Category Archives: Friends

Feeds, Friends, Help, Mobile App, Projects, Tasks

Who are “We”

My name is Peter Brosey. I’m a carpenter in Maine. When it comes to developing Grainchek, I basically try to stay out of the way. In spite of trying NOT to get in the way though, Grainchek has ended up being a little awkward to operate. I can assure you that all the awkward, “why did they do it that way”, parts of Grainchek are my parts! I teamed up with an excellent team at Bacancy Technologies that built all the amazingly smooth experiences.

NO COMMENTING OR LIKING: that is me, I enjoy the quietness of knowing that when I post an event, my friends, family and co-workers can view it if they want to, when they want to. No voting. No commenting. The amazing chat interface in Grainchek that includes sharing feeds and events within the chat thread is my team. They built a fantastic communication platform within the app!

SUBFEED SETTINGS COLLECT EVENTS: this is from me again. I enjoy building and assembling. I enjoy the process of taking a pile of lumber delivered to a job site and building something that people will occupy, use or operate. In Grainchek I have lots of levers and buttons to generate time tracking content. Then build feeds that report to other feeds and collect only certain types of content from a specific time period… Public feeds that can be viewed in your bio: this is the careful, considerate work of my team.

NEW TASKS NOT SHARED: this is also my design. When I add a new task to a project it is, by default, not included in any of the existing feeds. If I want to include it in a feed, I go to that feed and check the box. I recognize that this seems cumbersome and awkward when we are accustomed to sharing everything and need to specifically request the do-not-share option. The answer is to include a general feed in every project. The general feed includes all time frames and tasks, even new tasks: My team did a great job putting this together and fitting it into the different scenarios where feeds are handled in the app.

It seems likely that over time these strategies that were important at the beginning may change as Grainchek grows and shapes to fit the needs we’re working to satisfy. For now though, in addition to the fantastic work that Bacancy has done, Grainchek has some unique quirks based on my perspective!

Feeds, Friends, Help, Mobile App, Tasks

Shifting the date

After carefully tracking billable days for month, it’s time to detail a daily report. In this demonstration I explain the quick component intended for setting a feed’s start date/time and end date/time. Then shifting if forward and backward a day at a time. In this way the feed becomes a detailed report of each day. The strategy behind the design of Grainchek is to provide tools that can be used to assemble a time tracking platform that works for the unique circumstance of different users as well as different projects.

Feeds, Friends, Help, Mobile App

Friend Shares a Feed

Grainchek is a mobile application platform for tracking time. Each time tracking event can be assembled into feed. These feeds can then be shared with other Grainchek users. In this demonstration I use a sub feed to collect the events of a feed that has been shared with me.

Feeds, Friends, Help, Mobile App

Adding a Sub Feed

Grainchek is a designed to be platform where each user can assemble the tools, levers, buttons and gadgets to perform in a way that works for each intended use. In this demonstration I show how I assemble a unique sub feed for each billable task in a project for the purpose of reporting how much time was spent on each task.

Feeds, Friends, Mobile App, Tasks, Uncategorized

Designed Complication

The Grainchek app, by design, gives the user control over how to track time, what time tracking events to include and in which feeds. Sub feeds are created for the user’s own feeds or from a friend’s but still only using the information the user decides to include. Then a feed can be shared with other users but those users decide which events to include in their own sub feeds. This basic demonstration is intended to communicate a practical application of Grainchek’s time tracking tools:

Feeds, Friends, Help, Mobile App

Feed Settings

As Grainchek users, we use feeds to collect events that we generate and sub feeds of events. Understanding how feeds and sub feeds work will help users organize their time tracking events and feeds that have been shared with them.

Grainchek users will use feeds different ways and one user will use different feeds in different ways. Some projects will be set up solely for the purpose of collecting feeds and reporting the accumulated time. A project for collecting feeds from friends might never have any actual events posted and the feeds will be made up entirely of sub feeds. Other projects will be heavy in local content not having any sub feeds. The feeds for this project might contain events from specific time periods or a dynamic time period. Some feeds in may only look at specific tasks. Determining who the feed is intended to be shared with also determines what information is collected and from what time period. All of these variables and scenarios are managed here in the feed settings.