Looking for a task tracking / timer tool that works with TFS

Question

We've just converted to TFS at work and now we are asked to track how much time we spend on a task.

At this point it is all manual, we basically enter how much time we think its going to take, then manually update the time spent as we work on the task.

In theory that is all great but there are so many interruptions throughout the day that it becomes very difficult to track exactly how much time your spending on a task.

What I'm looking for is a tool that can basically download your tasks and then I can just pick a task, hit a start button and have it automatically keep track of my time spent.  If I'm interrupted I can then just press a "pause" button, and then "resume" when I get back to that task.  

Is there anything like that out there?

Answer 1

Nothing out of the box available in VS 2010. 

If you are using VS 2011 you can take advantage of the task suspend and resume functionality which would be closest to what you are trying to do. You can basically assign a task to in progress, start working on it and when interrupted suspend the task, this not only allows you to set something else to in progress and start working on that but also allows you to save the settings of ur visual studio such as quick watch, break point settings, etc when you suspend the task. Read more about this on msdn... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/hh440470 

You can however look at this free time tracking clock that lets you manually create the tasks and use the stop watch against those tasks to track your time. This desktop application also allows you to export the records to a xml, csv, etc. Read more here... http://timer.vertabase.com/ 

HTH
Cheers, Tarun

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Answer 2

Hi Adrian, 

Thanks for your post.

Sorry for any inconvenience, as Tarun said, there’s no that out of box available in VS 2010. But Tarun provided us the better suggestions, you can try to take them.

For this scenario, I suggest you submit it as a suggestion to User Voice site at: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio. Microsoft engineers will evaluate them seriously.

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John Qiao [MSFT]
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