Windows Phone Thoughts: Punchin' In -- Time Recording with Project Clock CE

Introduction
I came across a description of Project Clock CE while browsing another iPAQ-related site. Always intrigued by the possibility of finding an easier way to record time spent on my various clients, I thought I’d take a closer look.

Project Clock is a suite of applications developed by CyberMatrix primarily for the desktop Windows environment, for professionals such as lawyers, consultants, engineers, contractors and project managers to record and report on client/project-related work. The suite includes a network version, an Internet-enabled client/server version, and a web-browser enabled version. Project Clock information can be exported to QuickBooks, which would be a major boon for small business owners.

Modules are also provided for mobile staff to input their time on Pocket PC or Palm powered handhelds. Once back from the site, they can synchronize/download their information to the central server. For this review, I’ll focus on the Pocket PC module.

Installation
CyberMatrix provides a limited functionality trial version of Project Clock CE from their website, which handles up to two projects, clients and tasks. The download uses the familiar Activesync install routines, initiated from the Desktop PC. Two modules are required for the Pocket PC version. The first is NS Basic Runtime, which is available from CyberMatrix. It should be installed first, requires approximately 2.2 megs of RAM, and must be installed to main memory to work properly. As is normal for me, I did a soft reset after installing this module before proceeding with installation of Project Clock CE. Project Clock CE is quite a bit smaller, only requiring 123K of RAM and because it was so small, I decided to install it to main memory as well.

According to the documentation which came with the package, Microsoft’s ADOCE (ActiveX Data Objects for the Windows CE)is also required, but should come with the Pocket PC operating system in ROM. On my iPAQ 2215 with ROM 1.10 installed, I kept getting a message about an ADOCE-related .dll file missing. When I sent a message to CyberMatrix about my problem, they responded very quickly with the missing file, which I copied to the \Windows directory and the problem was quickly resolved. This file is also available from CyberMatrix’s download website.

After installation, you’ll notice two new icons in your Programs folder.


Figure 1: Project Clock icons in the Programs folder.

I’m not exactly sure what the Register Runtime icon does, since it’s not described in any of the documentation. I tried tapping it and got a couple of messages regarding RegisterServer succeeding. It didn’t seem to make any difference to the operation of Project Clock CE whether this was done or not. I suspect it has something to do with NS Basic Runtime.

Tapping the Project Clock icon brings you right into the main time-recording screen in Project Clock CE.


Figure 2: Initial, time-recording screen of Project Clock CE.