naderby's dashboard

Olly replied on October 28, 2008 12:17 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Pete,

I'm afraid not, although actually you probably don't need to do the encoding at all on the email/password -- just set them as plain text (I just cut and pasted my example above from a different site verbatim).

If that doesn't work I recommend asking on a dedicated ActionScript forum, or perhaps a programming QA site like the excellent http://stackoverflow.com as we don't have any direct AS experience.

Good luck and do let us know how you get on.

Pete replied on October 28, 2008 12:08 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi again,

I assume this base64Encode method requires a class like from:

http://dynamicflash.com/goodies/base64/

e.g.


import com.dynamicflash.util.Base64;

var projectsUrl:String = "http://yourdomain.freeagentcentral.com/projects";
var userName:String = "username";
var userPassword:String = "password";
var encoded:String = Base64.encode(userName + ":" + userPassword);
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(projectsUrl);
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/xml"));
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml"));
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic" + encoded));
request.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
try
{
loader.load(request);
}
catch (error:Error)
{
trace("Unable to load requested document.");
trace(encoded);
}


Any ideas why this isn't working?

P.

Olly replied on October 28, 2008 11:00 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Pete

I don't have any direct experience of ActionScript, but I've just had a quick Google around and it looks like the flash.net package contains everything you'll need for communicating with FreeAgent (the URLLoader, URLRequest and URLRequestHeader objects in particular).

I can't verify the correctness of the following at all, but I would imagine this is partly what you'd need to do to make a GET request to FreeAgent to obtain a list of projects in XML format:

var projectsUrl:String = "https://[yourdomain].freeagentcentral.com/projects";

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(projectsUrl);

request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/xml"));

request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml"));

request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + base64Encode(email + ":" + password)));

request.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;

I hope this helps!

Pete replied on October 28, 2008 10:21 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hey Olly. I was hoping to do it in Flash (AS3) perhaps as an AIR app. Once I can find any examples of the basics of REST with Flash it should be no problem. Any suggestions?

Olly replied on October 28, 2008 10:01 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Pete,

The API (still in beta, since not all of the FreeAgent functionality is available through it as yet) is documented here: http://www.freeagentcentral.com/devel....

It really is straightforward to get Time and Project data in and out of FreeAgent using most programming languages -- it just involves making a couple of HTTP requests and parsing some basic XML.

Which programming language would you like to write your timer in? I'm sure there are guides to using REST APIs (which the FreeAgent API is) for most popular languages.

Pete replied on October 28, 2008 09:28 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

I'm actually just wanting a timer for FA or build one myself. However I have no idea where to start with the API.

johnjreeve replied on October 27, 2008 22:51 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Maybe check out Intervals, a web-based time tracking service with multiple timers.

Petey replied on October 02, 2008 09:41 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi guys, any more development on your own freshbooks style timer? I'm still using my freshbooks clock to track my time and then put the timeslips in manually into FA. No offence to Timepost but I just don't want to fork out any more money on addons. If I was able to work out the API I would build my own Flash clock for FA in a browser popup (Freshbooks style) or AIR app. and even donate it if you were interested. Any pointers for getting started with the API and Flash?

Mark Davis replied on August 08, 2008 00:53 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Brenda,

While FreeAgent staff are busy adding necessary accounting features, we are committed to providing you with an ideal time tracking solution. Our sole focus is on time management, which allows us to add niche features that may never be available through a web application. We pay attention to all our customers and continuously add new features, services, and platforms that they demand.

Roan replied on August 07, 2008 08:59 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Brenda,

While we won't rule anything out, time tracking like that provided by Timepost, isn't on our immediate roadmap.

I'll write a little more about this on a Central post later, but it's tricky balancing act responding to feature requests while still trying to keep the software simple and easy to use for everybody.

Looking through GetSatisfaction you'll see so many other great ideas that people would like to see from FreeAgent, and we just don't have enough time in the day to do all of these right now.

So for the moment we feel that the level of time tracking within FAC is good enough for most freelancers. If you do need more than this, and of course some people do, then there's Timepost, which is, as you say, very reasonably priced.

Our Time Tracking will undoubtedly improve as time goes on, but for now we're concentrating on other areas of the application, making big improvements that will benefit everybody.

Sorry, it's not exactly the answer you're looking for, but hopefully it explains our reasoning.

Brenda replied on August 07, 2008 06:39 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Not to rain on the Timepost parade, it's a very nice widget, but does this mean FA isn't going to pursue developing its own? It's a little disappointing to have to pay extra (I know, I know... it's only $39 US) for functionality that should really be included in FA as standard.

Ed Molyneux replied on August 06, 2008 08:13 to the question "Starting half way through your financial year (sole trader)" in FreeAgent Central:

Yes indeed - and you should also upload your back statements going back to April too, so you have a record of money going in and out. Most online banking websites will allow you to go back that far...

naderby asked a question in FreeAgent Central on August 05, 2008 16:27:

Starting half way through your financial year (sole trader)

I'm starting to use FAC now (Aug) but my financial year starts 06Apr. Do I manually add all the invoices I generated in my previous software from this date and mark them as paid?

Olly replied on August 05, 2008 14:45 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Naderby

Rest assured you're not dumb -- we gave FreeAgent a tiny tweak last night to resolve a small teething problem ;-)

Let us know how you get on with Timepost

naderby replied on August 05, 2008 14:31 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Today it seems to work. Maybe it was fixed, maybe I was dumb.

naderby replied on August 04, 2008 18:50 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Great news guys! Looks great and thanks for all the effort on this.

I have registered my trial account and downloaded the trial Timepost and the timeslip posting works very well!

However, and please bare with me here as I'm unfamiliar with FreeAgent at the moment and could be wrong, can someone do some checks for me because I'm finding that individual timeslip enteries posted from Timpost will not Invoice.

I can add a manual timeslip and it'll invoice straight away but the Timepost one's are completely ignored.

Thanks.

Roan replied on August 04, 2008 16:34 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

That's great news Mark.

Thanks for all your hard work, and I'm sure FreeAgent users will appreciate it. I know I will.

Great looking new site btw

Mark Davis replied on August 04, 2008 15:19 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Timepost now supports FreeAgent, and can be downloaded for both Mac and Windows. There is a free trial available that runs for 30 minutes at a time, and the full version can be purchased for only $39.

http://www.timepost2.com/

Mark Davis started following the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central.

naderby replied on August 01, 2008 08:32 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Yeah that's the type of thing that I'm looking for. The fancy clock isn't as important as the ability to start and stop timers on projects many times a day and have these individual chunks of time appear as separate items on a bill.

I can start 4 timers an hour sometimes. I need that 15mins fixing a design project counting on a customer bill as an individual item (and a reason for that particular chunk of time in a project would be nice too). And yes, I might sometimes expect to bill 4 or more individual chunks of time on a project in one day so I don't want to simply add a daily timesheet, it's too limited.

To be honest, the new widget looks promising (it also knows if you walk away from the computer and stops the timer), maybe you should wait to see what that is like first?