No More Interruptions - Integrating Codealike and HipChat

I’ve recently started using Codealike, a service that tracks various metrics while I’m coding. The data it collects is then presented in a bunch of really useful ways to help determine when I’m being most productive, as well as the places our code base I spend most of my time and various other things.

One of the metrics they calculate as part of this process is how “focused” you are and from this they determine whether or not someone should interrupt you - they have three different levels, No Activity, Can Interrupt and Cannot Interrupt.

One of the worst things that can happen is being interrupted while you’re “in the zone” or as Codealike put it “on fire”.

Codealike does provide a webpage that you could put on a display in your office which displays your current status (you can view my current status), however whilst I have two monitors at work I tend you use both of them.

We use HipChat at work as our IM of choice, so, during the last week I’ve started to set my status as Do Not Disturb when Codealike thinks I’m in the zone.

Introducing: Codealike IM Updater

To remove the interruption of having to update my status in HipChat when I’m in the zone I set out to build the Codealike IM Updater. It’s a simple application that periodically checks my status according to Codealike and update my status on HipChat accordingly.

As you can see, it is very simple - all the user needs to do is supply their Codealike username, their HipChat API Token and Email address and how you want to map the different levels from Codealike to HipChat. Optionally you can also specify an optional message that is displayed next to your name in HipChat.

The code is available on GitHub and if anyone would like to extend it to work with other IM services then I will happily accept pull requests.