Helipad supports plugins and themes through add-ons. To view available add-ons, click the link at the top right of Helipad.

Installing an add-on adds a document to your account that contains the code for the add-on. This allows you to edit it, which is useful for customising themes.

Add-ons can be updated to a newer version if the author updates it by clicking on Settings and then Plugins. You can also remove add-ons here.

If you’d like to write an add-on, we’ve written some documentation on the process: Helipad add-on documentation.

Add-ons are simply an XML container that wraps JavaScript and CSS, so if you’ve got some basic web development experience you should be able to write an add-on.

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Kev (our sysadmin and morale officer) uses Helipad mobile in a unique way: he sets a tag’s page as his mobile browser’s homepage. This means he can quickly access documents suitable for his phone.

In his case he uses documents tagged with “gtd” so he can easily keep track of todo lists. I thought it might be useful to have an ”@mobile” tag for documents you generally want to see on the move.

We’re still working on the Helipad upgrade and Mac version, they’re almost ready! (Mac version needs serious testing to get synchronisation safe, upgrade needs more IE testing in Windows.)

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Note: This tip actually applies to all of our web applications, seeing as we carefully craft mobile interfaces for each of them.

Did you know your Tiktrac account has a mobile phone version? Just add /mob to your account’s URL. Even though it provides a limited view on your account, it allows you to post tasks wherever you are with a mobile phone.

This is great for anyone who leaves the office regularly, like tradesmen. We have a plumber friend who uses his phone to log time when he’s out on a job , which means his time sheets are more accurate: no more end of week panics trying to remember what he worked on.

Similarly, Helipad allows you to read your documents when you’re away from the computer. Just login with your phone at http://pad.helicoid.net/mob. This saved me a lot of time when I was setting up Helicoid, because I …

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Tiktrac, our time tracking app, has just been furnished with a Mac OS Dashboard widget.

To download the widget and get instructions on how to use it, visit the widget’s page.

We’d love to hear from you (and give you awesome free stuff) if you’ve used Tiktrac’s API to make any widgets, gadgets or interesting things. Also get in touch if you’d like help building something like this.

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Tiktrac now supports data imports from CSV files. This allows you to import time sheet data from spreadsheets straight into Tiktrac.

Each sheet now has an Import tab, which takes you through the steps to import your data.

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Tiktrac’s now got a referral scheme. If you get 10 friends to sign up, you’ll receive 50% off the Standard or Premium accounts for a year!

All you need to do is get your referral URL and hand it out to friends, or even stick it on your blog. You can find your referral URL by logging in, clicking on Tiktrac settings and then Referrals.

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We’ve finally updated Tiktrac’s reporting section. What you now see in place of the old report pages is an incredibly flexible system for analysing your Tiktrac sheets in almost limitless ways. Creating your own reports is now possible, as well as filtering them to only show what you need.

Here’s an excellent example for anyone who deals with software: a report to show time spent fixing bugs.

Constructing this particular report was easy enough for my grandma to do it. I added a new report, named it, then added two filters: one to search the task description field for “bug”, and another to limit to a particular sheet.

Here’s how the filters look:

Spend some time experimenting with the new reports feature, and see what you can discover. If you find any really creative ways to use it, let us know so we can share your thoughts with Tiktrac’s fans. In return, we might just give you some *incredible discounts on T…

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This tip applies to all of our applications. When you see a letter underlined in a link or form button, this means there is an available keyboard shortcut. This type of keyboard shortcut is called an “access key”.

Different browsers handle these keyboard shortcuts in different ways. In Safari (Mac OS), I press ctrl-letter. In Internet Explorer, I’d press alt-letter. Check your preferred browser’s manual to see how it handles access keys.

This screenshot is from Tiktrac:

To open up “Add a new task”, I’d press ctrl-a. The task save form also has an access key, so I can press ctrl-s to save.

Helipad has access keys on common operations, like new document and save document. You can even get straight into the handy search bar by pressing ctrl/alt-f:

If you use your applications regularly it’s worth…

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This article is the first in a regular series of tips on how to get the most out of Tiktrac. If you have any suggestions or questions, please contact us

Tiktrac sheets have several export formats. To view the export options, click “Export” when viewing a sheet. A panel opens like this:

Perhaps the most useful way to export sheet data is Export daily summaries as CSV. This creates a file you can easily open with Excel, Open Office or Apple’s Numbers, which contains the total duration for each day. If you’re in the month view, this will export a duration for each day of the month.

This really helps when submitting time sheets to contractor agencies! In fact, we implemented this feature specifically for contractors.

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