Add "reporting day" value: "start with 1'st of month" for Dashboard view

[Former user]

Right now editing the Dashboard-gadget allows you to set the "reporting day". It's quite disturbing that this value behaves differently when choosing e.g. "Monday" (report period starts with Monday) vs. choosing "Today" (report period ends with Today) - left alone that both values only influence the results, when the weekly-view is used having no effect in the monthly-view. But what we are really missing ist the possibility to set a value like "start with 1'st of month" so you get the results starting exactly with the first day of a month for the Dashboard-gadget. This would be very usefull for a fast report on all time spent in a certain month.

To get these results right now you have to set the date in the "Details" view of the gadget. That's a lot of clicking instead of having the possibility to just get the nedded results in the Dashboard view.

Affects Project Pivot and Time Sheet gadget.

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

You're right gadget ignores reporting day option and uses regional first day of week for month view. I think of couple of improvements in this concern:

1) Allow empty value, and use regional fist day of week for week view and month view in case reporting day is not set.

2) Honor reporting day option in month view.

3) Make month view use Calendar start date if it is set.

4) Order selector options to correspond user regional settings.

It should help. Please let me know if you have any concerns.

Thank you.

[Former user]

Hi Andriy - thanks a lot for your feedback! Sounds great to me - only two concerns on my side:

Regarding point 1: Trying to handle both cases - "first day of week" and "first day of month", depending on the view (week view vs. month view) might end up in even more confusion if the behavior is triggered by an empty value for "reporting day". Using clearly named values like "1'st day of week" and "1'st day of month" instead of the empty value would result in 2 benefits:

1. easier to understand for the user => less confusion
2. the possibility to use 1'st day of week also in month view and vice versa - resulting in more options how / which period should be displayed

Important: you're only mentioning "first day of week" - please note, that "first day of month" is much more important (at least for us) since many reports are done monthly!

Regarding point 3: When talking about "Calendar start date" are you talking about the date that can be "changed" in the "Details" view? If I'm right than this would the best solution in the first place - why using a "reporting day" value at all? Why not just setting the "report start day" and the "report end day" using a Calendar for the Dashboard views too like it's done in the Details-view?

I have to admit that I don't understand why the Detail-view options differ in some configuration items from the Dashboard-view options. There might be a need for two different ways to display the data - Dashboard vs. Detail. That's ok with me. But why do these both reports need different option-settings?

My roundup:

A) If you want/need to use "reporting day", two different new values would be more helpfull than using the "empty value"

B) The best (since most flexible) way would be to remove "reporting day" and use "report start day" and "report end day" instead.

Thanks and greetings, Sebastian

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

Thank you a lot for your input. Let me elaborate my plans.

1) First day of week I used as commonly used term, it is Sunday in US and UK, but it is Monday in major of other European countries. The point of this item is to default to user cultural settings, to avoid need to adjust this. So I forgot to mention, not only empty value will be added, but it will be also default value.

But for Month view the intention is to show the same hours per week, as it shows for the week in Week view. In other words, when you look at week view, you should see from Sunday, May 18 to Saturday, May 24, and when you switch view to Month current week should be the same from Sunday, May 18 to Saturday, May 24.

3) No, in the gadget there is Calendar icon, you can click to it and get to desired date window. The intention of this item is to let one make gadget start on the specified date and discard reportinDay option completely. This will let you see from 1st day of month, and will work inline between week and month view, I think.

So, reporting day is used for gadget to show current week initially. Now functionality is a bit over complicated, but it's important to keep original behavior.

Finally, overall intention is to minimize number of options, and to make behavior just correct :)

Thank you.

[Former user]

I'm not 100% sure if I do understand everything right but let me sum it up this way:

• "week view" AND "month view" will become a default value
• this default value will be "1'st day of week" (based on region)
• this default value however will NOT be named "1'st day of week" in the dropdown-box - instead this behavior will be hidden behind the "empty value" option, which will be added to the "reporting day" dropdown-box
• both views will - using this default value - display the same time range
• talking about "1'st day of month" there is no need for such a setting, since the calendar icon should allow you to set (and hopefully remember!!!) any starting and ending date you like

If I got this right, than it still would be great with us. Unfortunately the calendar icon doesn't seem to work right now! It seems to become overruled by the "Reporting day" setting - or something else. Correcting this/making it work would be great and exactely what we need - the possibility to set (and once again: hopefully remember the setting) of a custom starting and ending date - e.g. the 1'st day of a month.

Greetings, Sebastian

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

That's correct! And Calendar icon just should point you to the week/month within the selected date, currently. Hopefully within this change in plan, it will point directly to the selected date.

Thank you.

[Former user]

Yeah, it's quite useless and confussing/frustrating right now - you're selecting a date... and still the starting/ending date is caluculated and therfore changend :-(

Looking forward for the changes - hopefully it will not take too long! This will make our monthly reports much easier. Right now we need to use the "Details" view to generate reports for specific time periods. A lot of clicks instead of an instant result in the dashboard...

Thanks for your efforts!

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

Version 2.7.9.3 with changes, is released.

Note, it may be not exactly as you would expect. Month view shows selected date as last week, because of the rule for other case - when you just switch from week view to month view, it is designed to show back in time. You'll need to move view to the desired week for beginning. Sorry for inconvenience, but this is not possible to change.

I still hope it will suite your needs a bit better.

Thank you.

[Former user]

Hi Andriy - I really appreciate your efforts to improve this Issue... but the Improvement is unfortunately very small in 2.7.9.3.

All we can do now is:

• getting a weekly report starting with a choosen date via the Calendar. Point.

What still is not possible is:

• getting a monthly report with the same starting date as the weekly report
• or getting a monthly report with any kind of strating date set via the Calender
• quite apart from getting a monthly report with any kind of strating AND ending date set via (presumably) two different Calenders

The point is (to sum it up once again):

• our understanding is that reports often tend to be generated monthly
• from 1'st of a month to 30/31'th of a month, not from "today" or from "monday" to + 7/31 days
• this - apparently obvious and most important / logical - feature for a reporting tool does not work in the Dashboard view... rendering the Dashboard view useless for us

I have no idea, why the moth view was designed to show "back in time" when switching from week view to month view - what is the advantage of this, what is this good for? My personal opinion is that your're trying to address two different dates - starting and ending date - with just ONE drop down value ("reporting day") respecitevely with just ONE Calendar. This of course can't work. And it results in total confusion how things work and which setting triggers which behavior and lead to which results... And of course changing something becomes nearly impossible (like the "back in time" funcionality of the month view). However - it's just my opinion and this plugin is your 'baby' and of course it's your descision how the plugin has to work.

Greetings, Sebastian

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

For month view you have to scroll forward 3 times, after you chose date in calendar.

And for the question. This is needed for the case when you look at current week, when you switch to month view you don't want to see future, I think, do you?

[Former user]

Hi Andriy,

For month view you have to scroll forward 3 times, after you chose date in calendar.

LOL... you're kidding me, right? Of course you can do it this way... - I can switch to the Details view and choose a starting and ending date there as well... work's even better... so why using a Dashboard View at all? ;-)

This is needed for the case when you look at current week, when you switch to month view you don't want to see future, I think, do you?

Andriy, the first question is: "what do you expect to see, when choosing a reporting day...

• ...the past week/month or
• ... the future week/month?"

The second question is: "how do you expect week view and month view to work...

• ... exactely the same way (beginning or ending with the same day) or
• ... differently (e.g. week view starts with monday showing the future while month view end's with the last day of the week showing mainly the past)?"

And the third question is: "is it

• a month view (=> wich month? current month? last month?) or is it
• a last/future four weeks view?"

Right now

• setting reporting day to "blank" results in the week view starting with regional first day of week => the future is shown
• setting reporting day to a specific day of week (e.g. Monday) results in the week view starting with this day of week => the future is shown
• setting reporting day to "Today" results in the week view ENDING with this day of week => the past is shown

and

• week view works differently compared to month view

and

• month view is not a month view - it's a four weeks view

The outcome is that this combination of inconsistent behaviors is highly confusing for a common user!

Once again an example:

• When I chosse the week view to start e.g. with Monday
• and the future is shown (Mo, Tu, We....)
• and this is OK for me
• and then I switch to month view
• why do you belive I would like to see the past month
• or the last four weeks?

I'm sitting in front of the outlook-calendar... at home I'm using the Thunderbird calendar - neither of them behaves the way the Dashboard does when switching from week view to month view.

PHUH... this was a long post... as I said before, in the end it's your tool - I just want to point out that from a user-view there are issues. There are inconsistancies. And the behavior is hard to understand. All that makes the Dashboard view hard to use or renders it completely useless :-(

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

It's really great you can share your thoughts that thoroughly. I wish I could :)

In week view, gadget shows "current week", broken by reporting day, so it is current working week. Month view shows 'Number of Weeks' multiple of 4, grouping hours by week. It's nothing like normally calendar month view is. But I reopen issue to hopefully make it like this some day. This tool is for you and others, I'm not using it.

Note, it looks like it needs significant work, please do not expect it soon. Though I've just made it to show beginning from start date if it selected within calendar. Update should be available rather soon.

Thank you.

[Former user]

You mean, I'm really stubborn and annoying ;-)

However - I never expected to get a fast solution. In fact I'm surprised that you paid that much attention to our needs concerning this issue... and I want to thank you once again for your commitment! It would be great to see improvements in this plugin since me and my collegues have to use it quite heavily (it was a company-wide management descision... all timetraking and reporting has to be done in JIRA using the according plugins). I do fully understand that making crucial changes will take quite some time - still it would be great to see at least some improvements to the Dashboard. With this said I will stop arguing and get back to work ;-)

Greetings, Sebastian

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

No, no, I was writing seriously. I value every feedback, especially reasonable! I did not consider month view as normal calendar view.

Well, good news, is that 2.7.9.4 is out with showing view starting from the selected date.

Though new inconvenience appeared, it's necessary to click twice on the date to close calendar popup, it's because of fix to prevent popup closing when moving to previous/next month or year in calendar popup.

I will keep issue open to hopefully make month view to show whole month, e.g. from 1/Jun to 30/Jun, and not just 4*number of weeks.

Thank you.

[Former user]

Hi Andriy, obviously a step in the right direction - great! If you get the "real" month view to work and navigating in month view using ">>" and "<<" jumps from month to month instead of week to week, it will become perfect!

Talking about the Popup Issue: I belive that right now you need to keep the calendar popup open because your're reloading the reports/table in the background each time a new date is choosen. I'm not sure if this is really necessary. Usually changing configuration inside most software is a two-step process

1. change the configuartion (eg. in a popup)
2. apply the changes and as a result change the data displayed (reload page)

I would consider not to reload the displayed data/reports/table in the background as long as no date gets choosen inside the popup! This might eliminate the need for the fix at all!

By the way: if due to movig to another week/month/year the Dashboard area becomes to small for the calendar popup, it gets closed anyway!

One more thing: you might as well consider giving the Dashboard area a "minimum size" to prevent the popup from beeing cropped if the area is to small - a nasty effect as well. I quess this would be the easiest solution for this problem.

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

You're right but I'm bound to used technologies, the calendar does not allow to make it two-step process.

Regarding cropped popup, I've been just trying to solve it in Issue#522. Making minimum height looks ugly, because calendar requires much bigger space to fit into the viewable area, so without popup empty gadget occupies to much space on dashboard. I've been trying to increase height right before popup but did not manage.

Thank you.

[Former user]

I see.

Concerning #522: it might look ugly, but it works ;-) Don't see too many possibilities here if a dynamic resize doesn't work. One workaround might be to make the size of the dashboard height configurable... with default beeing "as small as possible" but giving all users who don't care about space consumption a tool to make the calendar beeing displayed 100%. Still I'm aware that this is hardly a "cool" solution :-/

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Thank you for another idea. I will keep thinking of it, meanwhile I hope it's not a big problem.

[Andriy Zhdanov]

fix issue#519 regression about restoring time frame after unlocking gadgets view

→ <<cset a89a44985553>>

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Version 2.9 is released with Full Month view in gadgets

[Former user]

Hi Andriy!

Really, really cool!! The month view works great now. Starting and ending correctly, Navigation forwards and backwards works as well. Really great!

A suggestion:

setting reporting day to "blank" results in the week view starting with regional first day of week => the future is shown
setting reporting day to a specific day of week (e.g. Monday) results in the week view starting with this day of week => the future is shown
setting reporting day to "Today" results in the week view ENDING with this day of week => the past is shown

is still an issue. If this is the way it should work, then it's OK - but it's not described anywhere and quite confusing

Another suggestion: The "reporting day" setting now only influences the weekly-view - not the monthly-view. Maybe an additional info-/help text explainig this might be usefull to users.

But I'm very happy that the monthly view works correctly now! Thanks a lot.

[Andriy Zhdanov]

Hi Sebastian,

Great, thank you for feedback!

Regarding Reporting Day option, it does influence month view, you may notice it in Timesheet gadget - weeks are broken on the reporting day. Though may be because of the similar reasons as in issue#644 it's not working for you - let's take care of it there.

Thank you.