The file is an outline: lines starting with asterisks are headers, and the more asterisks, the deeper the sub-header, so in html terms (or explicitly if you export an org-mode file to html):

* h1 header ;; => <h1>h1 header<//h1>
** h2 sub-header ;; => <h2>h2 sub-header</h2>

Any line not starting with an asterisk is content contained within the header above it, so you can start adding notes about production bug #123:

* Work
** back-end task #121
** back-end task #122
** production bug #123

Affecting servers X, Y
Tried A, B, C

** front-end-task #124

To hide anything under a header (notes or any subheaders) you can press tab at the beginning of the line, so to hide the details under “** production bug #123” you would press tab at the beginning of the “** production bug #123” line, which would change the display to:

* Work
** back-end task #121
** back-end task #122
** production bug #123…
** front-end-task #124

Pressing tab again at the beginning of the “** production bug #123…” line will re-reveal the hidden content.

You can also press shift-tab anywhere to cycle between displaying just the top-level header, all the headers and subheaders, and all the headers, subheaders, and text.

If your work tasks are tickets in JIRA or some such and you want links direct from the org-mode file, you can:

• use the URL of the link (e.g. http://devnull.atlassian.net/task-121) as the text, instead of “back-end task #121”. A URL in an org-mode document will show up as a link and pressing C-c C–o (org-open-at-point) will open a web browser to that URL.
• use C-c C-l (org-insert-link) to build a link: it will ask you for the link (insert the URL), and then again for description. This will result in, e.g., back-end task #121. C-c C-o will open this link too.

You arrive Friday morning, look at your list, and start work on back-end task #121. To start tracking the time spent, go to the header back-end tasks #121 and press C-c C-x C-i, which runs org-clock-in, and starts a clock on that header.

* Work
** back-end task #121
CLOCK: [2015-02-06 Fri 09:00]

When you finish the task or stop working on it, press C-c C-x C-o to run org-clock-out, which will stop the running clock on this task:

* Work
** back-end task #121
CLOCK: [2015-02-06 Fri 09:00]–[2015-02-06 Fri 11:00] => 2:00

Alternately, if you run org-clock-in on another task, it will stop the clock on the previous task before starting it on the new one:

* Work
** back-end task #121
CLOCK: [2015-02-06 Fri 09:00]–[2015-02-06 Fri 10:45] => 1:45
** back-end task #122
CLOCK: [2015-02-06 Fri 10:45]

If you leave a task and come back to it (after lunch, say), you can clock out when you leave and clock back in again when you come back, and it starts a new clock:

* Work
** back-end task #121
CLOCK: [2015-02-06 Fri 12:45]
CLOCK: [2015-02-06 Fri 09:00]–[2015-02-06 Fri 11:45] => 2:45

When multiple clock records become distracting, remember that pressing tab at the beginning of a header hides everything underneath that header, so the last example can be reduced to:

* Work
** back-end task #121…

You’ve built up your list for a week, adding new tasks as you go and clocking in and out of them to keep track of time spent. You come in on Monday the 16th and it’s time for morning standup. To get from the list of tasks a report of what you worked on on Friday the 13th, you have two options: use org-clock-report or org-agenda. We’ll discuss org-agenda in a later post.

C-c C-x C-r on a header runs org-clock-report on all the content below that header, so running it here on the * Work header would autogenerate a report of all the times for all the tasks, which over a week might look like:

* Work
#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 2 :scope subtree
#+CAPTION: Clock summary at [2015-02-16 Mon 8:55]
| Headline | Time | |
|—————————+————+——|
| *Total time* | *1d 16:00* | |
|—————————+————+——|
| Work | 1d 16:00 | |
| \emsp back-end task #121 | | 5:00 |
| \emsp back-end task #122 | | 2:00 |
| \emsp production bug #123 | | 2:00 |
| \emsp front-end task #124 | | 5:00 |
| \emsp back-end task #125 | | 7:00 |
| \emsp production bug #126 | | 2:00 |
| \emsp back-end task #127 | | 3:00 |
| \emsp hotfix #128 | | 1:00 |
| \emsp front-end task #129 | | 8:00 |
| \emsp front-end task #130 | | 5:00 |
#+END:

** back-end task #121

In this case, that’s all the tasks for eight days, not all the tasks just for last Friday. To limit it, we can modify the auto-generated #+BEGIN line by adding :block today-3 at the end. Press C-c C-c on that line to update the table, and we get instead:

* Work
#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 2 :scope subtree :block today-3
#+CAPTION: Clock summary at [2015-02-16 Mon 8:55], for Friday, February 13, 2015.
| Headline | Time | |
|—————————+——–+——|
| *Total time* | *7:00* | |
|—————————+——–+——|
| Work | 7:00 | |
| \emsp front-end task #129 | | 2:00 |
| \emsp front-end task #130 | | 5:00 |
#+END:

** back-end task #121

And there’s our standup report. Well, almost. It would be nice if it also told us whether each task was done or not.

As part of org-mode’s handling of TODO lists, any header can be turned into a TODO item. With the cursor on a header line, press C-c C-t (org-todo) three times. It will cycle from (say)

** back-end task #121

to

** TODO back-end task #121

to

** DONE back-end task #121

and back to

** back-end task #121

And the TODO and DONE fields show up in the clock reports, so if these TODO keywords were set and front-end task #129 were DONE and front-end task #130 were TODO, the report would look instead like

#+CAPTION: Clock summary at [2015-02-16 Mon 8:55], for Friday, February 13, 2015.
| Headline | Time | |
|——————————–+——–+——|
| *Total time* | *7:00* | |
|——————————–+——–+——|
| Work | 7:00 | |
| \emsp DONE front-end task #129 | | 2:00 |
| \emsp TODO front-end task #130 | | 5:00 |

And there’s our standup report.

The one other thing in our initial problem was to be able to report on planned tasks versus unplanned interruptions, perhaps as part of figuring out velocity or how much unexpected work or emergencies disrupted the work of the sprint. To handle this we can add tags to headers, and use those as filters for the org-clock-report.

Suppose

** production bug #123
** production bug #126
** hotfix #128

are unplanned interruptions. With the cursor on those headers, press C-c C-q to add a tag. It will prompt for a tag name: you can just type in unplanned in each case or set up a list of possible tags like so

#+TAGS: unplanned

and then (after reloading with C-c C-c), you get autocompletion on tag names. Having added the tags, the collapsed table will look like:

** back-end task #121…
** back-end task #122…
** production bug #123 :unplanned:…
** front-end task #124…
** back-end task #125…
** production bug #126 :unplanned:…
** back-end task #127…
** hotfix #128 :unplanned:…
** DONE front-end task #129…
** TODO front-end task #130…

At that point, you can use org-clock-mode using :tags on the #+BEGIN: line and the tag match syntax, so you can retrieve unplanned tasks like so:

#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 2 :scope subtree :tags "unplanned" |
#+CAPTION: Clock summary at [2015-02-15 Sun 19:22] |
| Headline | Time | | |
|—————————+——–+——| |
| *Total time* | *5:00* | | |
|—————————+——–+——| |
| Work | 5:00 | | |
| \emsp production bug #123 | | 2:00 | |
| \emsp production bug #126 | | 2:00 | |
| \emsp hotfix #128 | | 1:00 | |
#+END:

and planned tasks like so:

#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 2 :scope subtree :tags "-unplanned" |
#+CAPTION: Clock summary at [2015-02-15 Sun 19:22] |
| Headline | Time | | |
|——————————–+————+——| |
| *Total time* | *1d 11:00* | | |
|——————————–+————+——| |
| Work | 1d 11:00 | | |
| \emsp back-end task #121 | | 5:00 | |
| \emsp back-end task #122 | | 2:00 | |
| \emsp front-end task #124 | | 5:00 | |
| \emsp back-end task #125 | | 7:00 | |
| \emsp back-end task #127 | | 3:00 | |
| \emsp DONE front-end task #129 | | 8:00 | |
| \emsp TODO front-end task #130 | | 5:00 | |
#+END: |

And there, in addition to our standup report, is report on planned tasks vs. unplanned interruptions. The entire initial problem is now solved.