Changes and Improvements in Timekeeper version 2.24
8 October 2005
This document describes the changes to Timekeeper released
as Timekeeper version 2.24 in October 2005. The most important change
is the addition of a second reports interface using the Wizard
style. Form specific help using F1 was also added.
A version 2.23 was released in May 2005 but did not work correctly
with Access 2000. Version 2.23 worked OK with Access 2002 and 2003.
The Access 2000 problem is hopefully corrected in
version 2.24. Version 2.24 is otherwise identical to version 2.23.
Fixes in the Program
It was possible to edit attributes in a way which would then
cause Timekeeper to fail when a form for choosing attributes was
displayed. This is fixed. Also displaying attributes on the count
form did not work exactly like the form for choosing attributes
for members. They should now work the same.
Windows XP changed the space taken up by the borders of windows.
Because of this some Timekeeper forms were are smaller than intended.
Timekeeper should now correctly size Windows on both XP and previous
versions of Windows.
Changes to the Program
Timekeeper gave a poor response to entering a completely illegal
date in a date field on a form. Changes were made to all the places
where dates are entered on forms.
On the Find Assignment form, when no date was entered for Begin
Date and End Date for a new Assignment, Begin Date was set to
the current date and End Date was set to one month later. If a
lot of assignments are entered with the default then finding the
assignments for a specific day is hard because that day may be
within the month for a lot of Assignments. The default has been
changed to set both the Begin and End date to the current date.
If there is a Begin Date and no End Date then the End Date is
set one month after the Begin Date. If this change causes problems
please let me know.
A new flag, Ongoing, was added to Assignments. This is similar
to Time Critical. It is possible to search for Assignments with
the flags eiter off or on or to ignore this flags in the search.
Both the Find Assignment form and the Assignment form were changed.
A DemoData parameter was added to the demo database so there
will always be a clear indication of demo data. The demo data
indicator was triggered by an extra parameter in the shortcut
installed by the Timekeeper installation. Since users are now
making their own shortcuts this was no longer a reliable method.
Changes to Reporting
Eric Anderton wrote a reporting wizard for Timekeeper and a
new report style with a place for an image such as an organization
logo on each page. The changes introduced by Eric were distributed
to some Organizations as the Timekeeper Upgrade.
This change created a fork in the Timekeeper code and greatly
complicated the problems of long term maintenance. Timekeeper
2.2 merges these reporting changes back into the mainstream of
Timekeeper development. The Report Wizard is now in Timekeeper
as an addition to and not a replacement for the existing report
interface. Both the new report style and the old report style
are available through either report interface. Saved reports can
be used and changed through either interface. Integrating the
Wizard interface and the new report style into Timekeeper required
many changes so there is a good chance of finding bugs in reporting.
In the reports based on transactions some used Date of Service
and some used Date of Entry. For all reports which used Date of
Entry it is now possible to choose instead Date of Service. For
all such report the report itself now shows which date was used.
There is a new report which shows Member attributes and the
content of the text boxes on the member form.
The function to write the underlying data for reports to a
file from the old report interface was changed to write an Excel
file instead of a comma delimited text file.
Addition of Help to the Program
Mary Maler has written Help for Timekeeper. F1 will now display
form specific Help for most Timekeeper forms. The file Timekeeper.chm
must be in the same folder as TkProgram.
Changes to the Utility
To support the changes in Reporting a new form was added to
the utility. The button Edit Report Information replaces the one
about program prefixes. Program prefixes were most likely never
used by anyone.
Each of the Report interfaces may use either of the Report
styles. Use the Utility to choose. The default is the Image style
with the Wizard and the original style with the old interface.
In the Image style there can be two images at the top of each
page. A left and a right image. Use the utility to specify an
image for each. The default is no image for either so there will
be a blank space at the top of each report page. A few images
are provided with the Timekeeper files.
The customization function was changed where it interacted
with the changes to reports.
The conversion of old versions of Timekeeper data was updated
to convert versions before 2.2 including 2.1, 1.3 and the Upgrade.
The changed tables are the Assignment table and the Saved Report
Parameters table. A Saved Report Attributes table was added.
New Files in the distribution
Timekeeper.chm is a new file for the form specific help. The
folder images has some bmp images for use in reports. TkDemoData
is an entirely new demo database.
Previous Changes and Improvements
For changes to the previous Access 2000 version of Timekeeper
see Version 2.14 Changes.
For the change history for Timekeeper 97 see
Timekeeper 97 Changes, Version
1.35 Changes and Version 1.36 Changes.
For the change history of versions before Timekeeper 97 see
Version 0.81 Changes , Version
0.8 Changes and Version 0.73 Changes.