, then History to see the new page. We hope you like it.
Please note. This won’t show for old entries, only new changes made to entries will be logged.
We’re Having DNS Issues [updated]
Or rather our domain provider, Namecheap, is having DNS issues. That forced us to move the DNS to a new server, which is causing downtime for some of you.
Update: The DNS has been working around the globe for the past two hours, so we think it should be good to go again. Please contact us if it hasn’t updated for you yet.
The problem with DNS is that it refreshes differently around the world. For some, it worked instantly when we made the switch. For others, it’s taking hours.
We don’t have en exact ETA when it will be refreshed everywhere, but we have a monitoring service that is constantly checking the service from different countries, and we know several are still not working.
We’re truly sorry for this, and we can promise you that we will be changing things up a bit after this has calmed down and implement a different solution that will make sure this can never, ever happen again.
You could try this:
What might work, is trying to “flush” the DNS on your computer. It’s unlikely that your computer is the problem, but if you’re in a need right this second, it’s worth a try:
Please hang in there while this updates. You can follow @timelyapp on Twitter for regular updates.
An Insane Week of Growth; How Timely Doubled Its User Base in Seven Days
Timely is a very small company and launched 11 months ago, on December 5th, 2013. It has been a lot of work this year, but we’ve had a blast building out the product and especially getting incredible feedback and emails from you guys.
The growth has been rising steadily and something we’ve been truly happy with, especially as we have been bootstrapping thus far. Then, when we launched our all-new iPhone app last week, this happened:
In one week, our whole user base doubled!! We went from 30 000 to more than 70 000! The amount of companies rose from 18 000 to 27 000.
Being a tiny team and bootstrapping, two things are true for us;
- There are no sales people
- The marketing budget is exactly zero dollars
So you can imagine how happy we are right now. It took us 11 months to reach those original numbers, and only a week to double them. It was – and is – absolutely surreal. Here is an overview of the last four weeks:
Normally, we have around 50-100 new users per day. On October 31st, we had our biggest day ever, with 2390 new users. A week later, on November 7th, we doubled our new record, to 5810 users.
Now, you might be asking what the hell happened? Well, a couple of things. First of all, this is all related to the launch of our new iPhone app. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort on it, and it’s something we’re very proud of.
I’ll hopefully go deeper into these things in a later post, but the main things that happened were this;
- On launch day, we emailed every customer we had telling them about the iPhone app. That gave us a big bump.
- We had a full day of being on the front page of Hacker News, and most of the time on 9th place. It might not look like much, but Hacker News is huge for traffic.
- We had a top 5 spot on Product Hunt. Really great for traffic, and in contrast to Hacker News which is straight up and straight down, Product Hund slowly dies down.
- We had an article in The Next Web among a bunch of other smaller things we did.
- But more important than anything else, we were featured by Apple in 130 countries, under ‘Best New Apps’. We had different placements in every country, ranging from the second spot and all the way down to the 34th. This was, and is, by far the biggest source of new users
I’ll try to get a blog post up at a later stage that goes deeper into each of the things above. Right now we’re just so incredible excited here that we had to share the numbers.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for more updates.
Hiring: An AngularJS Developer and a Product Designer
Timely is growing rapidly and we’re looking for two more people to join our small team. Both positions are on a full-time basis.
We now have tens of thousands of users, so it should be a fun experience where your work will be used by lots of people every single day.
The positions come with lots of freedom and you can choose your own working hours. You will be payed by the amount of hours you work, so any extra time you put in will obviously be fully compensated. We do require a general minimum amount of hours per week.
AngularJS Developer
We’re looking for an AngularJS expert, not someone who understands it and “have used it in the past”. You can be anywhere in the world, all we require is that you’re damn good at your job. You should love going that extra mile to get that one feature just perfect.
Previous experience with Firebase is a big plus, and rails experience is a must. Contact us on hello@timelyapp.comwith the subject ‘AngularJS’.
Product Designer
Up until this point, all our design work has been done by founder and CEO Mathias Mikkelsen. We’re now looking to bring on a designer that will collaborate closely with him.
You will work on the web app, the iPhone app, future devices we want to support and on all sorts of other marketing material we need. It will be very diverse.
You need to have great knowledge of HTML/CSS. Any javascript experience is a plus.
The interfaces you design should be amazing, both visually and UX wise. Please send your portfolio to hello@timelyapp.com with the subject “Product Designer”.
