⏱️ TimePulseBackend

Enterprise-Grade Attendance & Workforce Management API Engine

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📖 Overview

TimePulseBackend is a robust, high-performance ASP.NET Core 6 Web API built to handle automated employee attendance tracking, timesheet ingestion, intelligent time logging, and workforce analytics.

Designed with modern clean architecture principles and Entity Framework Core, TimePulseBackend serves as the central data processing and reporting engine. It seamlessly connects with and powers its companion frontend user interface, which is developed using ASP.NET Core 6 MVC.

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✨ Key Features

• 📊 Automated Excel Timesheet Ingestion: Directly upload and parse employee attendance logs from .xls / .xlsx spreadsheet sheets using high-speed Microsoft ACE OLEDB data adapters.
• ⚙️ Intelligent Log Processing & Attendance Calculation: Automatically aggregate raw check-in and check-out logs by month and year. Compute precise daily metrics:
  • Total working hours and net duration
  • Late-in duration (in minutes)
  • Early-out duration (in minutes)
  • Overtime calculation (in minutes)
  • Automated weekend (Week-Off) and holiday detection
• 📈 Work Hour & Payroll Analytics: Generate detailed work hour reports and summaries optimized for payroll integration and workforce monitoring.
• 🔌 Seamless MVC UI Integration: Engineered specifically to feed real-time attendance data and report models to the ASP.NET Core 6 MVC web application frontend.
• 🛠️ Interactive API Documentation: Embedded Swagger / OpenAPI 3.0 documentation for effortless endpoint exploration, debugging, and testing.

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🏗️ System Architecture & Workflow

The system is structured around the Repository Pattern to decouple data access logic from business controllers, ensuring high maintainability and testability.

graph TD
    subgraph Frontend["🖥️ Frontend Application"]
        UI["ASP.NET Core 6 MVC UI (TimePulseUI)"]
    end

    subgraph Backend["⚙️ TimePulseBackend API"]
        API["HomeAPIController (/api/HomeAPI)"]
        Repo1["IDatasheet Repository"]
        Repo2["ILogProcess Repository"]
    end

    subgraph Storage["💾 Data & Storage"]
        Excel["Uploaded Excel Sheets (.xls/.xlsx)"]
        OleDb["Microsoft ACE OLEDB Provider"]
        SQL["SQL Server Database (TimeManagement)"]
    end

    UI -- "REST / JSON" --> API
    API -- "Multipart Upload" --> Repo1
    Repo1 -- "Read Sheets" --> OleDb
    OleDb -- "Extract Raw Logs" --> Excel
    Repo1 -- "Bulk Import" --> SQL
    
    API -- "Process Logs & Reports" --> Repo2
    Repo2 -- "Read / Write Attendance Register" --> SQL

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💻 Technology Stack

Component	Technology / Library	Version	Purpose
Runtime & Framework	.NET SDK / ASP.NET Core Web API	6.0	Core REST API backend framework
Frontend UI	ASP.NET Core MVC	6.0	Companion user interface consuming the backend API
ORM & Data Access	Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer	7.0.4	Entity relational mapping and database operations
Database Engine	Microsoft SQL Server	2019+ / Express	Primary relational database storage
Excel Ingestion	System.Data.OleDb	7.0.0	Microsoft Access / Excel ACE OLEDB 12.0 connector
API Documentation	Swashbuckle.AspNetCore	6.2.3	Interactive Swagger UI generation

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📁 Codebase Structure

TimeManagementAPI/
├── AttendenceManagement/
│   └── AttendenceManagement/
│       ├── Controllers/
│       │   └── HomeAPIController.cs            # Primary REST API endpoints for Excel upload and log processing
│       ├── Infrastructure/
│       │   ├── IRepository/
│       │   │   ├── IDatasheet.cs               # Interface for document uploading and Excel parsing
│       │   │   └── ILogProcess.cs              # Interface for attendance calculations and reporting
│       │   └── Repository/
│       │       ├── Datasheet.cs                # OleDb Excel reader and raw employee log importer
│       │       └── LogProcessRepo.cs           # Core calculation engine for working hours, late ins, and overtime
│       ├── Models/
│       │   ├── AttAttendanceLog.cs             # Entity: Raw employee check-in / check-out timestamps
│       │   ├── AttAttendanceRegister.cs        # Entity: Processed daily attendance summaries & status flags
│       │   └── AttendanceManagement001Context.cs # EF Core Database Context
│       ├── ViewModels/
│       │   ├── MonthYearModel.cs               # Request payload model for filtering logs by month/year
│       │   └── ReportViewModel.cs              # Response DTO for detailed working hour analytics
│       ├── uploaded_doc/                       # Temporary staging folder for incoming spreadsheet uploads
│       ├── TimeConvertion.cs                   # Utility extension methods for time format parsing
│       ├── Program.cs                          # Dependency injection, CORS, and middleware pipeline setup
│       └── appsettings.json                    # Configuration for SQL Server & Excel OLEDB providers
└── README.md                                   # Project documentation

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Prerequisites

• .NET 6.0 SDK or later installed on your development machine.
• Microsoft SQL Server (or SQL Server Express / LocalDB).
• Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010/2016 Redistributable (Required for the 64-bit/32-bit ACE OLEDB driver to parse .xls/.xlsx files).

2. Configuration (appsettings.json)

Configure your database connection string and OLEDB provider settings in AttendenceManagement/AttendenceManagement/appsettings.json:

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "SQLConnection": "Server=YOUR_SERVER_NAME; Database=TimeManagement; Trusted_Connection=true; TrustServerCertificate=True; MultipleActiveResultSets=true;",
    "excelconnection": "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;HDR=YES'"
  }
}

3. Database Migration & Setup

Ensure your SQL Server instance is running, then apply the Entity Framework Core migrations to create the required tables (AttAttendanceLog and AttAttendanceRegister):

cd AttendenceManagement/AttendenceManagement
dotnet ef database update

(Alternatively, execute your SQL database schema script directly against your SQL Server instance).

4. Running the Backend Server

Launch the application using the .NET CLI or open the solution in Visual Studio 2022:

# Navigate to the project directory
cd AttendenceManagement/AttendenceManagement

# Restore dependencies and build
dotnet build

# Run the backend API server
dotnet run

The API will start running (defaulting to https://localhost:7145 or http://localhost:5145). Navigate to https://localhost:<port>/swagger in your web browser to access the interactive Swagger UI.

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📡 API Endpoints Reference

The backend exposes RESTful HTTP endpoints under the /api/HomeAPI base route:

HTTP Method	Endpoint	Request Payload	Description
POST	/api/HomeAPI/PostExcelFile	multipart/form-data (file: Excel file)	Uploads an employee attendance spreadsheet, extracts rows via OLEDB, and populates the database.
POST	/api/HomeAPI/LogProcess	application/json (MonthYearModel)	Triggers the attendance processing engine for a target month & year, calculating late minutes, work hours, and leaves.
GET	/api/HomeAPI/GetList	None	Retrieves a consolidated list of processed employee attendance records and working hour metrics.

Example Request: Log Processing (POST /api/HomeAPI/LogProcess)

{
  "month": "07",
  "year": "2026"
}

Example Response (200 OK)

[
  {
    "id": 101,
    "userId": "EMP-0042",
    "userName": "Devansh",
    "attDate": "2026-07-04T00:00:00",
    "lateInMinute": 15.0,
    "eartlyOutMinute": 0.0,
    "workhour": 8.5,
    "overTimeMinute": 30.0,
    "isLeave": false,
    "isHoliday": false,
    "isWeekOff": false
  }
]

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🎨 Frontend UI Integration (ASP.NET Core 6 MVC)

The user interface, TimePulseUI, is built using ASP.NET Core 6 MVC to provide a rich, responsive administrative dashboard for HR managers and employees.

Integration Workflow

1. Timesheet Upload View: The MVC UI provides a file drag-and-drop form that posts .xlsx files directly to POST /api/HomeAPI/PostExcelFile.
2. Attendance Dashboard: When an administrator selects a month and year on the UI, an AJAX or HttpClient call triggers POST /api/HomeAPI/LogProcess on TimePulseBackend to calculate the metrics.
3. Report Grid & Export: The MVC controller fetches data from GET /api/HomeAPI/GetList and renders interactive data tables with filtering, pagination, and export capabilities.

Note: When running the ASP.NET Core 6 MVC frontend locally alongside TimePulseBackend, ensure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) or local development ports are configured appropriately so the MVC client can seamlessly communicate with this API service.

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🛠️ Troubleshooting & Best Practices

• OLEDB Provider Error (The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine): Ensure you have installed the Microsoft Access Database Engine redistributable matching the architecture (32-bit vs. 64-bit) of your installed .NET runtime.
• File Upload Staging: Verify that the application has write permissions to the uploaded_doc/ folder where temporary Excel files are stored prior to ingestion.
• SQL Server Connection: If encountering login failures, verify TrustServerCertificate=True is included in your connection string when using SQL Server Express or local development certificates.

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📄 License & Copyright

Copyright © 2026 TimePulseUI. All rights reserved. Developed for enterprise employee attendance and workforce optimization.