Case Study TimeControl

In the interests of employee protection and to provide supervisors and departments with a better overview, we record the working and absence times of our employees. At the same time, we optimize our own work processes through simple and efficient processing time tracking.

Accurate tracking of working hours is required by law in Germany, but is still not implemented in many enterprises. In order to provide our employees with automated proof of their work performance, we were in need of a program for tracking working hours. Since we were not satisfied with existing solutions on the market, we took the implementation into our own hands. Subsequently, we also desired to track our work activities in order to monitor the progress of our projects and to optimize our working methods in the long term.

The development of our time tracking system is a joint project of our development team, which is subject to a permanent growth process. For us, the development of TimeControl has the positive side effect that we can entrust new team members with the implementation of features on our internal tool in order to introduce them to our working methods and at the same time directly create added value for us. As a result, we can ensure that our customers are provided with competent staff who is familiar with our internal work processes.

We programmed the backend and the Android application in Java and Kotlin, and created the WebUI using TypeScript together with the Angular framework. We developed the terminal UI in C# using the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). We also designed the terminal to be compatible with RFID chips. For this purpose, we developed a controller in C++ that enables the reading of the chips. The various user interfaces are designed adaptively and thus enable the customizable data display.

We also established software interfaces with project management tools such as YouTrack and Jira to streamline the data volume in TimeControl itself. At the same time, data can also be transmitted to the project management tools to keep the processing flow within TimeControl and the external tool synchronized. We integrated another interface for evaluating the collected data in Excel.

The worktime tracking in TimeControl takes into account the German legal requirements, e. g. concerning break times or holiday and weekend working time regulations. Vacation and sick leave can be reported independently by employees and confirmed by supervisors. Logging in and out at terminals is possible via RFID chips. In addition, the use of the program on different end devices enables simple remote working time tracking. The processing time tracking also enabled us to sustainably optimize our work flow and, thanks to the connection of TimeControl to our internal ticket system, we were able to shorten the training cycle for remote developers. The interfaces to project management tools as well as to Excel ensure a perfect integration of TimeControl into our daily work and provide our managers with reliable and meaningful reports on the performance of our employees.